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NATIONAL STUDY

How Covid-19 has shifted home purchase motivations.
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Belinda Sward is..

Founder and Chief Strategist of Strategic Solutions Alliance. She has over 20 years’ experience providing market and consumer intelligence and customer-based strategies for real estate, working with developers, homebuilders and investors. 
 
This has included work with some of the most foremost development companies and investment firms over the years, such as Newland Communities, LDC/CalPERS, IHP Capital Partners, Anchorage Capital, Walton Street Capital, Mobil Land Development, Trammell Crow Residential, Del Webb, Howard Hughes Corporation and Crescent Resources, among many others.
 
Bringing customer insights has been a core focus of Belinda’s career, including leading customer strategies and consumer conversations for many of the nation’s best performing residential communities.

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Prior to founding Strategic Solutions Alliance in 2008, Belinda was the Chief Strategy Officer for Newland. Her role included oversight of all consumer intelligence and market research, and the application of these insights in Newland’s residential communities nationwide. She took the company’s research from one-off disconnected studies to an integrated approach of gathering intelligence, interpreting the insights and applying them to drive business results from community acquisition to successful grand openings.

At Newland, Belinda worked with team members, including the firm’s Chief Marketing Officer, Teri Slavik-Tsuyuki, to create a process to learn and classify attitudes, beliefs, lifestyle, needs and preferences of customers. Belinda led a transition of Newland’s research process from one-off market research reports with various vendors to an integrated process of consumer and market intelligence, interpretation and application. She provided input to determine optimal land use and product segmentation strategies for Newland’s communities. She utilized custom designed consumer research to incorporate development and housing strategies and implementation plans for each various master-planned community.  This led to innovation community and housing designs, space design and activation for authentic customer experiences, conversational marketing and customer engagement strategies.

 

Belinda also brings experience as a Managing Director with RCLCO, where she led consulting services for top developers and investors including development, market and consumer strategies, financial optimization analyses for planning and product segmentation, and builder sales strategies for thousands of mixed-use and single use real estate projects in 44 states. 

Belinda always approached Market Analyses to understand who is living there, who is moving there and why to bring a more comprehensive market understanding and identify actionable development and marketing opportunities for clients.

While at RCLCO, Belinda worked in-house with Mobil Land Development, working with the CEO and CMO to prepare community market and customer analysis.  In addition, she worked for numerous developers, homebuilders and capital investment clients on mixed-use and master-planned communities as well as several strategic planning engagements for various downtown redevelopment and regional development strategies.

Belinda was influenced early on by her grandfather who was a homebuilder who always cared about the people buying and living in the homes and communities he built.  

Similarly, always curious about the who and why, she received her BBA in Marketing with a focus on consumer sciences, from Georgia Southern University, and then pursued a career of uncovering and learning about the people, their preferences and why it matters to real-estate development.  

This combination of senior-level operating company experience and diverse consulting and advisory background in multiple states gives Belinda the combination of understanding the constraints and opportunities of business, and the curiosity of a researcher’s mind – a combination that is truly unique. 

Professional Affiliations...

Belinda is a member of the Urban Land Institute CDC Product Council and has held various leadership positions on Product and District Councils. Belinda regularly serves on Urban Land Institute’s CDC Product Council, is Co-Chair of the Membership Committee and on the Advisory Panel of ULI San Diego-Tijuana District Council. She was selected by ULI to be a mentor in the ULI/Randall Lewis Health Mentorship Program.

 

She is a frequent speaker at industry events, has served as an expert witness, and volunteers her time with Habitat for Humanity, Hope Leadership Academy and White Rainbow/Sangita.

  • Urban Land Institute (ULI)

  • ULI Community Development Council (CDC), leadership positions

  • ULI San Diego District Council, executive advisory board, membership committee

  • ULI Atlanta District Council, past executive board and leadership

  • ULI Advisory Services Panels

  • ULI Foundation

  • National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) past Member

  • Pacific Coast Builders – Matters Conference (formerly Vine Conference)

  • Industry speaker and panelist

  • Habitat for Humanity, Bread of Life and San Diego Rescue Mission

  • Bottom Line Business Community

  • Matter Conference

  • Women in Business

  • Selected among a small group of mentors through the ULI/Randall Lewis Mentorship Program in 2019. Active mentor to a mentee (Natalia Chavez) who is a recent graduate of Harvard University, Kennedy School.

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