Huber Heights, Ohio: From Truckers to Townhomes

Two pieces of land in Huber Heights, Ohio, taught me more about commercial land than anything else I’ve done. One became the city’s new Public Works campus. The other is becoming 159 new townhomes, and the newspaper named me in the article.

Explore the land

Click a parcel for details. Zoom in to see the lot lines on the satellite view, or switch to the street map in the top-right corner.

Lot lines: Montgomery County Engineer’s Office parcel data. Imagery: Esri World Imagery. Lines are approximate and not a survey.

The $127,327.37 offer

After COVID, rural land got crowded. Lots of people started doing what I had been doing, so I looked at what was working: high-traffic retail land. I ran the data to find the best-looking high-traffic retail land in the country, looked at what that kind of land sold for, and started at the low end of the comps. $127,327.37 came out as a nice number with three 7’s on the end. 7’s sell better than 9’s, so I ran with it and made that offer to high-traffic retail land all over the country.

5001 Taylorsville Rd: the truckers and the city

One of the acceptances was over 8 acres on a busy corner of Taylorsville Rd and Wildcat Rd in Huber Heights. I thought it would be more retail oriented. The shops around there are going off. I bought it and listed it with Tracey Herron at Equity Commercial Real Estate in Dayton. She had the listing contract over the next day and a flyer out the day after that.

All the truckers showed up. Fix trucks, clean trucks, take them apart, put them together, load them or unload them. All kinds of logistics. They loved the turning lane. The bids got up to $400K. One went for a 10-day buy at $400K. On day 9 they canceled to bid on a property at auction, but during that time the others had bid up to $500K, so I was relieved.

The truckers had me call the city multiple times a day to ask about this and that. I got to know the planner, Aaron Sorrell. He asked if the land was for sale. He’d been tasked by city council to find the perfect place for a new Department of Public Works, and I had just had him look up every answer the Department of Public Works would need. I had the right location.

I told him the truckers were bid up to $500K, so the city would have to pay $525K and close fast. I didn’t believe they could, so he got on the phone with the city council members while I was on the line as the seller. He blew me away. The city bought the land.

Today it’s an $18 million, 54,000 sq ft Public Works facility that opened April 1, 2026.

5425 Charlesgate Rd: 24 acres behind Lowe’s

What do you do when something great happens? You try to repeat it. I called the seller back. The Huber family developed most of Huber Heights over the years, and their attorney told me they had one property left: 24 acres behind Lowe’s and the hospital. I had studied that land a lot. Roads on either side, a big sewer main down the middle with capacity, water on the east side, and a small stream through the middle. That stream is why it was never developed.

They knew me from the last purchase. We paid cash, fast and easy. I asked for the same price per acre and 9 months to figure it out, and they agreed.

Home Depot and Costco were both missing from the area, and both like 10-acre-plus sites. I had renderings and site plans drawn up, mapped the drive-time gap for their customers, and pitched them both hard: phone, email, their brokers, and developers who work with them. Nothing. No response.

So I found apartment developers who agreed to buy the site if I could get it approved for a big apartment complex. The city recommended senior living so we could get away with less parking. We came up with two-story garden apartments, one bedroom each, 119 units, with a $500K tax credit from the city. It looked like such a great deal that I got some partners together and we bought the land before the option expired.

The city approved it pending detailed plans. Then interest rates went up and the whole apartment-building frenzy froze. By the time our buyer canceled, every apartment developer like them was in the same boat.

The city suggested we redo the plans as fee-simple units to sell instead of rent. Taxes on the sales would be expected to top $8 million, more than covering the roughly $4 million the city needed for roads and utilities. I brought in a partner who likes townhome developments, and CESO (they do engineering for Walmart) figured out we could fit 159 townhomes.

The city approved it. Then we found long-eared bats recorded nesting in the area, so we waited on a bat study. The west side was cleared, so we split it into two phases. Ryan Homes is building it: a planned $42 million project called Creekside Woods. Phase one, 78 units, is planned to be ready by July 2027, and phase two in late 2028.

I never would have figured this one out without my relationship with Aaron Sorrell at the city, the same person who helped me with the Public Works site.

In the news

The Dayton Business Journal covered the project. I put the three screenshots back together into one page. Look for the highlighted line: “Grey Fox Capital is the applicant for the project, owned by Luke Smith Trustee.”

Read the full articles:

• Dayton Business Journal: Creekside Townhomes phase one (Feb 17, 2025)
• Dayton Daily News: Plan for 159-townhome development approved in Huber Heights (Mar 14, 2025)

Project documents: Creekside Townhomes Basic Development Plan (PDF) · A Ryan Homes community a year ahead of ours, with the same look