How a new Pulte Florida agrihood makes conservation a buyer desire
For years, Central Florida’s exploding population growth and rapidly expanding suburban sprawl have clashed with local efforts to protect the region’s dwindling green space and undeveloped land. PulteGroup’s new 1,200-acre community on Orlando’s eastern edge aims to balance these seemingly contradictory interests.
The community is called The Grow. Once undeveloped, rural land, the property is set to begin morphing into a roughly 2,200-home “agrihood” centered around a 9-acre working farm. In keeping with its conservation focus, the plan calls for reserving just over half of the site from development, including wetlands, conservation areas and shared green space.
The Grow offers a potential case study in balancing growth and conservation, a tension deeply felt in Central Florida and many other high-growth Sun Belt markets. Between 2000 and 2025, the Orlando metro area’s population grew nearly 80%, from 1.64 million to 2.95 million.
That growth reshaped once-rural communities on the region’s edges, replacing undeveloped land with new subdivisions, apartments and shopping centers. Many long-time Sunshine State residents now lament the loss of “Old Florida,” marked by a landscape of open land, working ranches and orange groves that are now developed.
When Pulte, the sole homebuilder at The Grow, purchased the community’s lots in 2023, it set out to build a premier community that responded to these tensions.
“One of our biggest selling features is the openness of the community and how much greenery we left. Everywhere you look, you’re surrounded by trees,” Patrick McNamara, a Sales Manager at Pulte, told HousingWire TBD.
However, the true distinguisher between The Grow and other local communities will be its working farm, a rare amenity that carries the conservation theme beyond protecting land to putting it to use.
For Pulte, which held a grand opening for the community in late September, the farm and the extensive conservation space give the builder a way to stand out to prospective homebuyers, a crucial edge considering the challenging sales environment homebuilders are facing.
The Grow will feature a nine-acre working farm, along with two smaller, resident-only farms. (Photo courtesy of The Grow)
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How the agrihood will work in practice
The working farm is central to the community’s agrihood concept – providing fresh, sustainably grown produce. Residents will support it by buying products, volunteering and joining educational activities.
McNamara argued that the farm creates a direct connection between residents and their food. A professional third-party company will manage the farm, but residents and families will be allowed to volunteer and then buy the finished produce at a resident-only general store that will serve as an anchor for The Grow’s commercial and retail street.
The development will include two other farms: a small demonstration farm, covering about an eighth of an acre, and a separate community farm where homeowners can practice what they learn.
These smaller farms will serve as an educational, hands-on amenity for families, where residents can learn each stage of growing produce and then put what they learn into practice. An existing program, “Seed the Table,” will allow residents to plant crops, watch them grow and eat what they produced.
The farmers will also work with the lifestyle director to hold chef-led cooking classes at the community’s gathering barn, and will host seasonal celebrations and festivals that bring homeowners together.
Beyond conservation and sustainability, the farm is meant to build community, encourage learning and offer a unique lifestyle.
PulteGroup conserved hundreds of acres at The Grow, which recently held its grand opening in Orlando. (Photos courtesy of The Grow)
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How the agrihood and conservation space offers a sales edge
The Grow, which features homes from the low $400s to the high $800s, isn’t immune to the macro-level sales pressures impacting the local and national housing market. McNamara concedes that his team has to leverage generous incentives like mortgage rate buydowns to finish sales.
However, he also confirmed that The Grow has sold more than 100 homes since opening pre-sales about six months ago, and that prospective buyers have been anticipating the community’s opening for years.
The agrihood concept is the hook that draws buyers in.
“The farm is a big draw,” McNamara said. “I think the agrihood is what’s bringing people in, but what’s getting them to buy is once they see everything else that comes with it.”
In addition to the working farm and conservation space, The Grow will feature a main street with about 170,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, envisioned as a high-end retail and dining corridor that can work as a visitor magnet.
Other features include an indoor event and social space, an outdoor green space with a community pizza oven, a dedicated dog park, walking and nature trails, playgrounds and other resident-only amenities like a clubhouse, a gym and a pool.
“[Buyers] are shocked to find out that this isn’t a little farm community. This is a high-end resort neighborhood.”
The community’s preservation of nature is another big selling point. While many newly built communities lack mature trees and vegetation,
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