Selling Land To Home Builders

[John Lewis]

Hello! I am a raw land agent who is new to the business. There has been a lot of development activity in my area of Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in terms of building. My brokerage does Agricultural land, Vacant Land and Recreational Land. I've been talking with some farmers on the outskirts of Rochester, MN that were looking to sell part of their holdings to land developers like Lennar, DR Horton, et cetera. Let's say zoning is not an issue. What does this process look like? I want to help them the best way I can. A lot of this interest is sudden given housing demand and not many people I work with have any experience doing this.

[James Hamling]

@John Lewis to clarify and make sure I understand; 

Your a new agent, and in a brokerage where nobody knows development, just Ag, Rec and vacant land. Correct? 

Best advice I have is if your serious about being serious in the development space, change brokerages. 

Think of it this way; your saying your in a VW Bug car-club, and you'd like to do drag racing. Your in the wrong club. 

There is a hell of a lot to know. Utility infrastructure, local governance approvals and how to navigate the politics', soil engineering, EPA this n that, on and on and on. It's not something I could even begin to teach via a forum post. I could fill this whole thing with hours of reading JUST discussing and detailing the EPA aspect for wetland delineations, what the various types are, what each means, what can and can not be mitigated and how-to. 

Then another hour on soil corrections. 

If you want to work in this space, you need to get with a brokerage that specializes in this space. It is highly specialized and NOT for the "noob". Not unless have a good experienced mentor hand-holding through it all.