Plus its not that easy.. the business has to qualify and real estate generally does NOT.. not enough employees  I looked at this heavy about 10 years ago.. unless the regs have changed dramatically.. it was a non starter for developers of real estate.

Anyone have experience developing say 3 units on a lot?

I have a good amount of experience with development locally and if you are buying mostly land then I could see how a title search(along with zoning, utilities, ect.) might be more important with tax deeds than an existing SFR. 

While we are still developing our business model, we intend to focus on buy and hold properties in the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida markets.

We currently own a new house that was built before we moved in, and it is in a developing neighborhood, we are going to rent that house out then move into the house we just bought and do a live-in-flip and possibly sell or rent after two years to avoid the capital gains tax on the profits.Our goal is to get as much stuff done to the house as we can before we actually move in because we have two small children and it will be rough trying to live in construction zone with these two crazy babies.So, so far we have taken out the whole kitchen, removed ugly tile in the living room and two bathrooms, and started demoing the laundry closet.

In rare cases, I suppose a vast shift in the market like a substantial "pathway to progress" or neighborhood development could greatly improve a property's status.  

Before you develop a strategy it would be good to look at what your market is doing.

Peachtree Corners is very nice, a lot of high end commercial development in the area and the proximity to downtown Norcross is really convenient as far as value for location. 

It's come a long way and it's still coming.Once you factor in local external influencers as well such as the Chula Vista Bayfront development (which is actually making good progress in the approval process),  I would argue that IB will only grow in demand. 

We work with a few institutional developers building in Walla Walla, Tri Cities, Boise ID, Bend OR etc. and frequently get called on to help out with this sort of thing.