Seeking advice |Large land/construction deal

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Posting anon because the Internet is forever... :)

I'm a small investment co. that's only done a couple of deals so far, though I do have experience in the past doing deals with land subordination & creative financing. I want to scale up... way up. I'm interested in purchasing a large (1 acre +) piece of land in Atlanta and doing new town home construction. 

Here's what I have:

• a builder who's capable of a larger project
• $50k cash of my own
• a very good general understanding of business and a decent understanding of construction timelines and needs, how to use pre-sales to help secure funding

My question is, how to get started on a project like this. The land I'm looking at is ~$900k , in a great location, big enough to support at least 10-15 town homes. I obviously need access to capital... I could puzzle out how to make a proforma for this, but what I I do that and the land gets sold before I can get the money to lock it down? Should I approach the agent who has the land listed before I do anything else? You only get 1 chance to make a first impression... etc. 

I know I can do this, not just based on desire, but also on past successes doing things on zero budget and through thinking creatively. I should mention that I also owned part of an unrelated business a few years ago that required a lot of hard negotiating with difficult individuals (government officials in foreign countries, for example), so I'm not a noob to business or complex discussions with investors. 

I just need to know where to start to put this together... not putting carts before horses, etc. Thanks for any and all advice!

- AI