Best Development of 5 acres

[Kelly Dunkley]

A little over 2 years ago, my husband and I moved our family to a small town in central Nebraska. The house we purchased is on a .86-acre lot, but we also purchased the 5 acres behind on yard and have just leased it to a farmer for the past two seasons because we weren't sure yet what we wanted to with it. Now we're trying to make some plans. The town board is amicable to rezoning from agricultural to residential, and the area was recently approved for TIF, which the town also seems to be in favor of utilizing to establish infrastructure for the site (utility extensions, road work, etc). There are even some low-interest loans available through the county for new home construction because of the desperate need for rural housing in our area. So many factors are working in this project's favor! However, we have very little capital to get the ball rolling. We are currently thinking our best course of action is to sell the whole lot to a developer (we paid 40k for it, and quarter-acre lots around here are going for 20-30k each, so we stand to make a great ROI), but my long-term hope is to own several multi-family properties, and I don't want to miss an opportunity to build and own duplexes on this land because of a lack of money in the bank right now. We could probably figure out financing on the first duplex, but we would have to sell our current house and move into half of that duplex to fund the second, third, and so forth. Would you advise selling the lot and taking our funds to invest in other existing properties, or would you keep the land and build slowly? Or is there another better idea?