Home Builders Guide: Finding Suitable Build Sites Using Acres

Site selection for new housing development projects can quickly become time consuming when you're jumping between mapping platforms and government websites to find all the data you need. For larger teams, this can make it difficult to create consistent processes and future proof your business.

Acres.com streamlines site selection by bringing together national and local datasets into one powerful platform, whether you're using maps from our nearly endless layer library or dropping in critical local data—like zoning or utilities—for instant visualization and team access.

Contents

Setting Site Selection Criteria

Finding Off-Market Opportunities

Research Market Activity 

Setting Site Selection Criteria

Site selection is where the lengthy research and miscommunication can start. Knowing where to begin and setting clear site selection criteria for your team will set the tone for a smooth and successful project. 

When creating a site selection process, builders need to:

• Consider regional factors such as easements, schools, environmental risks, and more.
• Learn zoning laws and restrictions.
• Determine lease and build costs.
• Establish the scale and size of the project.
• Decide on the type of housing for your project. 

Acres’ Layer Library streamlines site selection by bringing all the maps you need into one place and providing team access so you can easily standardize site selection criteria. 

While Acres has hundreds of built-in mapping layers to use, land professionals have the ability to import and instantly visualize the local datasets you need.

By importing local datasets—such as zoning, utilities, and school districts—into Acres and seamlessly combining them with essential national datasets, you can complete your site search in minutes instead of days.

Key features include:

• Upload local data to pinpoint areas that match zoning codes or desirable features for your development, like specific school zones
• Determine building suitability with insights like soil types, elevation, and flood zones.
• Overlay dozens of datasets to quickly find suitable build sites and off market opportunities.

Finding Off-Market Opportunities

By building lead lists, you can:

• Identify and connect with other landowners in the area.
• Target specific areas and limit your research to the location of interest.
• Create and draw custom boundary lines.
• Save your research into one list and share it amongst a team.
• Broaden your search beyond just listings and foreclosures.

Lead lists can be generated using precise searches for parcel owners, major land buyers, land use, parcel type, and custom shapes or layers.

By utilizing this tool, you can access and save off-market information such as names and addresses of landowners to create outreach lists. 

Case Study: Building Lead Lists With Opportunity Zones

Ben Maddox, Acres’ SVP of Business Development, demonstrated this feature by identifying an Opportunity Zone, exporting the landowners within it, and creating a lead list for outreach (03:55). 

Research Market Activity

In addition to more material site selection criteria, establishing a process for market and competitive research will help you find the most profitable build sites fast.

Acres provides a centralized platform to track market activity, including listings, mortgage data, sales trends, and areas of residential growth.

Acres offers the most current national population growth data available as of 2023, enabling seamless and instant tracking of residential growth trends.

This powerful tool gives home builders and developers the ability to monitor competitors by identifying buyers and their locations, providing a competitive edge and revealing valuable opportunities.

Key features include:

• Access mortgage data for lender and borrower details.
• Look up parcel and mortgage data by ownership to see where your competitors are buying land.
• Analyze parcels owned by top buyers to understand their acquisition patterns.
• Track updated sales data and spot areas of emerging growth.
• See landowner information to connect with buyers.
• Compare land that sells quickly with land that lingers on the market.
• By consolidating this wealth of data, Acres empowers users to stay ahead of market trends and make informed decisions with confidence. 

Final Thoughts

With tools that can take your research from weeks and months to hours and days, Acres helps you and your team: 

• Bring all the maps you need into one platform to standardize site selection criteria.
• Uncover off-market opportunities ahead of your competitors.
• Streamline market and competitor research to support informed decision making.