The Developer and Land Acquisition Guide

Step One: Screen the Site Before You Spend

A site either works or it does not, and the answer is usually available quickly and inexpensively if you ask in the right order.

• Utility availability and capacity: water, sanitary sewer, and the real cost and route of any extension. Capacity letters matter more than proximity.
• Drainage, detention requirements, and floodplain or floodway designation. Detention can consume a meaningful share of usable acreage.
• Access: frontage, curb cut permissions, driveway spacing, and any traffic impact requirement.
• Jurisdiction: city limits, ETJ, county, MUD, or a special district, and which rules apply to platting and construction.
• Deed restrictions, plat status, easements, pipelines, and mineral or surface rights.
• Topography, soils, wetlands, and existing structures or debris that will need removal.

Step Two: Structure the Purchase to Protect Feasibility

• Feasibility period long enough for survey, geotechnical, environmental, preliminary engineering, and municipal response times.
• Staged earnest money tied to milestones you control, with a clear statement of when each portion goes hard.
• Extension options priced at signing, because you will want at least one.
• Access and entry rights for your consultants, with insurance and restoration terms.
• Seller cooperation for plat applications, utility inquiries, and rezoning or variance requests where applicable.
• Consider takedown structures, staged closings, or seller financing to align capital with absorption.

Step Three: Feasibility Work in the Right Order

• Boundary and topographic survey first, since everything else builds on it.
• Geotechnical report to inform pavement and foundation design, which is a major cost variable.
• Phase I environmental, and Phase II if the history warrants. Agricultural, industrial, and fuel history all deserve attention.
• Preliminary engineering: layout yield, detention sizing, utility routing, and an early estimate of horizontal cost per lot or per acre.
• Municipal and utility district conversations documented in writing rather than remembered from a phone call.
• Build the cost model against realistic absorption, then test it against slower sales and higher carry cost.

Step Four: Assemblage and Multi Parcel Sites

Assemblage fails when the plan becomes public. Price rises, holdouts appear, and the deal that was viable stops being viable.

• Approach parcels in a deliberate sequence, starting with the ones that make or break the layout.
• Use separate contracts with cross conditions so you are not committed to a partial site.
• Keep the identity of the end user and the ultimate plan confidential during acquisition.
• Confirm each parcel's access independently. A landlocked interior tract is only worth what the neighbor allows.

Step Five: Closing and Moving Into Horizontal Work

• Confirm plat status and any dedication or reservation obligations before funding.
• Coordinate title exceptions, easement releases, and any required abandonments.
• Understand rollback tax exposure when agricultural use ends, and who pays it under the contract.
• Line up your permits, bonds, and utility commitments so horizontal work starts without a gap in carry.

How I Work: Transparency, Integrity, and Privacy

Site pursuits are handled quietly so that sellers, competing developers, and the broader market are not moved by your interest. I bring in the surveyor, engineer, and environmental consultant rather than speculating, and I will tell you when a site does not pencil.