Question About Developing Land
I have a good oppotunity to get into development. My family has a lot of real estate and they want to start developing some of it. They want to subdivide land in tennessee and build condos on the beach in NC. My dad is a real estate lawyer. He wants me to look into educating myself on land planning and development. I'm 25 and I majored in Electrical Engineering (graduated from Georgia Tech) in college but I'm having trouble finding an EE job right now. So I'm thinking about pursuing this developer avenue. First I'm taking the 63 hour pre-license salesperson course so I can get my real estate license. After that, I dont have a clue. What do I need to know? Then, what's the best way to go about learning that? thanks
Hi TF,
If you're going to do any developing / buiding in NC then I suggest you get your commercial contractors license and start learning as much as possible about the construction and developing.
See my profile for email address.
PS. Update your profile area so others can contact you privately if need be.
Good Luck.
I am now developing in South Florida. Started as investor - grew into developing. Learned by doing. I tried in vain to find printed matter on developing.
One of the National builders I deal with (of Mutlifamily ) offered to let me work side by side by their project manager so I could learn the process.
It is not rocket science but there are many steps that need to be taken, and the order is sometimes very interdependant....
Look for a very experienced builder that can hold your hand throughtsome of the process.
I very large civil engineering firm can also guide you throught th early steps.
PM me if you want to chat about some of it.
Gregg
[addsig]
If I were in your shoes I would strongly consider doing a JV with an experienced developer. Your father should have the contacts if he is a real estate attorney. Learn all you can and make sure any agreements are written properly. The development game is very risky and people get squirley when things go awry.
Good Luck
We have a lot in common I've taken the real estate classes and have recieved my license. It was a good learning experience, but to be honest now that I have the hind sight of it, I don't think it was necessary to do what I'm doing (and what your talking about doing). I work for a lot of developers and most of them have no real estate experience prior to getting into development. The skills the sucessful ones appear to have is their ability to work with banks and local politicians (and believe me their are alot of politics involved in this game if you ever want to do big projects) .Most of these guys are a bunch of ex-lawyer and MBA types guess who are using real estate as a vechile to get rich. With your background in Engineer and your Father's help you should be able to make the transition to development easier than most. ....and by the way if you ever find yourself in the need for an architect be sure to look me up. Good Luck.
Brent
I'm new to TCI so I'm playing catch-up on the reading. User-friendly info about land and development property, unfortunately, is practically non-existent. (This is ironic because land can impact every property transaction.) I'm working hard to try to fill the information gap.
[addsig]
Greetings,
I also share your desire to become a developer and found a great book (in my opinion) on amazon. It's called "Be a successfull residential land developer" (gasp!). Since I am very, very new to the industry the book provided me with a lot of new and what will hopefully be usefull information. It will run you about 30 bucks. Best of luck and I hope this helps.
Thanks for all the replies! I hadn't checked this board in a long time and suddenly I have a flurry of responses.
I spoke with a developer that I know in south florida. He gave me great advice and put me in contact with a friend of his in commercial real estate in tampa. He in turn introduced me to a developer in Tampa and I ended up landing a job as an estimator site construction company.
The position is absolutly perfect for learning about land development. I am learning every last detail about what goes into developing a piece of land and how much it all costs. I look at plans for developments all day every day. This information will be invaluable to me when I'm on the other side of the game as a land owner. Just thought I'd share my story with everyone. Thanks again for all the responses.