An army of consultants awaits your call

Well-known home builder marketing consultant Bill Becker, based in Teaneck, N.J., is the latest addition to a consortium of housing industry consulting firms now packaging their services to help builders evaluate sites under consideration for acquisition. It seems like a smart idea, because builders who survive the current housing crash will be inundated with land acquisition offers over the next six months, and the expertise this alliance offers covers the full gamut of services required to take a site all the way to finished housing product — but the builder doesn't pay full-service rates for the upfront evaluation expertise.

It was Bill Feinberg, president of the architectural design firm Feinberg & Associates of Voorhees, N.J., who came up with the idea of bringing together all the professionals needed to evaluate a prospective site for large production builders before acquisition. Because Feinberg often gets the call to evaluate sites for density potential, appropriate products and a workable site plan, he put into his marketing budget the dollars to structure the alliance and organize the eight separate firms into a viable new business development team. Feinberg and the builders get the benefit of consulting with a combined workforce of more than 500 industry professionals to help make the best decisions possible on land acquisition. The other professionals get their feet in the door much earlier, with the potential to be part of the development team if a project actually comes together.

Besides Feinberg and Becker, the other members of the new alliance are: Joseph L.D. Bernardo & Associates (a New Jersey acquisition and development consulting firm); C.H. Kauffman & Associates (a New Jersey financial services firm); O'Donnell & Naccarato (a Philadelphia-based structural engineering firm); AKRF (a New York City environmental engineering firm); Patton Harris Rust & Associates (a Virginia-based civil engineering firm); and The Marcom Group (a New York firm offering services in marketing, sales administration, advertising and model merchandising).

These guys seem to be following the advice from colonial days that it's better to hang together so they don't hang separately. They're going to put on a program at the Atlantic Builders Convention in April in Atlantic City, N.J., titled “Boot Camp For Builders in a Troubled Economy. 

Read more on Bill Lurz's blog, Ear to the Ground.