First paid work: $750 for a zoning feasibility summary. The invoice cleared.

Someone in a local investor group posted asking whether a 0.4 acre corner lot could take four units under the current code, and got eleven guesses in the comments. I messaged him and offered to read the ordinance properly and write it up for $750, delivered in a week.

What I actually did. Pulled the zoning text and the overlay, read the definitions section twice because the density calculation ran off net lot area and not gross, called the planning counter and asked two specific questions with the parcel number in hand, and wrote six pages. Answer was three units by right, four if he vacated a strip of the rear setback through a variance he probably wouldn't get.

The part that nearly broke it was the planning counter. First person I got told me flatly that it was four, which was the answer my client wanted, and I nearly wrote that down. The number came from an older version of the density table. I called back the next morning, got someone else, and she walked me to the amendment date. That single call is the difference between a document that helped him and a document that cost him money.

What I'd keep. I put every source in a footnote with a date, so he can hand it to his architect. And I wrote at the top that this isn't a legal opinion and that anything hinging on the variance needs a land use attorney in that state, which felt like weakening my own product and is the sentence he thanked me for.

$750 for about nine hours. Not a rate, but it's real.