Everything you need to know about residential land development is here! Some of your MOST EXPENSIVE costs in real estate development will come from land development. So learn all the tricks of the LD trades here so you can feel more confident when negotiating deals with sellers.
These videos (along with the website) are perfect for everyone (both newbies and experts alike!) to jump in and really take a bite out of the land development process! The infographics and photos are clear to understand for someone with NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OR BACKGROUND! Land Development 101 will help you to get your feet wet and wrap your mind around the process as a whole.
Great topic!!! I’m very excited to develop my second 80ac property. As a realtor of 29 yrs and owner of a small brokerage. I am learning this side of real estate is so exciting and much more rewarding for us! I’m looking to learn as much as I can!
This industry sucks, especially in NJ. If you’re a civil engineer in land development, get out while you still can and go into transportation or working directly for a municipality, county, or state. Land development for private clients is all about tight budgets, low pay because the lowest bidder gets the project, high stress, insanely fast pace, long hours, being an expert in zoning, autocad civil 3d, grading, stormwater, utility design, and, you must be able to have excellent written and oral communication skills. Every project I’ve worked on in land development recently has been warehouses, which most towns don’t want, and high density housing. If the developer wants to make a last minute change, he won’t care how extensively it changes the design. He wants it done as fast as possible with spending the least amount of money possible while you also have other projects going on.
That's brutal. While it may not be as intense up in your neck of the woods, that is one thing all big home-builders and developers have in common, "GET IT DONE YESTERDAY!".
There's not a specific professional that you can call to do this. This is something that's done more internally, but it depends on the company's own personal skills and knowledge. But you can probably gather enough information by talking to real estate agents and looking at similar homes near your target area that have recently sold and at what price point. And also DOM (days on market), etc. In general, is their growth and demand where you plan on developing?
thank you for your great vid. One question. in which phase do you deliver lots to homebuilders? after landscaping? or maybe after flat work? thank you in advance.
It varies. I have another video on this on my channel about the different lot conditions. If you're delivering lots as "FINISHED LOTS", then the lots are graded, utilities are installed and stubbed out to each lot, and the roads are paved. This way, the homebuilders can hit the ground running with vertical construction. You can also deliver the lots as "BLUE TOP", which means you're just rough grading the lots to it's final design elevation (and maybe roads to subgrade). Or you can even just take land through entitlements and still deliver that to a buyer.
So basically they have use beurocracy to take all the lower rungs off the developer ladder so only the big investment banks have the capital and paitience to get through the all the hidden processes?
Honestly, that's mainly what I see in Southern California. You need deep pockets to develop. Especially the larger projects. It's a long and expensive process.
I too appreciate this great content. It is invaluable. If you ever produce more of these, I would be interested in the financing of these steps, and hoops that lenders typically make developers go through in order to ensure the security of their loans
Im taking the IBC ( International Building Code ) test for permit tech for the office of buildings for my jurisdiction. This was a helpful visual video fir people like me who learns visually.
When you're done with construction, ultimately you'll walk away from the project and the utility companies/municipalities will take over the systems (i.e. water, sewer, storm drain, electrical, etc.). But before those utility companies officially take ownership of it, they want to inspect and ensure that everything has been installed correctly and per code before they take over. "Bought it off" is just another way of saying that they've approved and accepted the system.
