There are many different real estate websites/magazines out there that have email newsletters. A few of them even deal with property development, if only sparingly. None of these e-zines focus on the “how-to” of land development. They are geared toward news, market research and trends in the industry and are heavily weighted to commercial projects. (If you know a good residential development e-zine please let me know.)

Here is a list of a couple that I have found worth signing up for. Keep in mind, 90% of the time I simply scan the headlines and hit delete. And often, I will let them pile up for a week or two and then run through all of them in one go. The headlines are good for getting a general feel of the state of various development sectors and regions of the country - which is really all I am after.

And when I do find a headline that makes me dig deeper and actually read the article – I consider it gravy. So here they are.

http://nreionline.com/ National Real Estate Investor Online: There free print magazine is excellent and their ezines are good too. NREI has a bunch of sister sites, so whatever you are interested you should be able to find a match here.

http://retailtrafficmag.com/ Retail Traffic Online: One of the sister sites from above. Some good insights can be found here if you are in any way interested in retail real estate.

http://www.smartbrief.com/icsc/index.jsp ICSC.org SmartBrief This is run by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

http://www.realestatejournal.com Subsection of the Wall Street Journal. The residential side is geared more toward individual home buyers it seems, but the commercial side is worth checking out. On a side note, there website has this cost calculator that is fun to play with but I wouldn’t base a project on it.

Please, submit the e-zines you subscribe to in the comments below. I would love to hear what you find valuable.

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I came into the office a few months ago after a long weekend. The weekend had been a good one. There were waves down here in Florida, so I managed to get a few surf sessions in and that always puts me in a good mood to start the week.

Now normally I do not check my voice mails or emails first thing in the morning. That may sound strange, but I have found that if I can hold off for at least an hour, preferably two, I am way more productive. This allows me to actually start my day focusing on the most important tasks at hand (i.e. uploading pictures of my kids to facebook) before I get inevitably sidetracked by that crisis email or phone call. All kidding aside, this simple strategy has been a lifesaver for me. It works.

Anyway, I didn’t do that this particular morning. I made the crucial mistake of glancing at my email inbox and that is when I noticed 4 separate emails from Steven Jacoby.

Steven was a new client of ours. He had just hired us to handle the civil engineering for the development of a small outparcel in Daytona. Normally, my engineering firm wouldn’t take such a small job, but Steven’s situation was different. Steven was tied in with an international restaurant chain that was aggressively expanding in Florida. (I don’t want to say who the restaurant chain is, but I will say they make a nice cup of coffee.)

Steven had already built a couple of restaurants for this chain and he would be doing 5, possibly 10 more in the next 12 months. With that volume it made financial sense for us to provide civil engineering services.

I glanced at the subject line of Steven’s first email: We may have a problem on the Panama City site.

“We aren’t doing a project in Panama City”, I thought to myself, “this must be a mistake.”

I glanced at the next email subject line and it read: EMERGENCY! Bart check your voicemail, need help.

“This is exactly why I don’t check email first thing Monday morning”, was my next thought because I just knew my day was about to get completely sidetracked.

So, I checked my voicemail and there were several messages from Steven and he was frantic. Long story short, construction was nearly complete on a restaurant in Panama City when it became clear that the restaurant chain was not going to be allowed to put a sign up advertising their store. Except for the normal sign on the building above the front door, they would not be allowed to have any other signage anywhere on the property. There would be no freestanding sign out by the street.

You may not realize it, but signage is a huge deal, especially for an international company where image and branding are almost as important as the product.

Steven’s voicemail stated that the restaurant chain that he had just constructed a custom building for was threatening to walk on the deal if there is no freestanding sign for advertising. He had already spent nearly a million dollars on this project and there was about to be no tenant to pay the bills. And it wasn’t like he could turn around and get another tenant, because nobody local could pay the rents that this large company was willing to pay with their aggressive expansion campaign. Without this tenant, this deal would turn into a major financial loss.

Well, as you read this, you might be thinking “Bart, this isn’t even your project, how is this your problem?” And technically you’d be right. But it was my problem for this reason.

If the Panama City deal goes south then Steven’s relationship with the restaurant chain will go south. And that means the Daytona project, which we had actually been hired to do, could disappear. And those 5 to 10 other projects this year? Well, you get the idea, they’d be gone too.

So that is how at 9:00 on a Monday morning, instead of doing what I should be doing (bragging to my friends about the waves I caught this weekend), I found myself making phone calls to the Panama City planning department on a project that we weren’t even hired to do.

After a couple of hours of phone calls and reading city development codes, the problem was pretty clear. I have drawn a quick sketch below.



(I know. You are in awe at my artistic talent. Try not to let it distract you.)
The restaurant was built on an outparcel of a large shopping center development. If you look at the closeup in sketch #2 you will see that the shopping center’s main sign was located on the outparcel property where the restaurant was being constructed. (The shopping center had an easement but they no longer owned the land the sign was constructed on.)



According to the City, because the Shopping Center sign was on the outparcel property, the code did not allow the restaurant to construct its own sign because there already was one.

I know what you are thinking … “Can’t the restaurant just put its sign on the already constructed Shopping Center sign?”

Well, Steven the developer had that same idea and he called the owners of the Shopping Center to find out. But the answer was no. You see the Shopping Center has multiple tenants and all of their leases are very clear about how much signage there will be and who gets how much.

In order to add the restaurant sign to the Shopping Center sign you’d need to change every single one of the lease contracts. And they weren’t going to do that. Especially since the outparcel was already sold to Steven and at this point Steven didn’t have much bargaining power.

Steven was stressing hard. And rightly so. We needed a solution and we needed one fast. After looking at a number of options, the final solution that we came up with is shown in the following sketch.



The portion of the outparcel where the Shopping Center sign was located was sold back to the shopping center (for $1). All expenses for the transaction were paid by Steven the developer. Now Steven was able to construct his own sign on his property (shown at the north end of the parcel) and satisfy his corporate restaurant client.

Luckily for everyone it worked out, but the point of the story is that it all could have been avoided. A proper due diligence report would have clearly shown the potential sign problem before Steven ever signed a contract.

Steven could have even used this sign issue to negotiate a lower price for the land if he had been aware of it up front. But instead of making more money on the deal, he ended up losing part of the land he had purchased and paying all the legal and recording fees to do it.

As the saying in golf goes – The money is made or lost on the first tee my friends.

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So it is not exactly property development, but it is definitely a case for conducting your due diligence before you make an offer.

Hilarious.

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I have received a few emails asking about how to structure the Development Team that I talk about in Step 2 and Step 10 of the Development Process post.

The short answer is “It’s entirely up to you.”

The long answer is “It is dependant on your needs and the needs of your project and I highlight the most common structures below.”

I’ll try to explain a few reasons why these structures are common and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Please, ask questions in the comments and talk about other structures in the comments. I think a discussion could be worthwhile to many readers.

Developer Does It All

The first structure is the one where the developer does it all. The developer hires every member of the team separately and she manages all the members of team individually.

(Click the image to open a window with a larger view of the structure map.)

Advantages: Financial Cost

The primary advantage of this structure is financial cost. This can be the cheapest way dollar wise to get a project completed. The reason for this is that the developer isn’t paying anyone a management fee to manage other members of the team.

Disadvantages: Time

The primary disadvantage of this structure is time. The developer will need to spend a significant portion of time managing the members of the team. Making sure everyone has all the information they need, everyone has the latest plans and all are up to date on the latest changes and issues.

As a newbie developer, you might look at this and think “What I have is time, what I don’t have is money, so this structure works for me.”

But, I would urge all new developers to NOT go with this structure. For a developer to manage an entire project effectively, he needs to be very knowledgeable about development. The developer must stay on top of everything. They must make sure all contracts and services cover what’s required. And they must recognize potential problems immediately and resolve them, otherwise significant delays in the project will occur.

And delays will wipe out any cost savings of this organizational structure in a hurry.

Architect Manages Project

The next structure is what most new developers end up doing by default. They decide to do a real estate development and the first person they talk to is an architect. The architect, recognizing they are new developers offers to manage the project for them.

The result is a structure that often looks similar to the one I have shown, but there are variations. (Click the image to open a window with a larger view of the structure map.)

Advantages: Management

This structure can be beneficial in two situations;
1. You know absolutely nothing about development
2. You hire a large AEC firm that does everything in house.

If you know nothing about property development, than hiring someone experienced in the process is a smart move. They can help guide you around common mistakes and help make sure often missed tasks get completed.

If you hire a large AEC (Architectural, Engineering & Construction) firm that does everything under one roof, than the structure I have laid out is essentially what you will be getting. Be careful though. Many of these firms are great in one area, say construction, but are mediocre in the other areas. And if they lose money in one area, they will try to make it back in others.

Disadvantages: Cost (possibly Time)

With this team structure you will often be double paying for project management services. This happens because most architects know very little about property development that falls outside their area of expertise, or “vertical development”.

So the architect will hire a civil engineer to manage the horizontal development of the project in the exact same way you would and bill you for it. But then the architect will turn around and bill you for his management of the civil engineer on top of that. You are effectively paying for management of the horizontal development portion of your project twice.

This same thing happens with construction or any other task that the architect brings under his management that doesn’t directly fall under his area of expertise.

A common problem with the architect led structure is that the architect is often not the decision maker on tasks that aren’t under the architect’s area of expertise. So when the civil engineer has an issue that ultimately the developer will need to resolve, the civil engineer has to go through the architect first. This can waste considerable time and ultimately more money.

Experts Manage Areas of Expertise

The final development team structure is one that tries to strike a balance between the two described above. The goal of the structure is to have experts managing the members that fall directly under their area of expertise.

(Click the image to open a window with a larger view of the structure map.)

Advantages: Management & Time (possibly Cost)

With this structure the developer is getting the expert assistance they need to properly manage the project. The organizational structure also frees up time. The architects can now focus on what they do best, letting them complete their projects quicker. The same goes for everyone else on the development team that is no longer routing questions through the architect that are best answered by the developer.

Disadvantages: Developer’s Time

The developer will need to manage a few more team members than with the architect led organization but significantly fewer than if they were to manage the whole project. This structure does require a basic understanding of the development process by the developer.

The three structures I have discussed above are only a few of the many ways to organize a development team. There are many, many variations in hierarchy, responsibility and contractual relationships.

Many of the readers of Property Development Source.com are not interested in developing real estate. They would rather simply buy and sell land and leave the land development to someone else.

So many of these readers have asked me the same question, “How can Property Development Source.com help me buy and sell land for maximum gain?”

Well, when it comes to buying land I think the answer is obvious. Without proper due diligence and a site evaluation there is no way to really know what the development potential of a property is. And thus, it is impossible to determine an accurate value or price for the land you plan to buy.

The advantages of conducting due diligence when you are selling land is a little less obvious. So let’s look at a few of the ways it can help.

1. Determining an appropriate asking price
Once you have done your research you are in a far better position to know what a good asking price would be. This is important because if your asking price is too high many potential buyers may not even bother submitting an offer. (99% of all real estate agents use the wrong techniques to estimate the value of raw land.)

2. Eliminate low ball offers and unqualified buyers
When you provide interested buyers with a property package that provides them with all the information they are going to need to it shows that you are not someone to be taken advantage of. Your package makes it clear that only serious offers will be accepted.

3. Gather more interest from the buyers you really want
Many of the bigger developers and companies have people who do nothing but look for properties. These people are extremely busy and will often skip over properties that require to much effort during the initial evaluation. A complete property package will get these buyers attention because you have done the initial work for them.

4. Give your asking price more validity and you more leverage in negotiating
Many buyers like to get a contract signed by the seller and then start chipping away at the price by finding things wrong with the property during the due diligence period of the contract. By putting everything on the table up front in your property package you significantly reduce the effectiveness of this tactic and give your starting price more validity and you more leverage.

To further illustrate my point, here is a story of the way many people go about selling property. Notice how the seller is constantly negotiating from a position of weakness during the whole story.

Jane Q. Farmer owns about 6 acres of rural land outside a major metropolitan area. The city is expanding in the direction of her property and she is nearing retirement so she decides its time to sell. She assumes, and wrongly I might add, that she only has 2 options for selling her property – sell the property herself (i.e. putting a sign on her property with her phone number and hoping someone drives by), or hire a real estate agent to list the property and sell it for her.

Jane isn’t in too big a hurry so she decides to simply put up a sign and wait to see what happens. Well, Jane has some luck and after a week or two she gets a phone call.

Steven Developer calls the phone number and starts asking her about the property and what Jane’s asking price is. Well, Jane doesn’t really know what the property is worth or what price she wants (just that she wants to get as much as possible, whatever that is). She had asked some of her friends what they thought the property was worth, but her friends aren’t any smarter about land than she is.

So out of fear of making a mistake and telling Steven a price that is too low, she just tells him they haven’t set an asking price but are accepting offers. This only delays the problem.

A few days later a contract offer from Steven comes in the mail offering $150,000 for the 6 acres. Jane has no idea if this is a fair offer or not but it is way lower than what her friends had told her the property was worth so she decides to do nothing.

Two days later Steven calls back and Jane tells him she felt the offer was too low. Steven replies that with the odd shape of the property and the current zoning he doesn’t think he can build more than 5 single family homes on the property and $30,000 a lot for raw land is a more than fair price.

That sounds reasonable to Jane but she’s still uncertain so she declines the offer and tells Steven goodbye.

Over the next 6 weeks, Jane relives this same scenario 3 or 4 more times. Most of the offers were for similar prices between $100,000 and $200,000. One was for $450,000 but the contract for that offer was very long and there was talk about the sale being contingent on rezoning which Jane didn’t understand so she passed on it.

Finally, Jane got tired of the stress of the whole ordeal and when the next offer came in for $175,000 she took it just to get it over with.

In reality, if Jane had done some basic due diligence and site planning, she would have known that the property was worth considerably more than $175,000.

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I have created a short video that runs through the main features of a Site Evaluation or Due Diligence Report. The video goes through an actual report that we prepared for an existing client.

The format that you see in this report is the same one we use no matter what type of site we are evaluating. This particular property is a small outparcel of a shopping center, but the report would look similar if we had evaluated a site for a large subdivision, or even a multi-use planned development. All reports look the same.

As a developer, you should be doing similar due diligence reports on the properties you are evaluating. Although they don’t need to be as formal, a consistent structure will help ensure that nothing is missed or overlooked. It will also make it very easy to find information quickly when a question comes up on a project.

Another great reason for a developer to compile their due diligence in a report, is that it is beneficial when hiring your team members. When you meet with your team members to request proposals on a project and you hand them the preliminary report you have completed, it shows professionalism. And it also shows what level of service you expect from them as well.

Please note: To protect our client’s information, all names and identification of the property, its location, and the people and companies involved have been changed.

You can watch the video here,



Site Evaluation Video.

A downloadable copy of the report in the video is included with “THE BIG 6: Answers to Developer’s Top Questions that Hinder Success”

You can get your copy here,

THE BIG 6:Answers to Developer’s Top Questions that Hinder Success.

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The Property Development Process can be difficult to map out because every project is different. The development steps don’t happen in the same order every time, and in certain cases some steps may not happen at all.

But for those just learning about land development, an overview of the most common tasks can be very informative. For that reason, I have created a simple video that walks through many of the steps in a real estate development. (The video is located here,

Property Development Process Video.)

The actual process map can be downloaded in .pdf form here, Property Development Process

The articles, videos, case studies and downloads we provide on Property Development Source.com are based on the suggestions and feedback we receive from our members. 

Please use the comments section of this post to ask questions and request topics that you want to see discussed.  (If you’d rather send a private email, you can do that at well at feedback@propertydevelopmentsource.com)

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Welcome to Property Development Source.com.  This site was launched in January of 2008 but we are already getting lots of attention and much positive feedback.

It is our goal to continue adding valuable tools and information on a regular basis, but to do that we need your help.  If you have specific topics you are interested in or questions you need answered, please submit them in the comments section of the “Suggestions and Feedback” blog post.  Or you can send an email to feedback@propertydevelopmentsource.com.

For newcomers, a great place to start is with our Development Process video.  The video is a good overview of the development process and explains more about what we focus on here at  Property Development Source.com.

If you are looking for answers to any of the specific questions below, then head straight over and grab our ” “BIG 6 Package”

• How do I get good cost estimates for evaluating potential projects?
• How do I get financing for my project?
• How do I get a reasonably accurate feasibility study without spending thousands on consultants and reports?
• What percentage profit should a project provide to make it worth doing?
• What development fee should I charge my partners or investors? (
• And finally, How do I hire the right team for my project and how do I
  manage them? 

If you project is being slowed down by anything of the questions above, check out the ” “BIG 6 Package” here.

Bart Pair

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Please check out the Site Due Diligence Checklist Video and Download below. This is the same checklist that the engineers in my office use when they are conducting an initial site evaluation for a land development project.


The checklist is a great guide for developers. Use it to make sure you have investigated the more common problems properties tend to have.


(The land evaluation checklist is quite thorough but I don’t want to imply that it includes everything. I make no claims that this checklist will eliminate any and all surprises on your development projects.)


I have done a quick video overview of the checklist and have placed the video on a different page for better viewing. Please go here,



Land Due Diligence Video,
to watch the video, but submit comments and questions on this blog post, please.


Download a copy of the Checklist in Word and PDF format when you order,


THE BIG 6: Answers to Developer’s Top Questions that Hinder Success


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