Has anybody actually subdivided raw acreage in Georgia and come out the other side with sellable lots

Georgia does not require you to be owner of record to initiate the preliminary plat process in most counties. The applicant on a plat submission can be the contract purchaser, and the owner signs a consent or authorization form alongside. Twiggs County is small enough that their planning office may not have a formal pre-application checklist posted anywhere, so you need to call the county administrator or the building and zoning office directly and ask specifically whether a contract purchaser can be listed as applicant with a notarized owner authorization attached. That is the question, word for word. Some rural Georgia counties still run their subdivision review through the county engineer rather than a planning department, and if that is the case in Twiggs, the engineer's office is who you are actually asking. Do not assume the zoning office and the plat approval office are the same desk.

The thing that does not come up until it is too late is your 90-day window almost certainly does not survive a preliminary plat review in a small county. Twiggs is not Forsyth. Staff review alone in a county that size can take six to eight weeks if they meet monthly, and if they require a public hearing for subdivision approval your timeline is gone before you have buyers under contract. The assignment question matters, but the calendar question matters more right now. What does your contract say about extensions, and did you negotiate any contingency language around plat approval when you got it under contract?

The core question is a legal one, and the answer varies by how Georgia's plat statutes intersect with Twiggs County's specific subdivision ordinance. A Georgia real estate attorney, ideally one who does land and entitlement work in middle Georgia, is the right person to answer whether the applicant on a preliminary plat must be the fee owner or whether a contract purchaser with written authorization can sign. That is a one-call question and worth making before you spend the survey money.

What I can tell you is how this tends to work structurally. Most Georgia counties require the property owner of record to sign the plat application, or a party with recorded authorization from that owner. If your seller is willing to sign a written consent or limited power of attorney authorizing you to pull permits and plat approvals during the contract period, that sometimes satisfies the county. Some counties accept it, some do not. Twiggs County planning staff can tell you exactly what they require, and that call costs nothing.

On the assignment side, assigning a raw land contract is generally permissible in Georgia if your purchase contract does not prohibit it. Check whether yours has an anti-assignment clause, because that is the more common trip wire than the platting process.

The sequence I would suggest exploring with your attorney: confirm county requirements first, then decide whether to spend the $3,800 to $5,200 on the preliminary plat. If the county needs the owner's signature and your seller will not cooperate, your options narrow to either closing yourself or renegotiating the contract structure, such as a double close or a longer inspection period.

You have 79 days left, which is enough time to make those calls before committing to survey costs.

What does your purchase contract say about assignment, and have you had any conversation yet with the seller about their willingness to cooperate during the platting process?