A 60-acre site in Central Florida has been cleared for a townhouse development, ending a years-long saga that turned on the listing broker's patience and persistence.
The property in DeLand, a city of about 43,000 residents between Orlando and Daytona Beach, sat on the market for more than six years, according to Steve Costa of NAI Realvest-Charles Wayne. It was regularly passed over by multifamily developers, he said in an interview, even though it was visible from Interstate 4 and located across a Daytona State College campus.
"We just couldn't get any traction with it," said Costa, a soft-spoken DeLand native who had the listing going back to 2017.
But as he learned playing college baseball, sometimes waiting for the perfect pitch and then following through with a strong swing pays off.
In recent years, elevated mortgage rates and home price increases have pushed ownership out of reach for many consumers. Townhouses, typically less expensive than single-family homes, are one solution to the nation's growing affordability gap.
In DeLand, part of the problem was that the city didn't have sufficient zoning to allow the development of townhouses, according to city spokesperson Chris Graham.
So Costa had an idea.
In 2021, he approached city officials about creating the needed zoning standards, and the DeLand City Commission approved those that year, making it easier to propose and build townhouse projects in DeLand.
Homebuilder signs contract for the land
With the zoning addressed, the broker then contacted the Arlington, Texas-based D.R. Horton, the nation's largest homebuilder by sales.
The company was intrigued about the idea of building 300 townhouses, so the homebuilder put the site under contract for $6.9 million, contingent on its ability to get the city's approval for the project, Costa said.
Other builders also made offers, he noted, but D.R. Horton made the strongest bid for the North Summit Avenue land Abdel Hakim Samawi of the Deprop firm owns.
From there, D.R. Horton worked with the city for about two and a half years to address a series of environmental and traffic issues related to the property. It submitted an amended application to the city in December 2023 and it was approved the following May.
D.R. Horton completed the transaction in June but structured the deal so that another firm, KBC Development, would pay the $6.9 million sales price and sell individual lots back to the homebuilder, Costa said.
D.R. Horton officials did not respond to requests to comment.
Not only did Costa facilitate the land sale but his work in nudging the city to address townhouse zoning could help improve the housing mix in DeLand.
Planners embracing townhouses
"How it changes the residential landscape would depend on developers taking advantage of the new standards," Graham, the city spokesperson, said in an email. "It does provide a more straightforward process."
Aside from the D.R. Horton development, one townhouse-specific project is under construction in DeLand and two others are in the planning stages, Graham said.
More city planners across the country are open to townhouses, seeing density as a way to boost the number of housing units while still protecting environmentally sensitive land, according to Sean Salter, a real estate researcher and finance professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
Townhouses also benefit a wide range of consumers with limited money to spend on shelter, providing a comfortable lifestyle through homeowner associations that take care of routine maintenance, Salter said in an interview.
"You don't have to cut the grass, trim weeds or plant flowers and bushes, but you're still building equity," he said. "That's attractive for a lot of people."
Before getting into commercial real estate some three decades ago, Costa, 50, was a power-hitting outfielder who earned a baseball scholarship to DeLand's Stetson University. As a child, he grew up around cattle and citrus with his family involved in those industries.
Costa laughingly said there were too many frustrations associated with this deal to call it a favorite of his career. Still, he's proud of the outcome.
"We finally got it done," he said. "It was very satisfying."
