CRE Development Site Selection — Multifamily Housing
Hi everyone — I am a young(ish) developer who works for a mid-sized, growing development firm in Indianapolis. To this point I have been mostly involved with execution of business originated by someone else.

I would be interested in any high-level recommendations for how to go about sourcing new sites. Certainly places like CREXi or LoopNet help, but more difficult is (of course) warming up a cold relationship with a seller or the AHJ.

For someone who is more naturally introverted — I would love help with the relationship part of the business. Principles to follow, what times of day you generally reach people via phone, things like that.

TIA!
[{"id": "h8vh919", "text": "I\u2019m not nor have I ever been a developer so take what I say with a grain of salt.\n\nI was helping a friend out last year who was looking for developments sites in a large MSA. I scraped all of the parcel info (zoning, last sale date, address, etc) from the city web site for literally ever parcel in the city.\n\nOnce I had all of the data, my strategy was pretty simple. I just screened for parcels with small businesses occupying them. Additionally, I screened for parcels that hadn\u2019t sold in a very long time that had either favorable zoning or large lot size in favorable location with zoning that might be able to be changed. This process also allowed me to hone in on potential OZ sites for him. \n\nThe idea was that he would then be able to reach out to businesses in person. His capital fell through and he never utilized my data, so I unfortunately cannot say how successful or unsuccessful he was.\n\nI would guess this is the type of strategy a lot of developers deploy.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]