Can it happen?
What will it cost?
Two questions decide whether a piece of land is a deal or a mistake. The answers usually come from different firms. We answer both, before you commit.
Entitlement and development services for land that has not been approved yet, or has been approved and is not moving.
The three answers you need sit with three people who never talk to each other.
A parcel comes up. You have a diligence window and a deposit that goes hard on a date. You need to know three things: whether the town will approve what you want to build, how long that takes, and what it costs to build once it is approved.
The attorney owns one piece. The engineer owns another. Development cost and delivery often sit with someone who is not on the team yet. Nobody owns the place where approval risk, schedule and cost meet, and that is the only place your return actually lives. The clock does not stop while they work it out.
The first gap
Parcel data tells you what the code allows. It does not tell you what the board will approve.
Zoning says the use is permitted. The comprehensive plan encourages it. Staff recommends approval. And then the board votes it down, or approves it with conditions that take a third of the yield out of your program.
None of that is in the ordinance. It is in the record.
The second gap
Approval is not the finish line. It is the start of the most expensive stretch of the deal.
Conditions somebody negotiated 18 months earlier land on a delivery team that never saw them, and surface at plat review, the most expensive place in the process to find anything.
Active management runs about 14 months. Closeout does not arrive until past month 36.
Where the two gaps sit
Will the town allow it? The answer sits in a public record almost nobody has time to read.
Conditions cross to a delivery team that never saw them, and your capital stays in the ground until the bonds release.
The record
We read the record. All of it.
All of it means every meeting in the jurisdictions we cover, not a sample and not a summary. Hundreds of jurisdictions, more than 200,000 recorded votes, going back as far as 2000. Who moved, who seconded, who voted no, and what got said before the vote.
It does not predict anything, and we will not tell you it does. What it shows you is what that board has approved, what it turned down first, and exactly what changed in between. That difference is the trade the record shows, and it is not written in any ordinance.
Tell us the parcel. We will tell you what the record holds, and if it is thin we will say so.
Two service lines. One accountable team.
Can it happen?
Entitlement Services
Pre-acquisition due diligence, so you know what a parcel can become before you close on it. Then the approvals themselves: rezonings, text and map amendments, site plan approval, variances, special use permits, subdivision and plats, and the hearings that come with them.
What will it cost?
Development Services
A development budget built early enough that the number can still change the decision. It is a budget, not a bid, and it tightens as the design does. Value engineering so the project pencils. Land review. And development management that holds the schedule, manages the budget and the subs, and owns the closeout, so your money comes back when you planned for it.
Most firms do one. We do both, which is why one conversation is usually enough to tell you whether a parcel is worth real diligence. What that diligence actually finds is a QuickCheck.
We manage development. We do not develop and we do not buy land. Nobody here is sitting on the other side of your table.
Two ways to start.
$1,000, two days
QuickCheck
One parcel, read against the record, the code and the dirt. Nine sections: water and sewer, environmental, zoning, land use plan, transportation, projected yield, approval path and timeline, precedent and political climate, and costs to budget. Every one carries a risk score, and it opens with a go, a conditional go, or a no-go.
No charge, 15 minutes
A parcel call
We will come to the call having already read the record on your parcel. You get our read of it: whether this is worth real diligence, and which questions decide it. That is what makes fifteen minutes worth giving up.
If we are not the right people for it, we will tell you on the call.
When you do not need us.
If the project is already permitted, you do not need us. If it is small enough that your own team can carry it, you are fine handling it in-house. We will say so on the first call, and we would rather say it than take the engagement.
The rest of the time: we are YES. If it is in our wheelhouse, we will figure out how to make it work.
Before you commit
What you will know.
- What that board has approved on the parcels nearest yours, and what conditions came with it.
- Which parts of your program are by right, and which need a room full of people to say yes.
- What it costs to build, early enough that the number can still change your mind.
- When your money comes back, and who is accountable for the date.
Start here