All Forum Posts by: Bryant Brislin

Hi Gabriel, I'm a land broker and I have sold 150+ properties to builders (both big and small) to do new subdivision tracts.  You should find a local engineer who also helps get projects entitled/approved at the city you are focused on.  Many engineers are not that desirable to work with, i.e. they are too busy, not responsive, etc, so you'll want to find one who seems like they are experiened and actually like to give good customer service. They can help you figure out a bit more to determine which properties are developable from an environmental standpoint (swamps, species), a topographical standpoint (slopes) and what the potential lot count yield will be given the zoning and the city's development standards (set-backs, height limites, lot coverage ratios, etc) associated with said zoning. At some point you would involve an architect, too, but sometimes they can take you down the wrong path. As far as getting a tract map approved and then the actual permits for construction, again, hopefully you can find a hybrid engineer/entitlement consultant. As far as your last question, yes, you'll have to find a competent general contractor (GC) to do the site work and construction, and yes, if you want to also hire a project manager to oversee the GC, engineer and other matters, they are out there to be found. 

If you have done that many deals I'm surprised you want the headache of investors, and don't have the capital to do it yourself.  But with that said, I think I'd rather use business credit cards rather than deal with investors (even the nice ones can be high maintenance).  And hopefully within a short amount of time you are doing enough deals to pay for the marketing overhead yourself. 

There is an FB group called High Value Land Group.  Start there.

@Kreg Thornley please know the following, as I've seen this happen a lot in Southern California where I'm based.  A lot of opportunistic investors who don't know how to really analyze land naively assume that every tax delinquent parcel has a situation where the land owner just didn't have enough money to pay the taxes and thus lost the parcel.  But in many cases, at least here in SoCal, it's many times a situation where the land owner essentially abandoned the parcel for reasons like bad zoning, little-to-no access, irregular shape (i.e. triangular) that makes it less efficient, environmental challenges, topography, etc.  Why would a land owner abandon a parcel to the tax collector? Because if not much can be done with it due to the reasons stated above, they don't want to keep paying property taxes, weed abatement/landscaping, have liability/insurance issues, etc et etc.

@Geoff Regan I don't want to post publicly, so feel free to reach out direct.

As a random FYI, something I've encountered in Southern California: a lot of investors buy delinquent tax/defaulted properties without doing much research and they realize down the line that the property owner didn't necessarily not have the money to pay the taxes, they just essentially abandoned the property due to various things that push down the value, i.e. irregular shape, bad zoning, little or no access, challenging topography, etc.  

I can send you the contact info of a guy who could let you know. 

I sell land to homebuilders and commercial developers in southern California.  Happy to talk.

These scenarios often can be a real nightmare. Even if the owner seems like a really nice person, they will micromanage the builder and not like the specs of the house the builder needs to do, and/or the timing in which the builder gets it done, etc.  Just from my experience.

I've sold land in Bakersfield in 2023 and 2024.  I've been a land broker in Southern California for sixteen years.  For a smaller piece like that, not sure how creative you can get, but it all depends on what it's zoning is, access, proximity to other things, etc.