Hello Gerald,
I work for a municipality in land development engineering and have worked with developers to develop their land for over 15 years, however, I am not a developer. Here are the steps I would take, and things may be different in your City vs where I work so make sure you double check your requirements.
1. Go to the City and confirm with the planning department that your lot is developable to single family homes. Make sure it is not slated to be turned into park land, or a conservation area, or anything else. See if they have a plan for the area, NCP (neighbourhood concept plan) or an OCP (official community plan) and check if your property needs to meet specific plan, eg. townhouses fronting the arterial (busy roads) and single family on the local roads, maybe with a small neighbourhood park in the centre. Find out if rezoning is required and what zone would be permitted. Ask about timelines for zoning and find out specific projects that met the shorter timelines they give you. Then get the names of the planning/engineering consultant firms that met the shorter timelines.
2. Retain a consultant. You need a local firm who is familiar with that municipality, who has met timelines. They should have planning staff and engineering staff. I do not recommend going with a planning only consultant and then retaining a separate engineering consultant because I often see lack of communication between two separate consultants. An architect may be required if you are building townhouses, a house designer if you are building just single family homes.
3. Your consultant should be able to put together proforma outlining the costs to get your site to rezoning and subdivision. They should also be able to give you costs for construction of all services (roads, water, sewer, drainage, hydro/gas/tel), and all the fees that will be required (their consulting fees, city admin fees, development cost charge fees (DCCs).
4. You need to decide if you want to build each lot or sell the lot serviced and have the new owner design and build their home. Different areas support/ allow selling of serviced lots vs. selling built homes. It really depends on a lot of factors- here both work but it depends on the market as to which sells faster.
5. Plans will need approval, reports will need to be completed. Reports such as geotechnical, arborist, environmental, traffic study, etc. Retain a law firm that deals with development legal documents such as statutory rights of ways, subdivision plans, restrictive covenants and easements. Meet all the City requirements to get your development to rezoning and subdivision.
6. Once your city council grants rezoning, and they City Approving Officer signs off on the subdivision, and all legal documents are registered, your lots are then registered and you can build on them or sell them. If you are selling them and they aren't serviced, be sure to commit to having the services constructed by a certain time and be diligent to meet that time line. I have one development that got their subdivision/rezone and the developer immediately sold off the lots at the peak of the market. 3 years later, those owners are constantly coming to the city asking why they can't get building permits on their lots as the developer hasn't been paying his contractors and the roads and services haven't been complete. These owners have been paying their mortgages on the lots but can't build houses yet. Be a good developer and work on maintaining good relationships and reputation.
If you have more questions, I can do my best to help you. Good luck and keep us posted on your development journey.
