Approvals are what you are selling
A parcel with zoning in place, a site plan approved, and access permitted is a different product from the same dirt without those things, and the gap is measured in years rather than percentage points. Entitlement runs through engineering, traffic and environmental studies, hearings, and staff review, and a builder who acquires completed approvals is buying a construction start date that cannot otherwise be purchased. That is why entitled ground holds its premium even in a slow market — the calendar does not speed up. When you describe where you are, be specific. Conceptual approval, preliminary plat, final plat, and recorded plat are four different positions, and the number moves at each one.
Utility capacity is not utility presence
A water main in the road proves a pipe exists. It does not prove the district will issue the number of connections a project needs, at the pressure it needs, this year. Growing systems run allocation limits and occasionally connection moratoria, and sewer is usually the tighter of the two because treatment capacity is a permitted number that cannot legally be exceeded. Then there is the cost of connecting. Tap fees recover the physical hookup and are separate from capacity charges; between the two, a single-family connection can run from a few thousand dollars in a rural district to tens of thousands in a fast-growing suburb. A written capacity commitment from the utility is worth real money, and we ask for it.
Impact fees and concurrency shape the math
Impact fees are charged per unit at permit to fund the roads, parks, schools, and utilities that new construction loads onto a jurisdiction. Nationally they commonly reach five figures per single-family home, and in parts of California the average is several times that. Concurrency is the related rule in states such as Florida and Washington: a local government cannot approve development unless the public facilities to serve it will be available at the same time as its impacts. Where capacity is short, the builder funds the improvement, contributes toward it, or waits for the jurisdiction. Both items land in the same place — the residual a builder can pay for land. Knowing your fee schedule makes the offer sharper, not lower.
Approvals expire, and renewals cost money
Preliminary plats, conditional use permits, and site plan approvals all carry a clock, commonly one to three years depending on the jurisdiction, with extensions often limited to a single additional year and granted only if you apply before expiration. Preliminary approval also does not generally vest the full project; later review can still add conditions. When an approval lapses you fall back into a code that has probably changed and a fee schedule that almost certainly has. Renewing is still usually cheaper than starting from nothing, because the drawings, studies, and staff familiarity survive. Send us the approval dates. How much runway is left is often the difference between two very different numbers.
A recorded plat is not a paper plat
A plat recorded in the county land records creates legally described lots that can be conveyed and financed individually. A plat that was drawn and approved but never recorded creates nothing yet. Between those sits a third case worth knowing about: subdivisions recorded decades ago whose streets were never built. Those streets exist as dedicated public rights-of-way on paper, and the lots behind them are legal lots that in practice nobody can reach or serve. Buyers price all three very differently. If your ground is platted, give us the recording date with the book and page, and tell us separately whether the roads and utilities shown on that plat were actually constructed or only drawn.