First split in your own county, or the county three hours away with the easier ordinance?

Question

This comes up in my inbox more than anything else, so putting it to the room.

Somebody wants to do their first two or three lot split. Their home county has a subdivision ordinance that's genuinely hard. Anything past two lots triggers a full plat review, the road standard is expensive, and staff is slow. Three hours out there's a rural county where a three lot split off existing frontage is an administrative process, a licensed surveyor draws it, staff signs it, and nobody asks for a road. Lot prices out there are lower, so the spread per lot is smaller, but the process cost is a fraction.

Case for home. You know which roads are good, you know what a lot is worth without looking it up, you can drive out at 4pm when the surveyor has a question, and you'll build a relationship with a planning department you'll use for a decade.

Case for the easy county. The subdivision process is the actual risk in this strategy, so pick the version of it that's most likely to finish. A completed small split teaches you more than a stalled bigger one. And you can learn a rural market in three trips if you're willing to make the trips.

I've seen both go fine and both go badly. What decides it for you?

ehernandez74 · Answer

Before I could vote I'd want to know one thing about the easy county. Is the process actually easy, or is it easy on paper and then the health department takes five months on septic approvals? A friendly subdivision ordinance and a backed up environmental review are two different agencies and I've read enough here to know the second one can be the real gate.

parcel, when you say administrative sign off, does that include whatever the state requires for on site sewage on new lots, or is that a separate track?

brandonlee36 · Answer

Separate track almost everywhere, and anchor's question is the right one. Where I own, the county planner will sign a three lot split in two weeks and the septic evaluation is the thing that decides whether there are three lots at all.

My vote is home county anyway, for an unglamorous reason. On my out of area stuff the cost isn't the drive, it's that I don't hear things. Nobody calls me when a road project gets funded or a new well restriction shows up. In my own county I hear it at the counter.

laurenkim53 · Answer

I'd take the rural county, because that's basically where I already look. But the smaller spread matters more than the post makes it sound. If lots retail at $32k out there and the split costs you $9k in survey and recording and soft costs, three lots is $96k gross and the process ate almost 10% before you've paid for the land. In a $90k lot market that same $9k is nothing. The easy ordinance is cheap in dollars and expensive as a percentage.

jessreyes12 · Answer

Asking the thing I'd feel silly asking out loud. If I buy in a county three hours away and split it, am I selling those lots myself, and does doing that repeatedly turn into something that needs a license? I know licensing rules are state by state, I just don't know what the trigger even is for selling land you own.

diane_kowalski · Answer

compass, selling your own property is usually fine and it's selling for other people that triggers licensing, but where the line sits and how many transactions start to look like a business varies by state, so that's a question for someone licensed there.

On the actual poll I'm voting for the third option and I know it's the boring vote. I've spent four months reading ordinances in two counties and the parcels that make money are the ones where somebody else already did the hard part or where the ordinance never made it hard. parcel, do you actually see split-ready parcels come up often enough that waiting for one is a strategy, or is that just how I avoid deciding?

First split in your own county, or the county three hours away with the easier ordinance?

5 replies