DEVELOPING COUNTY LAND
When looking at a parcel of land, the first thing to make note of is whether the land is within city limits including any ETJs (Extraterritorial Jurisdiction) or unincorporated (county land). This will give you the main framework with which you can start putting together development specs and costs and beginning your due diligence. For this post, we will focus on unincorporated county land.
There will be two main groups of people you will be working with to get a parcel of land shovel-ready for development in the county, your civil engineer and the county office. A local engineer should be familiar with the specs of the county and answer preliminary questions, but you will want to set up a pre-development meeting with the county and your civil engineer during your feasibility period (if you are under contract on a parcel of land). If the parcel is in the ETJ of a local municipality, you will schedule a meeting with the city as well, as they will also have input on the specs for the development. For this article, we will assume no ETJs.
Once you have completed your pre-development meeting and have the county’s requirements, you will be able to begin the preliminary platting process for the property. Your engineer will create plat that will consist of entrance(s), roads, lot layout. When you are satisfied with the plat, the engineer will begin full engineering plans inclusive of a demolition plan, grading plan, drainage plan, water lines if there is co-op water available to the property and roads. In most counties, if co-op water is available to a parcel of land, you must connect to it. On county land, sewer lines are not available, so each constructed home has private sewer systems, more commonly referred to as septic systems. If there is no co-op water then each home will need to have a private well installed. If there is no water then your engineer will not have to design water lines for the plans, however, the availability of water or not is important as it will determine the required minimum size of the lot. In Texas, if you do not have water or sewer lines available, each lot must be a minimum of 2-acres. If you have water, the lot minimum is 1-acre. The local county office would be able to verify these requirements for you.
Once this is complete, you will be able to begin collecting your bids from the necessary contractors to evaluate the total cost of the development. You will also need to coordinate with the electrical provider for plans. In most cases, there will be some costs associated with this service but it is dependent on how far the service is, whether or not they currently have the capacity to handle the number of lots you are going to be developing. You will also want to reach out to telecommunication companies to see who services this property. Generally, these companies do not charge for the installation of these lines but you will want to confirm this.
Once you have your plans completed, you will file the plat with the county office. At this time, your county development project is “shovel-ready”. You will begin grading the property, installing the roads and utilities, and making the land “construction-ready”. This is county development, in a nutshell, in our next article, we will cover city development processes.
