This episode documents the extensive due diligence process for a $500,000+ Louisiana acquisition targeting a three-way minor subdivide. The investigation uncovered multiple layers of regulatory complexity including parish-specific approval processes, historical preservation zoning complications, and grandfather clauses around road frontage requirements that wouldn’t have been discovered without hundreds of hours of research and local attorney involvement.
Key Takeaways:
- Historical preservation zoning affects child parcel layouts The property fell partially within a historical preservation zone not visible on standard mapping software, requiring verification through county-level GIS systems and creating upcoming changes from 150-foot to 300-foot road frontage requirements per child parcel.
- Grandfather provisions create temporary windows for advantageous terms The new 300-foot road frontage requirement won’t take effect until the parish updates county-level maps (estimated one to two quarters away), allowing projects closing before then to utilize the current 150-foot standard.
- Local expertise combined with legal review prevents costly mistakes Working with the region’s most active broker who recently completed similar approvals, plus engaging a local attorney for several hours of ordinance review, provides essential protection on deals where half a million dollars sits at risk.
Listen to the full episode for the complete timeline of survey approval, parish review processes, and coordination with dirt work contractors during the regulatory waiting period.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over Serious Land Capital vacant land funding partner. So I know yesterday I was commenting more regarding some of the fine print regulations related to handling Texas minor subdivides and just in general, needing a keen attention to detail in any new operator or
any new area that you’re operating in, particularly for more complex projects that minor subdivides often entail and usually higher price points as well, particularly on the buy side. So to give you another concrete example, the much larger Louisiana,
purchase that we are sizing up to close on in roughly a month.
So for that one, the county records seem to indicate that it’s roughly 32 acres. Based on our satellite imagery, it could be larger than that. We won’t know until the survey. But it is another one similar to that Texas subdivide I remarked on in the previous podcast that we’re going to try to target a three split child parcel setup.
You know, no exception criteria like the Texas one. So even though there was some fine print for the Texas subdivide, it’s still a simpler process just because you don’t need to go through a review session with the county or the associated municipality. With Louisiana one, there is, but so long as you know what you’re doing, it’s quite a simple process, though, you know, having a lot of local knowledge is really
going to help there. So in this case, we have perhaps the most active broker in the region who’s lived there his whole life and really familiarized herself, you know, okay, what is this minor subdivide process? Plus he’s handled a number of them in the past, including, you know, a recent approval process, not even two months ago. So we are very confident that
His knowledge is reliable just based on past track record and current ongoing projects. So with this one, it starts with a survey again and just diagramming out what you anticipate child parcels to be are. A key piece that we made sure.
to do regarding the selecting the surveyor first, know, again, the realtor suggested one, someone who’s who he’s worked with in the past and has had success and understands the parish’s exact specifications for getting a minor subdivision approved within that area. So we can have much higher likelihood that we’re not going to run into trouble.
just based on, okay, we both have the full ordinance, in front of us in terms of, okay, you know, the letter of the law. Plus we know, you know, somebody who’s actually going to handle the survey for us who does these routinely. And I mentioned parish because in Louisiana, parish is effectively equivalent to a county. think it’s the only state in the country that has that distinction, just FYI for the,
vernacular there. And so we were trying to set up a full timeline for this. Surveys should be relatively quick, but we’re, you know, conservatively estimating that it might take roughly five weeks or so for the parish to approve the process. That seems to be the piece that we have the least amount of control over. And in the meantime, since we were planning to do a value
on the property while we’re waiting for the survey to be approved by the parish. Since we’ll already have the survey done and the exact boundaries lined up, we’ll be able to get a firm hard quote from our dirt work and clearing.
contractor who’s already walked the property a couple times, but you know, once we have the actual boundaries set up, it can be an even firmer quote and try to get estimates for possible overage as well conservatively. So we’re trying to handle all of that in that period of time where we anticipate the parish to approve the process. Notably, there were a couple of other
key snags that could potentially affect the child parcel setup that we wanted to do. And again, this is why you have to just dig. If you think you’re digging deeper, you just have to keep asking yourself questions like what else could you be missing, especially when there’s a lot of money at stake. And so we found out that a part of our subject parcel
was included or designated within a historical preservation zoning. And this isn’t something that shows up on land ID or the typical mapping software. So it’s always good to double check the actual county level GIS zoning maps whenever they are available. And so we found out that it
doesn’t seem to affect much from a surveying perspective and what you can do for child parcels. And again, we’re not planning on developing the property. It might need an extra level of approval for building on certain parts of the historical preservation designation, but so long as you can look around in the area and also just confirm.
with whoever that permitter is at the local level. You know, also covering from an on-buyer perspective, okay, is there going to be any extra issues here? So you can just line everything up as turnkey as possible for your on-buyers because you already did all this research prior. So that’s something else that we’re addressing. But in regard to our hold of the property,
The only thing it seemed to affect is that there is an upcoming requirement for 300 feet of road frontage per child parcel instead of 150, which is the current. However, there’s even more distinctions when you dive in and figuring out that although the new regulation was passed requiring 300 feet of road frontage per child parcel,
the county or the parish rather has not updated the county level map. So until that is done, which is estimated to be like another quarter or two from now, you would still be grandfathered in to allowing 150 feet of road frontage rather than 300. So, you know, it can probably tell just from a listener perspective, yeah, your mind might be spinning a bit.
in regard to this, but the details don’t necessarily matter in regard to your memory here. It’s more just a service, an example of, again, us operating nationally, even though we’re extremely experienced investors, is that there’s no way we would have known all of this from the start. It’s just a required hours and hours of deeper…
diligence and asking the right questions, figuring out who knows the answers to these things. Plus, even if we do get answers and our own written ordinances and so forth to look over, because of the money at stake here, roughly a half million dollars, we’re also having a local attorney spend a few hours on it just to confirm every step of the way and make sure we’re not missing anything.
Again, as much of a checklist as you can have here, it’s the boring work. You get an exciting deal, think, yeah, this is lining up perfectly. I’m going to make several hundred thousand dollars more, what have you. But when something is at stake there, especially the opportunity to lose money, you really have to spend that extra level of time to make sure that you’re not.
missing anything because you blow up one of these projects and easily go out of business. You take other investors money and all of a sudden you’re in really bad shape. And you know, even if you find a better project in the future, you might have already ruined your reputation later on. And generally, you you lose investors money once you’re never getting more again. So that’s always something to keep in mind and why we’re even extra protective when we do try to raise some outside capital for larger projects.
So that should give you an idea of, again, the particulars that we had to review for this particular project. Everything seems to be a green light so far. We’re going to solidify everything and anticipate closing in, again, roughly a month here. But, yeah, I just wanted to share with you some of these updates and hope the bottom line
kind of suggestion really resonates of just being extra, extra certain of every level of the deal, particularly in areas that you are not familiar with. With that, check out seriousland.capital for any of your funding requirements for land deals, land daily diligence to review any properties at zero cost, and landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to price land. I just got a whole bunch of work.
Done with that, before recording this, getting so close to a testable format. Cannot wait, I will let you know. Take care.
