All Forum Posts by: Bart Pair

Oh yeah,

once I started working on this "Due Diligence" resource, I purchased a bunch of products being sold online to see what was out there - one of them being the "Real Estate Development Coach's" product - the commercial development one.

It is a general overview of developing high rise commercial projects in downtown Brisbane, Australia. There is enough in there to make me believe the guy actually developed the properties he said he did and isn't lying. And part of the product is getting to email questions back and forth to this guy (although I never tried it.) But if that part is true, than I would consider the price of $87 not bad. (please know that $87 isn't alot of money in my opinion for an investment book.)

Because he is doing high rises on fully developed city blocks of downtown Brisbane there isn't a whole lot in there about site analysis and due diligence. And his market research is a little simple for what's is available these days. But there are a few tips in there that are worthwhile.

Could you take the book and use it to do a development project? - NO. But as I said above, I don't think one of those exists.

I grew up in a family of real estate investors (father has been developing land for 40 years, mother is a real estate agent, and my older brother is a successful commercial developer and investor.) I personally have been a civil engineer working in land development for over a dozen years.

In that time, I have collected a lot of "land development" books - it is kind of a hobby. Not one of them has provided more than just a general overview of the land development process.

If that is what you want then the latest 10th edition book title "Land Development" on sale at Amazon isn't bad. Although it has a bunch of information in it that the typical developer doesn't need (specifically a bunch of civil engineering design information - which is weird since the author is an architect.)

But I would suggest you would be better served not looking for an all inclusive book, but instead looking for books/information that focus on specific areas of the process.

The three areas I have seen developers make their most mistakes over the years are these.

Market Research: Projecting what the demand will be for a product at the time you actually bring that product to market. (Knowing whats in demand right now does you no good.)

Financing: Doing accurate cash flow projections of your project to determine how much cash you will need when. Then procuring that cash either through traditional financing, mezzanine, JV etc...

Due Diligence: Conducting proper site evaluations to accurately determine a property's development capacity, the cost of development, and the time it takes to bring your product to market.

There are books on market research and financing, but I haven't seen many on real honest to goodness Due Diligence. In fact, because there is such a lack in that area, I have started developing Due Diligence resource myself. (But I don't spam forums so I won't say anymore about that here.)

Just let me say this. The best developers don't gamble. They know damn well what a property will yield and how long it's going to take and how much it is going to cost to create that end revenue. And they know this very early in the process.