Go deep

Football analogies come naturally to David Hitchcock and Clay Taylor, who together, from Polk County, form one of Florida's leading commercial real estate duos with a focus specifically on land.

It makes sense. Hitchcock played defensive tackle for the Florida Gators, and was the co-captain and most valuable player of the 1973 team. Taylor was an assistant football coach at Lakeland High School for a decade, during an era when the team won six state championships and “mythical” national championship twice.

The duo, the Taylor-Hitchcock Land Team, run out of Lakeland-based Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate, has closed nearly $20 million in land deals in each of the last three years. That's in the top 2% of Coldwell Banker land brokers nationwide. It's also high volume for a land-focused duo in the region, where many others run solo-based entities, such as Bill “Dirt Dog” Eshenbaugh and Bruce Erhardt, both based in Tampa.