TrueDevelopers · by Franklin Andrew Cruz
Already building, or about to? Get an experienced developer in your corner.
You do not need another course. You need somebody who has done this thirty times to look at your actual project and tell you the truth while there is still time to change it.
I have taken land from raw dirt through rezoning, entitlement, financing and permits 30+ times. 107 deals closed. 20+ years. Bring me what you are working on.
Twenty years, in four lines
It started with one. Then an assemblage, then a subdivision. Nobody starts with forty-one.
A $1.25M disposition to a national homebuilder. They do not buy dirt that was not entitled properly.
The city named it. You cannot buy that and you cannot fake it.
The butterfly roof homes. Beautiful and profitable are not opposites — that is the whole argument.
The problem
You are about to spend money you cannot get back
on a decision you have never made before.
Almost everybody who calls me is in the same position. There is a parcel. There is a clock. And there is nobody in the room who has actually done this — just an agent who wants the commission, an engineer who answers only what he was asked, and a lender who will not say yes until it is too late to matter. So people guess. Then they find out what the impact fees really are, or that the zoning will not carry the density, or that the capital stack never worked, after the money is already spent.
More of the record
Twelve case studies. Seventy-seven projects.
Go read them before you decide anything.
Everything below has an address, a permit number or a document behind it. If any of it interests you, the full case study library is one click away — and it is free, and there is no form in front of it.
Lots nobody wanted, on blocks nobody was building on. Rezoned, financed, permitted and finished — and the block changed around them.
"Beacons of light — developer building modern homes in city's Northwest." Not a press release. A reporter came and wrote it.
From their Director of Land Acquisition: "the entitlements were delivered on time." That is the whole business in one sentence, written by the buyer.
Published
I wrote the reference books I wish somebody had handed me.
All three are on Amazon. You do not have to take my word for anything — go read the sample and decide whether I know what I am talking about before you ever fill out a form.
Every term a developer has to know to sit in the room and not get taken advantage of. The reference I wish somebody had handed me on day one.
The 30-minute daily audit that reclaims half your wasted time. How I actually run projects, weeks and a life while carrying several developments at once.
Why housing costs what it costs, where the money actually sits, and what has to change. The case for why more of us need to be building — not just investing.
In their words
What people say after we have worked together.
"Paste a real quote from the testimonial booklet here. The best ones name a number — what they were about to do, what got caught, what it saved."
"Second real quote. Add a photo if you have permission — a face converts far better than a name alone."
"Third real quote. Ideally an architect or a builder, so the reader recognises themselves in the person speaking."
Only real quotes from real people who gave permission. Nothing invented here, ever.
Two ways in
Pick the one that matches where you are.
This is what Polk Parkway looked like. A single engagement fee plus an ownership position, structured for that one project. Nine acres, one hundred units. I negotiated the land, negotiated with the city, ran the studies, built the budget, structured the capital and designed it on Usonian principles.
It is on this page for one reason: so you know what the top of the range actually is, and so you know I have been paid it. It is not something you can buy from a webpage. The fee, the participation and the control provisions are different every single time, because the risk is different every single time. Structured only after I understand the project, and only where an ownership position genuinely makes sense for both sides.
Clients have brought me in as co-CEO for a defined stretch — usually six months — when they had a project moving and nobody with development leadership to run it. I sit in the seat. I run the process, I make the calls, I am in the meetings with the city and the consultants and the lender, and I am accountable for the outcome.
This is not advice on a weekly call. It is me operating your development. Limited to a small number at a time, because it is my calendar and not a subscription.
Everything above requires me to give you my calendar and, in one case, my capital. This one gives you my judgment, every week, on your actual project — for less than one wrong assumption on a parcel costs you.
Weekly live working session — same day, same time, bring the parcel, the number, the letter. Unlimited project reviews — the site, the pro forma, the zoning letter, the bid, answered within one business day. Direct access between sessions. The document library — permit card, fee invoice, reimbursement letter, permit tracker, offer calculator, proforma. The room — other people doing this, every session recorded.
Start at the bottom of that list, not the top. Almost everybody should. The top two are on this page because you deserve to see the whole range before you decide where you sit — and because I have actually been paid both, on real projects, with permits and addresses. Anybody can print a big number on a website. I am showing you ones that were invoiced.
I am not going to argue with you about it and I am not going to make you fill anything out. One email. That is the whole policy, and I can offer it because in twenty years I have never had a conversation about a real parcel that did not produce at least one thing the owner did not know.
How it works
Three steps. You can be working on it this week.
If you already know, join and you are in immediately. If it is bigger than that, or you want to talk first, fill out the application. It takes four minutes and it is deliberately direct.
Address, what you are trying to do, where you are stuck, and whatever paper you have. I look at it before we ever speak, so the first conversation is not you catching me up.
Every week, on your actual project, until the decisions are made and the thing is moving. Not theory. Your parcel, your numbers, your city.
Featured projects
One house. Then a street.
Then a community.
In order, so you can see how it actually happens — because nobody hands you a hundred units on day one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
U.S. Army. Then a TEDx stage.
I did not come from real estate money. I served, I came home, and I learned this the expensive way — one decision at a time, paying for the ones I got wrong. Years later I stood on a TEDx stage and talked about it.
TEDx Lakeland.
Entrepreneur and philanthropist, on a red dot, talking about what building actually does to a neighbourhood. You do not get invited onto that stage for a spreadsheet. You get invited because something you built changed a block that people drive down every day.
One house became forty-one.
The first one taught me the sequence. Then I ran the same sequence again on a bigger parcel, and again, until it was a subdivision. The unit repeated is the whole business. Volume is a consequence, never a starting point.
Entitled it, then sold it to KB Home.
A national homebuilder paid $1.25 million for land I took through the approval process. They were not buying dirt. They were buying entitlement — and that is the single most valuable thing I know how to manufacture.
Cruz Court.
Raw land, rezoned, financed, permitted and finished on a block nobody was building on. The city named the street after my family. You cannot buy that, and you cannot fake it.
The award-winning butterfly roof homes.
716 and 720 W 14th. A roofline you do not see in Florida infill, on a street nobody was building on, delivered at a price that worked. Not a rendering — standing, permitted, occupied. Wright's principles through Gene Leedy's Florida work and Mies's discipline, on an ordinary budget.
709 N Vermont — built with Habitat for Humanity.
The first Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired home ever built with Habitat. I pushed for it and paid for the redesign out of my own pocket, because a Habitat family deserves to live in something that inspires. The whole block changed around it.
Nine acres. One hundred units. In development now.
Polk Parkway. I negotiated the land, negotiated with the city, ran the studies, built the budget and structured the capital. Usonian principles at community scale. This is the one I am in the middle of while you are reading this.
Every one of those started as one parcel and one decision. What's yours?
Apply to work with FranklinWhy my projects look the way they do
I did not invent the design principles.
I inherited them, and I build them for regular people.
Most developers pick a plan from a catalogue because it pencils. I start from a lineage — three architects who each solved a piece of the same problem, which is how ordinary families get to live in something worth living in. Then I make the numbers work around it, which is the harder half and the reason most beautiful projects never get built.
Usonian: good design is not a luxury good. He spent a career proving a working family deserved light, proportion and a real connection to the site — not whatever was left over after the budget.
He built it in Florida, on real budgets, for real buyers. The Sarasota School showed this is not a coastal fantasy — it is buildable on a normal lot for a normal number.
What you leave out matters as much as what you put in. In development that is not an aesthetic position, it is a cost position — restraint is what keeps a good building inside a budget.
The butterfly roof homes.
Two homes on a street nobody was building on, with a roofline you do not see in Florida infill, delivered at a price that worked. Not a rendering. Not a concept. Standing, permitted, occupied.
This is the whole argument in one photograph. The lineage is why it is worth building. The pro forma is why it got built. You need both hands on the project, and almost nobody has both.
You have a parcel. I have done this thirty times. Let's look at it together.
Apply to work with FranklinThe proof, not a pitch
I can only teach what I have actually done.
Raw land through entitlement to standing homes. Named after my family, built on the block I said I would build on.
The first Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired home ever built with Habitat for Humanity. I pushed for it and paid for the redesign myself.
An active master development. Design lineage on purpose, numbers that hold, and a community that did not exist before.
The application
I only take the call if I can actually help you.
Not a formality. I read every one myself, and I say no more than I say yes — because taking money from somebody I cannot move forward is the fastest way to end up with nothing worth showing. Five things I need to know:
Start the application — 4 minutes
If it is a fit you will get my calendar the same day. If it is not, I will tell you why, and point you at the part of the case studies that answers it.
Who you are working with
Franklin Andrew Cruz.
This is not theory.
U.S. Army veteran. TEDx speaker. Twenty years and 107 closings. I have rezoned parcels, fought for entitlements, structured the capital, pulled the permits and stood on the slab. I have also lost money learning things nobody told me, which is the part that actually makes me useful to you. Everything I teach came out of a project with my name on the permit.
I am not a licensed architect and I do not pretend to be one. I do not provide architecture, engineering, land surveying or design services. What I do is help you make the right calls in the right order, so the people who do provide those services are working on the right project.
Straight answers
Questions people actually ask.
Any time, yourself, no call and no retention pitch. If it is not producing, you should not be paying for it.
Then do not book yet. Find a parcel, get it under contract or close to it, and come back. I would rather have you in three months with an address than today with a maybe.
Yes. The sequence is the same everywhere; the numbers and the agencies change. I will tell you plainly when something is jurisdiction-specific and needs a local answer.
Sometimes, on the right project, structured after I understand it. That conversation belongs in Partner & Ownership, and it is never a promise made on a website.
Do not, yet. Read the 12 case studies and the 77 projects, look at the three books on Amazon, then decide. Everything I claim has an address, a permit number or a document behind it.
One decision
There is a version of your project where somebody who has done this thirty times
is in the room with you.
It costs less than one wrong assumption on a parcel.