Residential Land

Ideally, by the time you are about to start marketing your land, you'll know who is building, the locations of the existing new construction communities in the area of your land parcel, the price ranges in which the new home sites are selling, and relevant details about the "products" (e.g., size of home and lot, amenities offered, lot premiums, and number of homes in the community). You'll also have identified the residential properties that are in the process of being subdivided. This last piece of information will tell you the names of organizations who will be building new homes in the area in the future. Some of these may not be the same organizations building in the area now. The most efficient way of gathering the information you need is to get a copy from the municipal office of the updated list of residential parcels that have been approved or are being approved) for subdivision. (This is public information but the municipality may require you to jump through a few procedural hoops before they let you see the list.) Once you review the list and look at some of the municipal files on these properties, you can then begin driving around to the individual new construction communities and get brochures and other data from the sales agents at the sites. If possible, find out how many home sites are sold (closed) or under contract or deposit, when marketing of the community began, and what, if any, lot premiums are being charged by the builder. The builders' web sites may have additional information about their existing and planned communities. Start compiling a list of the builders and their projects, together with contact information.

It would be a waste of time for you to contact every organization that, for example, is building homes in the county where your parcel is located. What you want to do is identify those builders who would be the likeliest buyers based on your parcel's location, the estimated sale value for the new construction, and your best estimate of the number of home sites that could be subdivided. In other words, you want to match your property with organizations who are developing new communities in roughly the same price range and with about the same number of lots as your parcel. The reason for this is simple. Builders tend to stay in their respective niches or want to work in certain geographic areas. Some specialize by the price range of housing (entry level, middle of the road or upper end). Others want to build only true custom homes or are picky about the size of the subdivision (number of home sites) they build out. Organizations that build $1mil homes may not be interested in sites where the homes would sell for $400-450,000. To maximize their economies of scale, large builders might only get involved with parcels that could produce at least 50 home sites. Conversely, some builders prefer to do smaller communities, work on the basis of a lot here and a lot there, or are flexible about the price range of the home sites they produce and sell.