It sounds like they just sent you to a lender and builder and maybe they got a piece from each?

I can hardly believe an accountant would say such a thing unless there are pieces of the story that aren't in the post. 

Everything we did had a value add piece to it.

Its more like 98/2 with an additional 5% saying they do stuff so they can get a piece of someone else's hard work while they have not done anything and live in their mom's basement.All that said there is value well over the cost for those who apply themselves to deriving the value. 

While both involve finding and properly securing a site and bringing it to full entitlement, the ground-up process includes the land piece but gets way more involved and complex to execute.The full "Monty" for ground-up development needs to include financial literacy, an explanation of metrics, and how they work.

I would check out those posts and see who was active in them and reach out to them to see who they have gotten in touch with - it sounds like they are making some progress and from what I heard have the ear of someone at the SEC or DOJ that is looking into it. 

Very cool piece of real estate, unfortunately it doesn't even make sense at the $650k asking price.

Then chase down deals for him and take a piece of each one.   

Put down a nice piece of sheet vinyl.

start with one piece of land for one single family or a smaller development. or get the buy box of larger developers. why would they need to partner with you when they can do it on their own or find someone more experienced?