If northern Frisco is as rural as you get, then you probably don’t know what a landman is.
Dan Collins of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, who will spearhead the real estate brokerage’s first Land + Ranch division, began his real estate career as a petroleum landman many years ago for the consummate Texas businessman H. Ross Perot, Sr.
“I was a young man standing in what was an old horse pasture off Preston Road with Ross Perot,” Collins says. “He was pointing outward to Legacy Drive saying, ‘I’m going to build a new EDS there.’ Then we all ate barbeque.’”
And Perot did. The property, which was once open pastureland and surrounded by nothing much — became the new massive corporate Plano campus for Perot’s iconic Electronic Data Systems, or EDS.
Lessons Learned From Ross Perot
For nearly a decade, Collins worked with Perot’s oil and gas company to work on numerous drilling, non-producing and producing land transactions — that’s landman-speak for land that might have oil and gas.
In that time, Collins learned a lot from the small Perot organization founded by Ross Perot, the “eccentric billionaire who made two independent runs for U.S. President” as the Washington Post described him in his June 2019 obituary — though one Texas publication retorted Perot wasn’t eccentric by Texas standards.
“Ross Perot taught me the value of truth, accountability, and preparedness in business,” Collins says. “Preparedness for Perot meant his employees used extensive due diligence and practical intuition in finding and securing good opportunities for the company.
“That also meant having integrity and treating people well,” he continues. “In negotiations, you need to be tough, smart, and sensitive to people’s needs.”
Real Business Applications
Collin’s expertise lay in real property asset transactions — landman-speak for buying and selling land, and anything attached to it. He did the research and due diligence to make the deals successful.
But for a real layman like me, I understand its essence as discovering a piece of land that doesn’t have a For Sale sign on it, finding the owner, convincing them to sell, and negotiating a fair price for both parties to successfully complete the transaction.
That last part — negotiating a fair price for both parties — is important, Collins says. No company wants to pay more than they have to for a piece of land, and no owner wants to receive less than what their property is worth to them.
Dan Collins knows how to be tough, smart, AND sensitive to what people want and need in a land transaction, a lesson that he continues to pass along to up-and-coming real estate agents today. He also uses his extensive oil and gas knowledge for the benefit of landowners, while being their advocate for a desired buy or sell transaction.
Combining Forces
After Perot, Collins held several top executive positions managing hundreds of millions of dollars of land and assets. But when his wife Rosa Collins — an uber-successful luxury real estate agent — needed help with her flourishing business, Dan walked away from the corporate world and went full-time to co-manage her business. Just over a year ago, they joined @properties Christie’s as one of the founding members of the firm’s Frisco office.
They also relish the time spent together serving the community — Rosa primarily working with Equihope, an equine therapy facility in Pilot Point, and the Collin County Children’s Advocacy Center, and Dan primarily volunteering his time assisting U.S. Veterans and Bible teaching at an Alzheimer’s Day Center and a local Plano Church.
Challenging Land
Collins put his land management and acquisition skills to work when a buyer found a key lot near Downtown Frisco he wanted to purchase. He discovered the land was completely surrounded by Frisco, but was not platted as part of the city limits. Collins, along with the seller’s agent and Rosa, worked some landman magic — my term — and closed on the lot after six difficult months.
Collins later came together with Jerry Mooty, CEO and Principal of @properties Christie’s, to discuss the best strategy for serving land and ranch clients.
“I have been wanting to expand our real estate services to include land and ranch, mainly because of the amount of land changing hands in north Texas to meet the future growth and development of those areas,” Mooty says. “Having Dan with his expertise already onboard, allowed our brokerage to accelerate that idea to meet the demand our brokerage is seeing locally and through our Christie’s affiliate network.”
Collins adds, “Selling land and ranch properties is different from selling luxury homes. With the launch of a dedicated Land + Ranch division, our buyers and sellers will have a real advantage because they’re working with a team that specializes in and has experience with rural properties.”
@properties Christie’s new Land + Ranch division was born with Collins at the helm, though Collins himself is hesitant to attach a title to his new founding role. He says he’s most excited to share his decades of knowledge with new agents joining @properties Christie’s.
“Mentor is not necessarily a title you give yourself, but leading the new Land + Ranch division will give me the chance to mentor or share all my knowledge with new agents,” Collins says. “That’s really important to me.”
And those lessons come from Collins’ days as a landman for Ross Perot. A legacy of landman lessons, you could say.
