One of the main components to a real estate deal is how to analyze a deal and how to know a good deal from a bad deal ( make your money on the buy).

@Greg R.Cash flow is an essential component in real estate investing.

Hopefully this helps, feel free to DM me or reply back on this thread if you have any more follow up questions.Hey i bought my first house in 79 in Milpitas  It was a Shapell new construction on 1143 Arizona Ave right behind the high school.. paid 80k for it.. this massive appreciation is  a  major component of many Bay Area and West coast folks success's I know it is for me.I bought a house in Palo Alto for 185kk and so on and so forth.And there are many cities out in the mid west or East rust belt where homes are selling for less than they sold for in the 80s  west coast gentrifies and values rise.. other areas become over run with rentals and values regress or stagnate.. 

I'm honestly scared of the middle man component.

I could be wrong about this, but if I recall correctly, it had been "done" for an investor / flipper who found out only after the project was "done" that actually, lots of crucial work on major components (I think chimney was one of them) had not been done at all!

The 120 acres you are buying, and the phased development plans with truck stop, etc... you have covered all the bases for zoning, permits, environmental assessment, etc.?

But a particular city within the county has experienced significantly higher rent growth than other similar cities in counties with growing populations but stagnant rents for the past 20 years (an extremely common trend in the midwest, prob not columbus though).Then there's the "that city's population declined 10%", but further investigation shows an environmental crisis caused 10% of the housing supply to be deemed uninhabitable in the area... causing a population to decrease, but a massive surge in rental demand and market rents, but not an increase in value because investors see a surface level statistic without truly understanding the market dynamics, or looking at direct indicators of an asset's performance (rental demand) instead of indirect indicators (population growth).That last situation has actually happened to me, and I managed to grab over 60 small MFR buildings at  15-20 caps over about 2 years and sell them at 10 caps.

In your case though, there seems to be a big lifestyle component so you need to bear that in mind.Lucky you to live in beautiful Atlanta!

I would start with an environmental engineering company to see what their thoughts are.  

Even on small projects you could have to deal with the Army Corp of Engineers, and various environmental agencies.