Finding lots to build apartments/condos on

[Jarrod English]

Hello, I have recently been motivated to look into flipping a house with a contractor partner I've met.  The problem is we don't really have wholesalers where I live so I was thinking it was something I need to take up myself in order to find a deal.  

With that in mind, I was thinking that the more central and older neighbourhoods in my city would be an excellent spot to find adjacent properties and see if an apartment/condo could be built.  There's a lot of infilling going on in these areas and builders are making duplexes on a single lot and selling those for an okay profit, but you don't see a lot of apartments going up (possibly nobody is out there trying to make this happen I think).  If I'm going the wholesaler route, I thought if I could just secure a set of adjacent houses under contract and sell to someone to develop a 4 storey building, there could be a lot more profit for the builder and myself.  Has anyone done this sort of thing before?  I need to brush up on wholesaling tactics but think it would be extra difficult as you'd need to secure 2 adjacent houses to make it work haha.

A house in the area I'm talking about might go for $350,000 normally.  I need to figure out the building costs of an apartment still but figured my best strategy would be to pay above market value on the 2 houses.  This way the owners are happy, yet still keeping the total number below what a builder would need to turn a good profit.  For example, I offer $375,000 for the houses (which aren't for sale).  Total cost being $750,000, sell to the builder for $800,000.  In the end maybe they make a couple hundred thousand profit and I pocket a cool $50,000.  It's a really high number for wholesaling, but it's just an idea that I'm floating around and would love some feedback.

Here's an image of 2 houses next to an older apartment building.  These are actually nice looking houses but trust me there are some really old and small looking houses in the area that would be more ideal.  The apartment isn't what I had in mind though as it's obviously older.  There's a really cool 4 storey one down the street which is a great example of what could be built.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.514254,-113.508416,3a,75y,349.73h,86.02t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sQTG0jEl2wzbc8VrSCsbJew!2e0!6m1!1e1

Thanks!