I work for a tract home builder as a construction manager and really enjoy what I do and like my company, but prior to that I was an independent contractor and miss being self employed.  

Don't subrogate your interest/position and let the Builder come up with scenarios that keeps you clean and your interest in tract. 

Realistically, in Silicon Valley a $1.3 million dollar home often is a remodeled 3-4 br, 2 bath, 40 year old tract 1,300-1,999 sf home on a 5000+ sf lot.

Pearce... it depends on which spot in Summerville, but given the recent and planned growth, you could have a valuable tract if already zoned appropriately.

So for you as a private investor what you want is to buy a 40 or 80 acre tract that has 20 to 30 year old timber buy it in your roth IRA  you can buy these for 100k to 200k.. and in 30 years you will have about 2 mil in standing timber that can either be sold in one fell swoop or logged off over time.there are many old families that live on their timber.. they log just enough each year to pay the bills.

I just purchased a 6.48 acre tract with a single family home in the middle outside of city limits.  

I have done many real estate flips from over $1 MM to as little as $10,000 - I am always aware of the pit falls of doing this - if you don't know what you are doing - if you took a down and dirty motel seminar, if you don't have all the details of a successful flip deal ---- be careful - hang with a mentor who has a successful tract record ----Flipping isn't as easy as the BIG TALKERS try to convince you - to buy their program - the big dream is possible only with the right tools - deal with successful people who have flipped properties successfully. 

I bought a timber tract that could also be built on.. timber usually paid for the land or almost all of it..

FWIW, I have found that smaller developments in terms of acreage can be more complicated than larger tract developments.

They are in Arizona (AZ) and Colorado (CO), and they are all larger tracts of land.