New Colorado Trumark division plants flag in Windsor

WINDSOR — On the back of a recently formed Colorado division, California homebuilder Trumark Cos. LLC is continuing its first push onto the Front Range residential development scene with a new neighborhood in Windsor’s RainDance planned community.

Locally, the San Ramon-based builder, which began buying land in RainDance last year, has to-date acquired 226 finished lots.

RainDance is being overseen by local developer Martin Lind’s Water Valley Land Co. LLC and Trumark’s holdings include property along the perimeter of Lind’s soon-to-completed RainDance National Golf Course. 

The company’s Windsor offerings include single-family, for-sale, market-rate homes that range from roughly 2,000 square feet to more than 4,000 square feet.  Prices are expected to be from about $800,000 to more than $2 million.

The homebuilder’s Colorado operation, which is fewer than two years old, is led by president Scott Davis, a long-time Centennial State builder previously with D.R. Horton Inc.

Davis recalled to BizWest a 2021 meeting with Trumark founders Gregg Nelson and Michael Maples.

“They happened to be wanting to launch their first division out of state,” Davis said, and “we just happened to meet and hit it off.”

The Trumark Colorado team has been rostered with local real estate professionals, including director of operations Tyler Steinke.

With a local team, “we feel like we have our ear to the ground on what’s important to vendors, how we can be more efficient, time, money, scope of work,” Davis said.

This insight is particularly important because Trumark is setting an ambitious six-month construction schedule for its RainDance homes.

“A brand-new operation would struggle” to build on an accelerated schedule and in an economic climate rife with inflation and supply-chain disruptions, Davis said. “Relationships are important — and trust.”

While the Trumark team projects confidence, Davis acknowledged that there are challenges in the Northern Colorado real estate market.

Access to water rights is “a big issue” generally, he said, but the lots Trumark purchased from Water Valley include water. 

That will likely not be the case if and when Trumark expands its regional footprint. Still, Davis said the division is set up for success. 

“It’s easier to talk about what bad builders are doing,” he said. “… You hear things that you read in the press that everything’s chaotic — it’s really not.”

That’s a bold statement considering that Davis said Trumark is negotiating final prices for new homes on the front of the construction process. 

The speedy build-out timeline helps mitigate risk by allowing the developer to more effectively lock in prices, which have tended to escalate since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“It’s hard to be predictable today,” Davis said. “We’ve pre-ordered some things, and we’ve pre-permitted so we don’t delay the homes.” 

This strategy limits flexibility on certain construction elements but helps “offset[s] some of the delays” that frequently take bites from developers’ bottom lines, he said.

Again, Davis points to the Trumark Colorado team’s experience in the market as a factor that hopefully will allow for maximum efficiency.

“If you started from scratch and you’re waiting on the bank to loan you money to buy four lots here and 10 lots there, it would take a long time,” he said.

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