Technology is rapidly changing, and it will shape future developments. This can be a precarious situation for developers breaking ground today and delivering into a market several years in the future. While one solution is to encourage government regulations that will allow developers to adopt new technologies into development projects, another is for developers to adopt multi-decade strategies and development projects. Emile Haddad, the new chairman of the USC Lusk Center and CEO of development firm FivePoint, recommends developers look out over 10-, 15- and 30-years.

“Our company is different than most companies,” Haddad tells GlobeSt.com. “We have a strategy that has an outlook of three decades. The assets that we are working on today, we started on them 20 years ago—and those are assets that we'll deliver in the next 10 to 20 years. Because we are looking over the long term, we rely more on demographic shifts and technology that is going to change the way people behave. We look at more long-term trends to be informed. The lifespan of a typical developer is two to five years; ours is 20 to 40 years.”

The risk of a long-term strategy like the one the FivePoint has adopted is that you are more susceptible to economic changes. FivePoint keeps a strong balance sheet to ensure it doesn't get caught in a down cycle. “The way we cover ourselves in terms of not being caught in a cycle is simple: we make sure our balance sheet is solid. We are the largest developer in the state, and we have zero debt,” Haddad says. “We are always making sure that if the market shifts and we cannot generate revenue that we are not going to be in trouble.”