The Costly Mistake Asset Owners Make

There is a massive transfer of land beginning across America.

But I don't think the biggest risk is simply who buys it.

I think the bigger risk is how quickly we decide what it should become.

USDA's latest Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land survey estimates that approximately 43 million acres of U.S. farmland are expected to transfer ownership within the next five years, excluding land already expected to move through wills or trusts. Among non-farming principal landlords, the average age is now 69.2 years old. The average American agricultural producer is 58.1.

Look farther out and the scale becomes even larger. American Farmland Trust estimates roughly 300 million acres, approximately one-third of American agricultural land, could change hands over the next two decades.

Some families have the next generation ready to take over.

Many don't.

Some heirs inherit land but not the desire, experience or financial structure required to operate it. Others inherit divided ownership or unresolved title issues. USDA specifically recognizes heirs' property as a challenge because ownership can become increasingly fragmented across generations, making management, financing and even access to certain programs more difficult.

And even when a family desperately wants to keep the land, economics matter.

In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, only 43% of U.S. farms reported positive net cash farm income. Meanwhile, farm real estate values continue rising. USDA reported an average U.S. farm real estate value of $4,350 per acre in 2025.

That creates a very real tension.

A family can be land rich and operating-cash poor.

A ranch can carry enormous financial, cultural and emotional value while becoming increasingly difficult for the existing ownership structure to maintain.

Eventually someone asks: what do we do with it?

And this is where I believe one of the most expensive mistakes in development begins.

01 / The Sequence

We start solving before we have defined the problem.

The conventional path often looks something like this.

The landowner has an asset. A developer begins evaluating what can be built. Capital evaluates whether the proposed development can generate an acceptable return. Architecture translates the program into something physical. Construction determines how it gets built. Operations eventually determine whether the experience actually works.

Each discipline is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

The problem is what can happen before all of them. Someone has already made an assumption about what the asset should become.

Maybe it should be a resort. Maybe residential. Maybe a master-planned community. Maybe luxury ranch ownership. Maybe agricultural tourism. Maybe conservation. Maybe some combination nobody has seriously considered.

Once that initial assumption enters the process, incredibly sophisticated people can begin optimizing around it. The developer improves the development model. Capital improves the capital structure. The architect improves the physical solution. The operator improves the operating model.

But everyone may still be improving an answer to the wrong question.

02 / The Missing Layer

The missing layer is upstream.

The question before development should not simply be: what can we build here?

It should be:

What is actually true about this asset, this market and the people who could value it?

And perhaps most importantly:

What would have to be true for any proposed future to work?

That is where I sit.

03 / Position

I sit before the answer.

My role is not to replace the developer. It is not to replace capital. It is not to replace the architect, operator, engineer or contractor.

I want those people at the table. But I want them solving a problem that has been properly defined first.

The American Institute of Architects makes a surprisingly similar point from inside the architecture profession itself. Its guidance on Owner Project Requirements says that for many projects, the problem is insufficiently stated when the architect becomes involved, and that understanding the problem should precede design.

That distinction matters enormously. Because by the time an architect is designing a 120-key resort, someone has probably already decided that a 120-key resort is the answer.

My interest is in what happened before 120 keys became the assumption.

That is upstream development strategy.

04 / The Developer

Then the developer becomes more valuable.

This isn't an argument against developers leading development.

Urban Land Institute describes real estate development as a multidisciplinary process with the developer acting as the conductor across site selection, visioning, entitlements, design, construction, leasing and eventual disposition.

That expertise is essential. But even sophisticated financial feasibility does not answer every strategic question.

ULI's own development guidance notes that initial financial analysis is a starting point and does not provide all the information necessary to make the development decision.

Exactly. Financial feasibility can tell us whether a particular model works under a particular set of assumptions. It cannot necessarily tell us whether those were the right assumptions to begin with.

That is a different problem.

05 / Capital

Then capital gets a better thesis.

Capital should not have to determine the consumer thesis. Its job is to understand risk, return, structure, timing and whether the opportunity deserves investment.

But capital is only as good as the development thesis underneath the model.

If we assume 120 keys at a certain ADR, occupancy, capture rate and operating margin, we can build a very sophisticated model around those numbers. Sophistication does not make the assumptions true.

The greater the amount of capital involved, the more valuable it becomes to test the thesis before the organization becomes financially and psychologically committed to it. A relatively small amount spent interrogating the original premise can protect an extraordinary amount downstream.

06 / Architecture

Then architecture receives a better problem.

Great architecture can create enormous value. But architecture becomes even more powerful when the architect receives a deeply understood problem rather than a loosely defined aspiration.

Instead of: design us a luxury Western resort.

Imagine handing the design team:

Now architecture isn't being asked to discover the entire business thesis through design. It gets to solve for it.

07 / Compounding Cost

One wrong assumption becomes incredibly expensive downstream.

This is what asset owners need to understand. Early assumptions compound.

If the initial assumption is wrong, every discipline downstream can perform exceptionally well and the project can still struggle.

The architect did not fail. The developer did not necessarily fail. Capital did not necessarily fail. Construction did not necessarily fail. They may simply have inherited an assumption nobody was responsible for challenging.

That is why I believe the development process needs another layer at the very beginning. Not more consultants. Not another 100-page report.

Decision intelligence before commitment.

Only then should increasingly expensive disciplines begin optimizing the solution.

08 / The Opportunity

The opportunity hidden inside the land transition.

The coming transfer of American land is often framed as a succession problem. It is. But I also see something larger.

We are about to make millions of decisions about what happens next to assets that may have been held by the same families for generations.

Some should remain agricultural. Some should be conserved. Some will need new economic engines to survive. Some will become hospitality. Some will become residential. Some will support entirely new ownership and operating models.

And some may be far more valuable if we resist developing them at all.

The answer should not be predetermined by whichever discipline happens to enter the conversation first.

The costly mistake asset owners make isn't hiring the wrong architect or choosing the wrong developer. It happens earlier.

It is allowing an untested assumption about the future of the asset to quietly become the brief everyone else is paid to execute.

Before we ask the world to design, finance and build the answer, someone needs to make sure we are solving the right problem.

That is the work I believe belongs at the beginning.