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I don't have a college certificate on the topic. But, as I understand it, the business of single-family-residential real-estate development consists of several different paths.
(1) Buy a medium-sized lot; subdivide it into a few small lots; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses.
(2) Buy a large lot; subdivide it into many small lots, plus drainage features and new roads; give the new roads to the municipality; give the drainage features to a homeowners' association; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses (getting a bulk discount with the homebuilder either way).
Regarding options 1b and 2b, people tend to dislike my house designs. Regarding all four options, I do not have access to a small loan of one million dollars.
Nah, you can totally buy a single lot and contract the building (on spec) with reasonable margins -- my wife did it for quite a few years. You just need enough seed for the bank to write you the construction loan, and a real estate market that isn't actively dropping. (I think Florida is mostly OK ATM?)
In your case I would definitely include an architect in the budget (or just buy some blueprints from Jenish or something) -- it's not so much that your designs are terrible, it's just that they are pretty specific to your tastes. This will make your house hard to sell, but I'm pretty sure you could build one that isn't.
This doesn't make sense to me, though.
I can see why a consumer would want to take advantage of the economies of scale inherent in buying a speculative house in a large subdivision.
And I can see why a consumer would want to avoid the hassle of buying a medium-sized lot, subdividing out just the small piece that he wants to build on, and selling the rest of the lot back into the market.
But why would a consumer buy a developer's random spec house with no economies of scale and no subdivision, when he can just get a construction loan that converts into a mortgage all by himself? My own experience shows that getting a custom house built involves some hassle, but it isn't that much hassle (so far, at least), and it must be far outweighed by the comfort of having designed precisely to your preferences the home that you will inhabit for the next several decades.
Most people are afraid of it, and/or aren't competent to get it done themselves -- seems to me that you kind of like it (in a pig-wrestling way) and are certainly competent.
As you say it's not that much work; seems like a feasible hobby is all I'm saying.
General contractor margins tend to be in the 30%+ range for custom work (custom work is a PITA; I personally would want more!) -- if you come off as a pro doing a spec house and say "just get these plans done" they will build it for a lot less; the difference is your margin.
Check out Zillow on existing houses and go get a quote I guess?
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Almost $10MM now, using CPI adjustment.
Assuming you could solve the "small" problem of how capital-intensive this is, there's probably some class of people looking for custom houses where they have an off-the-shelf plan requiring modification / site-specific edits or something in mind and need someone to make plans and stamp them. I don't recall if you are/were a Civil PE, but I assume it would not be an automatic transfer to Gatorland SE anyway. Though I think their structural engineering recognition program is supposedly less onerous than some other states, excepting the hurricane/wind-loading note you already made. The prospective clients would presumably also be expecting you to handle most of the project management stuff too. But this is all starting to look like real work and not a retirement hobby at that point.
I technically am eligible to take the exam and obtain a professional engineer's license, but while I was employed I saw no reason to go through the process, since my employer offered no incentive for it. Previous discussion
(It was hilarious to see all the best employees constantly leaving for private employment in part due to this reason. Compare this recent announcement of special bonuses, and even special positions, for licensed employees at NYSDOT.)
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