Wharton Land Partners has been formed to take advantage of opportunities to acquire distressed, larger scale, residential development projects located primarily in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic States.
With the strengthening of banks' balance sheets, coupled with the passage of time which has enabled banks to gain control over troubled assets, there are an increasing number of properties becoming available for sale. Further, unlike income producing assets, banks are more apt to dispose of land at attractive prices as there is a less ready secondary market of buyers, and land development is an involved, complex business where banks do not have adequate expertise.
Wharton Land's main office is located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and is headed by Kyle Corkum who has almost 30 years of experience in residential development. Complementing Mr. Corkum is a team of 9 real estate executives with over 200 years experience, collectively, in residential development. Expertise covers asset management, site selection, land development, finance/accounting, market analysis, sales, marketing (Wharton Land has in-house legal and engineering). Moreover, many of these individuals were employed with the major national and regional homebuilders (Lennar, KB, Beazer, Pulte/Del Webb, Toll Brothers, WCI and DR Horton), thus providing in-depth relationships and unique understanding of these companies' acquisition criteria.
While Wharton Land has the capability of engaging in large-scale vertical construction (e.g., construction of homes), the company focuses solely on preparing and marketing lots to builders. Wharton Land is also aggressively pursuing the acquisition of debt, particularly projects encumbered by Community District Development Bonds (Florida) and similar instruments, in other states.