Can land development actually work around a full time job, or does the entitlement calendar decide that

Question

Land development looks attractive to a lot of people with full time jobs because the timelines are long, which reads as spread out. Long project, not much happening most weeks, seems to fit around a job. The reality is bursty rather than spread out. A planning commission meeting that runs from 6pm to 10:30, the third hearing on the same application, with someone having attended all three hearings plus the neighborhood meeting plus staff level conversations in between, is a normal pattern. Nothing happens for two months, then five things happen in one week, mostly during business hours when county staff are reachable. The case for doing it while employed is that the income side works independently of the project, and carrying land through a long approval process takes patient capital, which a steady salary effectively provides. The case against is that the entitlement process punishes anyone who can't be in the room when hearings and staff calls happen, since county staff generally answer the phone only during business hours. A middle path is partnering: one party brings money and underwriting, a local operator handles hearings and site presence. That works as long as the decision-making split is clear from the start, since ambiguity there tends to surface at the worst possible hearing. Another path avoids the calendar problem entirely: sticking to by-right splits with no rezoning and no hearings, where the timeline mostly belongs to the engineer and the county reviewer rather than a public meeting schedule. For most people balancing a job against this, the by-right or well-structured partnership approach tends to hold up better than assuming a full entitlement process will fit around a 9 to 5.

derekj19 · Answer

The bursty part is right and it's worse than hearings. Plan review comments come back with a clock on them, and if you sit on them for three weeks because you were traveling for work, you've lost a review cycle and a review cycle in some counties is six weeks. That's the kind of thing that turns a 14 month entitlement into a 22 month one without anybody doing anything wrong.

aliyah_b · Answer

You can hire the room, though. A land use attorney or a consultant goes to the hearings, presents, and handles staff. That's a real line item, I've been quoted in the low five figures for a straightforward rezoning in my area and more where there's opposition. If the deal can carry that cost then the day job problem is mostly solved for the hearing part.

What you can't hire is the decision about whether to accept a condition of approval on the spot when a commissioner proposes it.

mikeoconnell7 · Answer

@aliyah_b that last sentence is the whole thing. A commission attaching a condition about a second access point can change the lot yield entirely, and an applicant's consultant will often say yes in the room because saying no means a continuance. The owner finds out later.

diane_kowalski · Answer

By-right only, at least to start, and I say that as someone who's been researching this for a year without buying. If there's no legislative approval needed, no rezoning and no variance, then most of the timeline risk moves to plan review and construction, which are both things you can manage over email and on weekends. You give up the biggest source of value creation, because the spread on rezoning ag to residential is where the real money is. You also give up the risk that a 4 to 3 vote deletes your budget.

joe_delgado5 · Answer

I did my first two deals with a job and it worked because both were by-right and small. The thing that actually broke was the construction phase, not entitlement. Site work generates decisions daily, an inspector shows up and wants something changed, a crew hits rock. I burned a lot of PTO and I was lucky my boss didn't care.

If I were doing it again employed, I'd buy the turnkey site contract and pay the premium so somebody else is answering the phone at 7am.

megan_doyle15 · Answer

So the answer that keeps showing up is that you can be employed if you pay other people to be available. That's clearer than I expected and it also means the small deal is the hardest one to do this way, because the small deal can't carry the fees.

Can land development actually work around a full time job, or does the entitlement calendar decide that

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