You’ll spend more on surveys, permits, and building which is where you’ll need the financing or to pay directly over time.

I would just be cautious about doing the work yourself, without pulling permits.

Be prepared for things like carrying costs, permits, and any surprise repairs that come up.

Not yet, looking to attain permits & start horizontal development in Q1 2025. 

Without the sprinkler permit you can't pull an underground plumbing nor interior plumbing permit and if you're amending the plans that could hold up both of those permits, which could stop your build in its tracks, depending on when the mistake is caught. 

Apparently in Texas which might as well be the Moon as compared to Cincinnati, commercial lenders do not permit subordinate seller financing.

So if I pull permits and my work passes inspection, is there going to be an issue I’m not aware of?

so much private land has been logged and replanted since then.. in those days we would buy a 40 lets say for 150k  take 200k of timber off of it then sell the land on contract for same price then hypothicate the note to pull out more cash rinse repeat.. we also would use our logging roads and staging areas stratigically so when we left the roads were in the right place to do a 4 way lot split and the landings/stagging areas became the building pads.. in the NW permits for logging are not tough.. in those days it was over the counter and there was nothing you needed to do with regard to excavation.. however if I just bought the land and wanted to put in roads and pads then I would have had to get a grading permit and all the survey and engineering that went with it.. its was really something how we did that.. and I miss it to this day.. the other item that made it so profitable was Japan was paying premium for Export quality doug fir logs.. you could get double or more for export logs.

The best thing to do would be to consult an attorney, but likely, that is not an option for everyone starting out.I'm not an attorney, and this is not legal advice, but some of the information that we include in our contracts is:- A clear scope of work - Payment schedule / Milestones- Change order approval process- Allowances for finished materials- Reasons to terminate the contract- Expectations for start date (X amount of time after final plans /permits are received or X amount of time after the contract is executed)- General schedule and timeline (This is where you could specify an end date - however it may be better use incentives rather than liquidated damage if your general contractor is late - we've done both, but found General Contractors respond better to getting something if they get done early instead of being punished for being late. 

STR permitting could be a huge challenge depending on the market.