Q&A with Steve Barnes, Oklahoma residential developer

BY RICHARD MIZE

Published: February 6, 2009

Q: Lawton has been readying for a housing boom from relocations to Fort Sill associated with Base Realignment and Closure. Update us.

A: Maj. Gen. Peter Vangjel, the commanding general of Fort Sill, has formed the Community Regional Integration Committee, which has over 120 representatives from around Fort Sill and Lawton within a 50-mile radius, plus many state and federal agencies and politicians. The purpose is to help coordinate the influx of the 10,000 personnel being transferred to Fort Sill by the end of 2012. The number yet to be received given at the January 9 meeting was 8,700.

The two-year lead time to have a development through the plans approval process, to being built, should have builders-developers who are in place now in good shape. But for someone to come now and expect to buy the land and go through all the process and be building homes for a transfer of personnel that will end by late 2012 — they are most likely too late in the game. Local, established landowners, developers and builders in the primary market areas of Lawton, Cache and Elgin own enough land now to develop over 5,000 single-family lots.

Q: What are a few things that builders and developers in Lawton need to do to meet the needs of the influx of people?

A: Build the right product. I went to Fort Riley (Kansas) and have worked with a group from the Fort Hood (Texas) areas on what their influx of transferees bought and rented. The buyers bought $125,000 to a top $225,000 in both areas. Many rented because they are being deployed so much, usually every 18 months. If a builder is going to build in volume he needs to stay in this price market.

Build in the right places. This is simple to say but can be difficult for some to understand. The best advice is to build near the best schools — schools, schools — and go where you can hear the hammers. And remember, the explorers get the arrows in their backs.

Build the right amount. Absorption: Most lenders, builders, planners, you name it, don't have any idea what this term means. It is very simple. If an area built and sold 100 new homes of type-X homes and next year the same builder is going to build 200 new homes, and there was no change in the number of people moving in the area or other economic factors, he will have 100 new homes to sell the next year. This is the classic overbuilding that happens when the banks start loaning to every guy who thinks he is a builder and no one is checking what the number of new homes on the market is.