Land & New Construction
Vacant land is the part of this business Derek knows best, and it is also where a buyer can get hurt most easily. With a house you can see what you are buying. With land you are buying what it might become, and finding that out before you are committed is what feasibility is for.
What feasibility answers
In Washington a land offer is normally written with a feasibility period, a stretch of time in which the buyer can investigate the property and walk away if the answers are bad. The questions are much the same on every parcel.
Start with zoning and land use. You need to know what the parcel is zoned for, how many homes it allows, and what the setbacks and height limits do to the building you have in mind. Inside Bellingham that is the city’s code and outside it is Whatcom County’s, and the two read differently.
Access is a separate question. There has to be legal, recorded access to a public road, and a driveway has to be physically buildable where it needs to go. A parcel can touch a road and still have a problem here.
On utilities, either city water and sewer are available or the property needs its own, and if power is a long way off, somebody pays to bring it in. Without public water you need a well that produces enough, and nobody knows what a well will do until it is drilled. Without sewer you need soil that will support a septic system, which means a designer digging test holes and the county health department approving a design, and if the soil fails that can be the end of the project.
Washington cities and counties also regulate what they call critical areas, which include wetlands, streams and steep slopes, and these come with buffers where you cannot build. A wetland at the back of a lot can shrink the usable ground to far less than the acreage in the listing, and sometimes it takes a wetland biologist walking the site to know where the lines are.
Derek holds the Accredited Land Consultant designation from the REALTORS Land Institute. His part in feasibility is knowing which of these questions is likely to be the problem on a given parcel, who to call for each answer, and how to write the offer so you have time to get them. If you are selling land, the same list applies from the other side. The more of it you can answer before you list, the fewer buyers you lose during feasibility.
Builders, developers and investors
The agency also works with builders, developers and investors from the first site search through to closing. That covers site selection, consulting and advisory work, portfolio valuation, pro forma analysis, feasibility studies, and equity sourcing for projects.
Our team has more than 30 years in land development and new construction behind it, and Anne Cantrell is our new construction specialist. Over those years people on the team have worked alongside builders all over Whatcom County, from finding the land to marketing the finished homes, which meant paying attention to market trends, interior design, building styles and finishes as well as the dirt. Projects they have been part of:
- West Hills, 125 lots
- Spyglass, 88 lots
- Wycliffe, 45 lots
- Northwoods, 25 lots
- Tanglewood, 25 lots
- Brighton Crest, 24 lots
- Highfield, 23 lots
- Geneva Hills, 23 lots
- Edgewater Condominiums, Northern Heights, Cedar Creek, Lost Creek and Rose Garden Condos
See land for sale around Bellingham, or talk to Derek about a parcel you are looking at.