It’s easy to get excited and go look at property to build your dream house with your spouse. It’s fun, exciting, and takes you to a place that’s totally different where it makes your dream feel somewhat like a reality, doesn’t it?
Cannot argue with that logic, however our job is to protect you from making impulsive decisions that may negatively impact your family or business! We strongly encourage all families or businesses looking for property to contact a real-estate development professional (not a real-estate agent!) to ensure you’re making a wise financial decision.
No matter where you are looking at property, up in the mountains of Western North Carolina or down in the city of Atlanta, Georgia there are certain development criteria which can impact your project.
As a business, we always look at projects the same and identify one variable first no matter the type of project; How does this project need to perform?
As there are nuances to both Commercial applications as well as Residential, we give you a narrative example from the Residential side, so you can see why this is so important.
Residential Example:
You and your Husband escape for a long weekend to the mountains up in Murphy, North Carolina. You guys rent a super cute cabin with nice views that’s dog friendly so you can bring your fur-baby on the long weekend.
You drive up for 3 hours and finally arrive at your cute little cabin in the woods located in Murphy, North Carolina. The cabin is small and hard to get to with road access, but it’s exactly what you all wanted to experience for the weekend just to decompress.
While you’re up there resting on Friday evening, your Husband is on his cell phone scrolling through the latest Instagram Reels / Tik-Tok garbage, and you are watching something on TV eating Cheez-It’s and red-wine. (Don’t act like you haven’t done this…)… Finally the show gets just boring enough for you to start poking around Zillow to see what other homes in the area are for sale. Prices on these small cabins seem reasonable, but you’re not ready to build the cabin just yet, so you call the listing agent that has land for sale and says “perfect for a small cabin”.
You and your Husband make it a point to go look at property on Saturday morning with the agent who was oh-so-very accommodating to the out of town buyer, who they’ll never see again.
You see the property which has an amazing view, but you cannot really see through the woods, identify the lot-lines, or even tell the type of soil on site. Regardless, it’s only $45K so you make an offer and the seller magically accepts it within 20 minutes!
You guys make your way to the closest winery to celebrate your new purchase! Wahoo!
Now, that we have given you all of the sunshine and smiles, let us give you the reality of what just happened. Brace for impact!
- The Agent can tell you’re an out of state buyer and don’t know squat about the area so they just shuffle off one of their more difficult lots to build on to your family since you all don’t know the difference, and likely won’t ever know the difference. In their mind, if you’re ignorant enough to buy a lot from someone you don’t know, you’re ignorant enough to just hire a local builder that’ll do the same thing to you.
- The lot you purchased has poor soil conditions and cannot accommodate a septic system on site, making your lot completely un-buildable for a residential home site.
- The lot you purchased has such poor soil conditions that the soil is unsuitable for deep cuts or home foundations due to it primarily being sand/silt.
- Due to the topology of the land, any home you might build will require a significant amount of grading and foundation work, which will eat up $100K of your $350K total home budget. Now, you “dream cabin” just took a massive hit financially and you may not get all of the finishes you desired.
- There are two (2) abandoned well casings on-site which are not providing any water flow. If you are to come in and drill a 3rd well location, you likely will not hit any water and will still end up having an unbuildable project site.
Makes you think twice before buying a piece of land without a good real-estate developer doesn’t it?
Similarly to the Residential Example we just discussed, there are twice as many variables when it comes to Commercial Developments. All Commercial property is required to follow the local municipality’s Unified Development Codes (UDC’s), which while similar they are also all uniquely different. Doing a commercial development in the City of Milton, Georgia may have completely different requirements than the City of Alpharetta, Georgia, or even Cumming, Georgia which is a neighboring city.
For these reasons; we strongly encourage your family and business to invest in a strong partnership with a real-estate developer who can effectively help you manage your real-estate assets, acquisitions, and projects.