^ Agreed. Land development is a very long-tailed process and very capital intensive. Your first two stages will likely have higher offsite costs (bringing services to your land) than total profit, speaking as someone in the industry. Your land equity will get you pretty far in the process if you own it outright.
To make land development work, you need relationships with many different experts. If the land has value, have any developers approached you? How near is it to new subdivisions? Contiguous? Or a couple quarter sections away? Quarter section is ~10 years to develop in low-density...depending on absorption in your area should give you some idea of value.
Rough-rough anticipate to spend $200,000 before any actual construction underway just on due diligence and professional fees for engineers and planners to achieve the NSP. Getting an engineer to estimate the offsite costs, should give you a good idea of initial development cost as well. Research on the city's website how they handle offsite expenditures...some cities require developers to share debt in a basin while others require a set assessment contribution + pay for any offsite you need. Massively different implications, total deal killers and will dictate when your land is feasible to develop. In Edmonton, there is a debt sharing system so paying $5 million up front to develop a hectare is a reality in areas with lot of infrastructure that has been installed by other developers (not a typo!).
What is land selling for an acre? Might be better money in that, just run the numbers.
