Site Acquisition

Every development project makes its most permanent decision first: what was paid for the land. Budgets get value-engineered and exits get repriced, but basis is forever. Site acquisition sets that number, usually under a seller's deadline with diligence incomplete; the financing's job is certainty on that calendar without urgency writing checks the project cannot cash.

Most acquisition files here run between $3 million and $7 million, one of our core transaction ranges, from infill lots to community-scale positions.

What defines this stage

The project exists on paper and in a purchase contract, sometimes with entitlements, sometimes nothing but zoning and intent. Income is zero, carry begins at closing, and the currencies are speed and certainty: a seller prices the probability of your closing as much as the number on it. The stage ends at title transfer; everything after belongs to entitlements and predevelopment.

The capital questions at this stage

How much leverage can land carry, sized conservatively because land produces nothing while it waits, with entitlement status moving the answer. What closes fastest without skipping the diligence protecting the basis; title, survey, environmental, and feasibility are compressible, not skippable. Whether the seller is part of the stack: a carryback can bridge gaps, subject to senior consent and honest subordination. And whether the acquisition is financed alone or as the first phase of a continuous plan.

Programs that fit this stage

Bridge acquisition financing serves the classic case: real deadline, sound site, permanent plans still forming. Land and predevelopment financing fits where the hold through entitlements is the plan, funding acquisition and the soft costs after it. Where plans, budget, and team are advanced, acquisition, development, and construction financing carries the project from closing through vertical work: fewer closings, fewer gaps, more diligence up front.

What to prepare before entitlements and predevelopment

Leave this stage with more than a deed: a written entitlement strategy (approvals, sequence, political realities), consultants identified, a predevelopment budget with honest carry, and a first-draft capital plan. Sponsors who close with that package move through the next stage on schedule; those who close with only enthusiasm fund the difference in carry.

Where files get difficult at this stage

The failure patterns are old ones. Unentitled land priced as if approvals were certain, so the basis needs a perfect outcome. Diligence compressed past protection; the environmental surprise found after closing costs multiples of the report. Closing calendars that force capital decisions before the capital plan exists.

And equity so committed to the land that nothing remains for the entitlement years. Each is avoidable with the same discipline: buy the site the numbers support, not the one the deadline demands.