First timer need help on development

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I've been talking to a potential seller about commercial property for developing, with a city parcel that comes up for bid, could put 16 live work units on it roughly at $399,000 a unit now. I want to purchase and develope with the right partner but could be a year or more before we could start, so my question is how do I tie up the property,options, non refundable earnest money as you can tell I'm a newbie. Please use instant messenger because it takes so log for these pages to download from my computor.