Can you actually do land development with a full time job, or does the entitlement calendar decide that for you

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.

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.

@tally that last sentence is the whole thing. I've watched a commission attach a condition about a second access point that changed the lot yield, and the applicant's consultant said yes in the room because saying no meant a continuance. The owner found out later.

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.

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.

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.