It can take a year or more in some areas to get approvals for a new development and then 6-12 months or more to do the work to produce finished pads to build on.Starting with the raw land and developing finished pads to build can be costly and risky depending on location, site conditions, availability of utilities etc. so you will need to get the land at the right price to make this work.You need to run the numbers and way the risk and time factors to determine if it makes sense to build vs buy.

@Andrew Graham, Raw land is a long game. 

When is the last time a lot of raw land traded in the same neighborhood as the proposed lot?

Raw land is harder to sell than houses usually..its a smaller pool of buyers.

Apartments are a much easier point of entry than trying to develop raw land if you have no experience in either.

Oh and I especially loved the trash bags full of pounds raw sausage left in the middle of the yard when they moved out (among other trash).  

It wouldn't be surprising that construction costs are going to be somewhere around $400 - $700/sq ft, converting from raw land, to build a similar 1,500 sq ft house, plus the cost of the land. 

I would suggest another thought and question: Why do you have to develop raw land?

There's very little market for raw single family residential land.

Purchased 7 acres of basically raw land (only 1 home on the lot which will be demoed soon) in a partnership deal with a person I've never met in person.