What to build a profit making building on a land we own.

[Raj Sidharthan]

Dear friends,
My wife and I have half an acre land close to downtown San Jose, CA. The property is close to the main street, but not on it, so it's not ideal for retail.

The property is also zoned as Light Industrial. Other businesses around are all body shops, machine shops and similar businesses.
However, at this point in time, this area is fast developing and the bodyshops and machine shops are starting to get replaced by housing units and other consumer oriented businesses.

We would like to build a structure on our land and rent out. We dont have a lot of cash on hand to complete the project on our own. 

A couple of questions...
1) How do you determine the ideal type of building to build on this land?
2) How do you go about getting a loan for the build?

[Austen Mueller]

Determining highest and best use for your property is hard to say. I would recommend talking to local municipality and see what future plans they see coming to that area.