Real Estate Development: Principles and Process [Hardcover]

In its earlier incarnations Real Estate Development Principles and Process was groundbreaking,informative, insightful, and occasionally downright brilliant. This edition builds on that legacy with updated coverage of electronic information systems and thoroughly revised (vastly improved) coverage of marketing and market analysis. However, Development is still not an easy read; adjectives like ponderous, academic, and stodgy still apply!

Development is structured around an Eight Stage Model, prefaced by ~200 pages of introductory material about developers, development environments, development finance, and real estate development in the United States. The authors emphasize several themes:

* The interplay between markets, marketability, and feasibility: Development recognizes thatprojects must be feasible for all of their constituencies to be feasible for the developer.
* The role of public and political interaction and goal congruity in the process: Development extends James Graaskamp's thoughts on development as socio-political activity.
* The necessity for coherent risk-management and exit strategies at every step of the process:Development emphasizes the development process as (simultaneously) a business activity, a prelude to property management, and an integral part of asset/portfolio management strategy.

At core, Development is about process. Each successive step of the model applies: increasingly sophisticated analysis or procedures to ~ increasingly specific and refined data in order to ~ match resource commitments to ~ the "go forward" decision's inherent risk and "reversibility." Model steps include:

1. Inception of the Development Idea
2. Refinement of the Idea
3. Feasibility
4. Contract Negotiation
5. Formal Commitment
6. Construction/Development
7. Completion and Formal Opening
8. Property, Asset, and Portfolio Management

The eight step format is instructive, but probably shouldn't be taken too literally. One could argue just as easily for as few as 5 or as many as 15 steps.

In practice, development processes often overlap or are indistinguishable from each other. Project inception, refinement, and feasibility analysis collide willy-nilly. Negotiation, commitment, and construction proceed simultaneously and loop-back to accommodate change orders or "unanticipated events." (Who knew about the aquifer under that hillside?) Recently re-invigorated design-build strategies (e.g. Integrated Project Delivery) usually require greater developer commitment, and greater risk, at earlier stages of development than the authors' model contemplates.

None of which detracts from this book's achievement!

As a textbook for a junior or senior level real estate development class (the authors' intended audience) the work has no peer. It is a monumental tour-de-force of development with unrivaled breadth and depth.

Development can also serve as a reference and how-to guide for practicing developers and their advisors - no matter how sophisticated we think we are already. The bibliographic material,references to printed and electronic data sources, and the authors' analysis of the data's limitations are enough to justify keeping a copy of Development close by - though you may have to reinforce your bookcase just to be on the safe side!

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A (minor) quibble about style: Development's prose is turgid, its sentence structure convoluted. {We counted 8 subordinate clauses in one (not atypical) sentence that continued for 24 half-column lines.} The authors are inordinately fond of "laundry list sentences" - multiple nouns, separated by even more numerous adjectives, strung together by a plethora of commas, colons, semi-colons and "and/ors," with nary a verb or a period in view (kind of like this sentence). The authors wrote much of the book in passive voice (an unequivocal breach of Strunk and White's law for effective prose). Net effect, Development is a difficult read! The authors' style (or lack thereof) masks their often startling insights into the development process.

This book is exactly what the title says - Principles and Process of real estate development. It is written by professors and it describes development as a whole and I would definitely recommend it to every development student. Every possible segment of real estate development is captured. Don't think this book will provide various 'tricks' and 'secrets'. It will provide more than that. For those wishing more practical knowledge I recommend 'Confessions of a real estate entrepreneur' by Randel.

This book was just what we were looking for: A comprehensive professional overview of all of the aspects of RE development. Everyone who owns or develops commercial real estate, and has not formally studied development, should read this book regardless of their experience.