This episode summarizes key lessons from developing a 32-acre Louisiana property subdivided into three child parcels with cleared home sites and installed driveways, where initial two-week clearing estimates stretched to three weeks with ongoing gravel work still incomplete. The project revealed systematic underestimation across timelines (parish approval quoted at one month but completed in one week, total development quoted at sub-two months now approaching three times that duration) and costs (requiring 20-25% additional buffer beyond quoted overages for terrain complications and aesthetic improvements).
Key Takeaways:
- Development Takes 3X Initial Quotes Parish approval finished in one week versus one month estimated, but contractor work stretched from two weeks to three+ weeks for clearing alone—weather delays and terrain complications consistently extend timelines beyond conservative estimates.
- Budget 20-25% Above Your Cost Overage Buffer Nominal improvements like extending home sites for better visuals or adding dirt for long-term driveway durability cost extra thousands—double your safety buffer beyond high-end quotes to avoid scrambling for capital.
- Boots-on-Ground Expertise Is Non-Negotiable Even simple three-parcel projects require daily on-site decision-making about terrain, clearing, and dirt movement—local experts with development experience provide value that remote oversight cannot replicate regardless of your DD skills.
Listen to the full episode for the complete development project post-mortem and future strategy adjustments.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, Vacant Land Funding Partner. Today, I wanted to recap some of the key lessons that we’ve learned about development projects, primarily from the one that we’ve worked on in Louisiana over the past few months. So…
I know I’ve covered a lot of these topics, probably more piecemeal, but I wanted to provide at least a basic summary of where we’re at now and how we would approach development projects differently or have different expectations coming into it. Overall, I’m feeling very positive about it. It’s been more work than expected, but in terms of what we anticipate,
uh, the total exit to be, think we’re tracking really well here. So the first item is that we should just expect development to take much longer than anything that was originally quoted to us. So, you know, when we purchased this property, uh,
think it was back in mid-March, approximately. And just to recap for those of you who aren’t familiar, this was a roughly 32 acre land property in central Louisiana. We chopped it up into roughly three equal child parcels. One was a flag lot, so 10 to 11 acres each.
And we were expecting the parish approval, by the way, parish equals County within the state of Louisiana, to take maybe a month or so. And the anticipated, development where we were going to be carving out home sites and install installing nice driveways for all three of the child parcels, basically making it as turnkey as possible for.
in eventual and buyer where all they would need to do is lay down a foundation and hook up utilities with public water and electricity available at the street to make it basically again, as turnkey as possible for them to have quick and easy set up. Plus all of the home sites within the trial parcels would be private to the street and to each other.
because there was just enough room on all of those parcels to be able to do that. So that was the overall goal. And we thought that whole process, based on some initial estimates from a developer we had reached out to, or at least a contractor, moving dirt and installing driveways, it’s going to be like maybe like a two week project. So we thought, okay, conservatively getting the parish approval is going to take maybe a month.
And that was, you know, first we needed to get a survey done. That was maybe, maybe going to take a few days. I ended up taking like a week or so, then get the parish approval might take a month and then another couple of weeks to, um, knock out all the value add. And then we could list and we were targeting probably listing by mid to late May, probably late May was the initial estimate, which is like key, you know, best, best possible timing for, um, that particular market.
And, so, you know, sub two months for us to actually get things fully, fully out there. Well, like I mentioned again, you know, survey probably took a little bit longer, to, get done. And parish approval was actually way faster. It took a week, approximately. And so we thought, okay, Hey, we just gained a whole bunch of time here, but then.
You know, when we went back to the contractors, the first one who had looked at it, their hard quote changed significantly. They came back as more expensive than what they had quoted before. And, you know, I was understanding of their situation because, we needed, didn’t, they didn’t have a child parcel survey yet. So once we actually had the hard data, wherever the flags were and so forth, they could assess it more realistically.
So then we had to go back with a quote process with other contractors to try to get a better deal. And we did find one who could also start work a little bit earlier. But that’s another thing too, is like, you know, a lot of these contractors are busy depending on what area of the country that you’re in. So, you you don’t want to commit or throw a deposit down on something until you have full approval for your plan from the county or the parish or whatever.
So you might have some lag time that no work is getting done. And then we were quoted, okay, it’s going to take two weeks just to get the clearing out of the way, but not even, you know, the driveway.
wash rock that they were going to put down and so like okay this might take a little bit longer than we thought but again luckily we had some buffer time to work with and so they were quoting okay it’s gonna take two weeks just to clear and two weeks passed and now we are three weeks deep into the project and it’s still not done it’s almost done but there were multiple rain outs you know it’s wet
wet season in central Louisiana. You know, even these guys were working any day they could, including Saturdays and Sundays. Um, but you just had to account for that. Plus there were just complications that came up during the actual clear out that required more time and adjustments just based on the underlying terrain. Um, uh, which again, I’m
you know, ignorant as far as how we should have expected that, you know, cause I just don’t, you know, do onsite work myself. but you know, understanding that, okay, yeah, once you actually dive into a project, just like anything else, inevitably things come up. So that’s going to be the same thing with development, especially when you’re outside and you have a hold into the elements. Some things are just going to get delayed there.
And so we, and we still don’t have a final quote on timeline as well as final cost on the, actual, you know, gravel, installation for the driveways. So I’m still not sure what that’s going to take, but that could, you know, be another couple of weeks, maybe a little bit more. so, at this point. It’s.
probably going to take like three times as long for the total development project as what we were initially expecting on the deal. you know, just going forward for future developments, which again, we plan on doing again. You know, we’re just going to include a much longer buffer time for what we’re initially quoted, just expecting possible weather delays and complications that just happen during the project. it, you know,
If we underestimate or overestimate how long it’s going to take, fine. That’s, that’s Rosie, but I’d rather, you know, you know, the fact that it’s like three X as long as we thought, and we might not even hit our original listing date that we thought we were going to do. from, the start is, yeah.
Definitely something that we weren’t expecting, even though the parish approval was like one quarter as long as how conservatively what we had booked for that. So that’s what we would adjust from that side. And then the cost as well, would just, instead going forward, I would have even higher buffer range for overage, just because.
we’re figuring out again, like things may just come up during the course of development that might, you know, like for instance, on the flag lot, they needed to, you know, add extra dirt in to ensure the long-term durability of the driveway back to the home site. And if they weren’t able to collect enough dirt from the other child parcels, they were gonna have to bring in two extra truckloads of dirt, which is gonna cost an extra eight grand.
And it’s like, okay, we could just say no to that, but then you’re basically required to do that because like, okay, are you going to, um, you know, present a shoddy parcel to the market? No, we have to like maximize value. So, um, it’s important to, uh, ultimately keep that in mind, um, and be able to adjust as needed based on the actual terrain that comes up or same thing with the third child parcel.
once the realtor and the contractor were actually on it, they’re like, okay, we should extend this home site a little bit further back, do a little extra clearing. It’s going to be way more appealing visually for an end buyer. You know, it’s going to cost another few grand to do that. and they’re like, okay, if it’s nominal costs relatively like that, fine, let’s do it. Again, we’re trying to maximize value here. but just being, you know, understanding of.
It’s probably harder to get fully hard quotes on a development project right from the start, especially on raw land. so even if we’re getting, you know, a rough quote and then we’re including an overage, I’d probably even double that buffer. I’d probably include like 20, 25 % buffer on already what we think the high end is going to be for.
That particular project and it comes back lower great We’re gonna return capital and other investors are in once everything’s committed. It’s fine But I’d rather have extra buffer and not have to scramble for additional cash if it turns out It’s going to be advantageous or just the other complications come up during that And then the
Additional piece here is just there was a lot more complexity and day-to-day decision-making in this development project than we thought. Again, we thought this was relatively simple, right? It’s like three child parcels. All we’re doing is carving out a driveway, a home site. And on relatively flat land, there’s heavier vegetation, but it’s not like we were blowing dynamite into a mountain.
or installing like a full sewer system or something like that. I thought it was going to be relatively simple, but again, once the development actually started, it just required additional decision-making. Like, okay, do we need to clear out this extra little area to make it more beautiful? Or again, we might need to adjust the amount of dirt that needs to come in here and hopefully we can avoid that eight grand costs or not. But we have to be ready to handle that as needed.
Plus we needed to add a deed of easement onto the middle child parcel to avoid a much larger fee from more difficult terrain near the entrance of the flag lot. So the driveway ultimately needed to exit onto the middle child parcel and then wind its way back onto the flag lot to.
more naturally fit the terrain and avoid like a much more significant dirt work expense, probably like 20 grand or more. Um, so all that stuff we just, you know, they didn’t have an understanding with until the development actually started and you just have to be, you know, adaptable and able to handle this. And, know, again, very fortunately we have a local expert boots on the ground realtor who is, you know, working, you know, he’s out there almost every day.
Basically being a broad project manager for us and again, this is just a reminder for if you’re to be doing a development project and You’re not available to be boots on the ground Even if I was like I don’t necessarily have that expertise to figure figure it out like I understand how to price land you’re right, but you know the actual Moving dirt around process like that’s it’s in another skill set
entirely. So I appreciate having somebody who has handled projects like this before and understands what to look for and can like quickly educate us on what the best decision might be to go ahead there. But again, even if I was available physically to be out there every day, don’t, I’m almost positive I would not be able to do a better job than the realtor who’s out there has a lot of experience with these projects, making sure that we’re, you know, not getting charged.
and, and, too much extra or getting gouged and so forth. He’s managing the project very effectively. So having a real solid boots on the ground person. And again, this isn’t like a super complicated development project. So imagine if you’re doing, you know, a. 10 plus lot, set up and a whole bunch of value added. Like you’re really, really going to want to make sure you have the right people in place before, before you ever agreed to move forward with something.
So there’s the primary lessons that we’ve learned recently from a development side. Again, getting much more comfortable with this and I plan to do a lot more of this over the coming years and decades here. It’s questionable whether we’ll do like the massive major subdivides. I don’t know just yet, or do we try to just prep paper lots or?
you know, maybe some horizontal development and so forth, but you know, there, there’s just a lot to it. Um, a lot of, a lot of moving parts, um, various personalities and skill sets and so forth. um, that’s what I’m just like reminded sometimes, uh, you know, you, you, you see other, you know, larger developments going on. even living here in Austin and where we have, you know, nice weather basically year round, um, where people, you know, uh,
contractors, construction workers going to be out all months of the year. And still things just seem to take forever. Like there’s this sewer installation slash road widening project near where I live that has just seemed to take like two plus years. And I pass by it every day. I’m like, what is going on here? I just, don’t understand how this isn’t done or why it can’t move faster.
And whenever I see people, like, I’m just, I don’t actually, I’m not able to put all the pieces together to figure out what is going on. I’m sure I’m missing tons of context there. Um, and maybe there’s other red tape and so forth going on, but it’s like, you know, some of this stuff just takes way longer than you would think. Or, you know, again, some like the Northern climates, like I used to live near Chicago and back. mean, then you’re they’re closed off for sometimes four or five months of the year, just cause it’s frigid and ground is frozen. And so all this.
The projects are just put on pause. so this, yeah, started to appreciate, okay, yeah, stuff just, it’s probably going to take longer than, than expected. Um, and then, and these guys all work really, really hard, uh, for, for the most part, you know, they’re usually out there. Possibly seven days a week, just trying to avoid weather delays and so forth. Or like the neighborhood that I’m in, um, you know, did these guys out in the hot sun just, you know, 6 30 AM to.
like 7 p.m. sometimes just grinding to build houses and develop. Like I admire the work ethic. Not something I would want to be doing personally, but you know, that’s what it takes to get a lot of these physical projects done. So I’m appreciating us being able to handle more of the oversight of that. But it is a beast to…
uh, start working in development. So hopefully this is all helpful to you. Um, as you might tackle some of these projects, I know this is bit of a recap, um, for other stuff I’ve commented on recently. I just wanted to summarize for you all, uh, as well as myself, um, going forward here. And with that in mind, seriousland.capital for any of funding needs and land, daily diligence, Facebook groups, zero cost review of your land deals and land price for.ai from the most simple and accurate way to price land.
LandonConference.com to snag one of the last tickets available. $200 off your ticket, if you use my last name as a promo code. Really hope to see you there. It is less than three months away. Only large land conference I’m going to this year. Very much looking forward to it. Subscribe and share. Take care. See you next time. Bye.
