Building multi family on land I already own

[Matt C.]

Hi Everyone,

Would love to hear feedback on a project I am considering. A little bit of a unique situation my parents bought a track of land in a suburb of Dallas in the 90s. It is roughly 3 acres with around 588' of road frontage running north and south so a long rectangular property. My mother still lives on the property and has a house on the south acre. She is gifting me the north acre which would be around 255' of road frontage. I am checking now with the city to see if they will allow me to build multifamily on this acre. I would love to build a couple 4-plex town home style properties on this. My main question is the pitfalls of building new. Land is free besides taxes so it would just be the construction cost. I'm also wondering if this is a good route or if it would be better to do a few duplex instead. I'm under the impression more doors under one roof is better but that may be wrong as I am new to multi family. I'm sure a lot of this is market specific but would love to hear from others that have built new multi family. 

[Peter M.]

Go to a few of the P&Z meetings, listen to the issues and talk to some of the members. Every municipality does it differently but the staff members are usually the ones you want to make friends with if you can figure out who they are. There are also consultants who will walk you though the zoning and permitting process. Since Balch Springs is more remote and less developed you may have a harder time finding these types of consultants but I'm sure Frisco, McKinney, Allen would be places to look. 

I don't have direct experience with this but my dad was on a P&Z board a few years ago so I learned a few things listening to him. 

Sounds like a cool project. Good luck