Five Generations of Texas Land, Paired with Institutional Underwriting and Data Analytics
Emerging Coast is a Texas-based private capital firm founded by brothers Mark and Andy Cochran, who bring a combined 30 years of Texas real estate experience. We specialize in rural and exurban land in the growth corridors of the Texas Triangle — a market we study closely and on which we will soon publish original research.
The firm was built to pool the resources of our family and extended family with those of friends and select partners to capitalize on Texas's historic growth. Our principal strategy is acquiring land across the Texas Triangle's growth corridors, then maximizing its value through strategic, low-cost subdivision. We also hold land for long-term appreciation and future development, and we will soon launch the Lone Star Opportunity Fund, an SEC 506(c) Qualified Opportunity Zone fund focused on rural land.
Our family's history in Texas land dates to the late 19th century. Our great-great-grandfather, L.C. Luckel, was a prominent Houston developer who platted extensive portions of west Houston and, in 1895, laid out the town of Katy; he is considered one of its co-founders. His son, Frey Louis Luckel, our great-grandfather, carried that legacy into minerals as a notable early 20th-century oil and gas operator, assembling oil and mineral interests across Texas. He and his family appeared before Texas appellate courts in a series of oil and mineral title disputes.1 Their interests helped shape Texas real estate law: most notably, the family's royalty interests were the subject of Luckel v. White (1991), a landmark Texas Supreme Court ruling still cited today as the rule for how Texas courts read land deeds.2
We grew up helping our father manage more than 60 real estate and mineral properties he inherited from his grandfather, including the very property at the center of that case.
Mark Cochran, Managing Partner, holds an MBA from Rice University with a concentration in real estate and studied business and statistics as an undergraduate at Northwestern. A licensed Texas real estate agent since 2011, he spent several years at a high-volume brokerage, served as a senior analyst at Crown Castle, designed real estate analytics systems for Bain Capital, and was Director of Analytics at Barvin, a Houston-based private equity real estate firm that managed $1 billion in assets during his tenure. Mark has published articles on AI and land economics.
Andy Cochran graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Tulane University. He has led the family's real estate investments for the past 15 years and manages the firm's land developments, after 18 years assembling, packaging, and managing complex projects for Fortune 500 companies.
Together, we pair an instinctive fluency in Texas land — from entitlements to valuation to market trends — with rigorous data analytics.
We work with a seasoned bench of Texas land specialists:
1. Luckel v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 243 S.W. 1068 (Tex. Comm'n App. 1922); Luckel v. Barnsdall Oil Co., 74 S.W.2d 127 (Tex. Civ. App.—Texarkana 1934), aff'd sub nom. Barnsdall Oil Co. v. Hubbard, 130 Tex. 476, 109 S.W.2d 960 (1937); Humble Oil & Refining Co. v. Luckel, 171 S.W.2d 902 (Tex. Civ. App. 1943).
2. Luckel v. White, 819 S.W.2d 459 (Tex. 1991).