For the past couple of years, I've been investing in rural land alongside Wayne Congar, founder of HUTS. Watching him work has changed how I think about rural real estate, so I asked him to teach a workshop on how he does it.
The workshop runs Thursday, May 14, at 12pm ET on Zoom. It's $299, and any developer building (or thinking about building) outside the urban core should attend. Get tickets here.
The cliché about rural land is that it's cheap because it's worthless, acreage priced by the acre because there's no higher and better use. But great rural land development businesses are built on the opposite premise: the land isn't the product, the place is, and the gap between what a parcel costs as commodity dirt and what it's worth as a destination is often an order of magnitude. Closing that gap is the unlock, and it's what this workshop teaches.
The economics have also quietly shifted in favor of developers who know what they're doing. Modern tools like aerial imagery, GIS overlays, and AI-powered site research have collapsed the cost of finding and evaluating parcels, turning weeks of windshield time and county assessor websites into an afternoon at your desk. Meanwhile, demand for rural housing and hospitality has stayed strong well past the COVID-era surge, with secondary leisure markets like Driggs, Idaho posting 40% year-over-year price increases in 2025 and surpassing $1 billion in total sales velocity for the first time. The bottleneck isn't sourcing anymore; it's knowing what to do with what you find.
That's what Wayne will teach. HUTS has spent years refining a methodical framework for moving a rural parcel from "raw land priced by the acre" to "a place people want to be part of," covering site evaluation, concept matching, placemaking, deal structuring, and the narrative work that turns a spreadsheet into something investors and end users actually understand.
The most valuable hours I've spent thinking about rural development have been with Wayne, and this workshop compresses that thinking into a session you can take action on the next day.
What we'll cover
Sourcing and screening rural parcels with aerial imagery, mapping platforms, and AI research, compressing what used to take weeks into an afternoon at your desk
Evaluating a site before you visit, including wetlands, flood zones, topography, access, utilities, and zoning, and how to separate real opportunities from dead ends digitally
Deciding what to build, using the HUTS framework for matching a site's natural assets to the right concept (cabin community, boutique lodge, hybrid housing + hospitality)
Turning a parcel into a place with placemaking principles like story, gathering points, relationship with landscape, and economic sustainability that separate destinations from subdivisions
Changing how people value your land, applying Wayne's core method for moving capital partners from "that's a lot of dirt" to "I want in," and end users from "parcel" to "destination"
Phasing and de-risking, including seller financing, options, phased closings, and how to structure deals so early phases fund later ones
What you'll walk away with
Due diligence checklists for both off-site screening and on-site evaluation, built from dozens of real HUTS deals
Deal structuring frameworks tailored to the realities of rural parcels, including seller financing, option agreements, and phased closings
The value transformation playbook, HUTS' proprietary method for reframing a property around its highest and best use, the engine of the whole approach
Recordings, slides, and the resource guide, delivered within a week of the session
Access to our private Circle community where the conversation continues
Who this is for
Ground-up developers exploring rural projects, landowners looking to unlock parcels they already hold, hospitality entrepreneurs and operators, homebuilders eyeing rural and exurban markets, and land brokers and acquisition teams. No technical background required.
Logistics
When: Thursday, May 14, 12:00–2:00pm ET
Where: Live on Zoom (recording shared with all registrants)
Price: $299
The biggest mistake rural developers make is treating their land as a commodity, and Wayne's whole career is the rebuttal to that mistake. If you're working on a rural project, or wondering why the math on yours feels harder than it should, spend two hours with him on May 14.
Brad is the founder and editor of Thesis Driven (www.thesisdriven.com), a publication covering innovation in the built world. Over the past decade he has co-founded General Assembly and Common which generated a combined $500M+ in enterprise value.
