Planning your community

“Now entering Harrietta, A zoned community.” In driving to a wedding last weekend I passed through this quaint town and saw this sign at the city limits. Working in a development company and growing up in the real estate business, Zoning is something that I have been very familiar with. I can’t count the amount of times I have heard, Unless we can get the zoning needed, we will not be able to purchase this property. From a purely profit standpoint, the zoning can have one of the greatest impacts on the value of a piece of property. Even with Location, location, location, being the mantra of real estate investors, if you have a prime corner, and the only thing you can put on it is a single family home, the piece of property is only going to be worth 25% of what the house will sell for completed. Had this piece been zoned commercial, you could sell it in some cases for hundred’s of thousands more.
I had the opportunity to attend a workshop last week with many of the local officials on planning and zoning boards from Ingham and Eaton counties. This was a three hour workshop on the basics of planning and zoning from the government side of the business. Forsberg for the most part has had excellent experiences working with many of the local municipalities and has built many projects that have been win-win for the different communities, and for our company. Occasionally there have been some head-butting, but in the end things have always worked out. Seeing how zoning is put in place gave a little bit different perspective to how our communities work.
When you see a sign on a town that states it is a zoned or planned community, most likely it has had a Comprehensive Plan or sometimes known as a Master Plan put in place. This is an official document that is authorized under Michigan law. It has many components, and in many ways, could be looked at as the business plan for a community. If you really want to see where your community is heading in the next 10 to 20 years, this is the document to look at. It will tell you what the community planners are expecting for the municipality. According to the Michigan Association of Planning, the compnents of a Comprehensive Plan is as follows; a Transportation Plan, Housing Plan, Land Use Plan, Recreation Plan, Facilities Plan, and Sub Areas Plan. I will go into detail on these sections in later posts. Interacting with the officials, and learning what they do about putting these documents together was a great experience. If you are interested in real estate investing, this is a good document to look at to see what types of investments that a particular municipality is looking for. Talk to the planners about what they want to see for growth, or rehabilitation in their communities. For more information on the Michigan Association of Planning please go to www.planningmi.org . Have a great holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving

I apologize for not posting in the last week, but I have been out with a severe cold. I will try to post the recap of the Michigan association of planning meeting that I went to last week. Being on the development side of the business, it was very interesting sitting in a class that was designed for governemnt officials on how to design a master plan for a community. I will also have the podcast up of my interview with a first time home investor by Monday next week. I am really excited with these upcoming stories for the week and I hope you find them interesting and educational. If you have any topics that you want covered, please email me at brent@lansingrealestate.com, or post a comment. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

Learn how land planning and Development is done

As development and land use become an ever more heated topic in the United States, many people have questions as to how different decisions are made. Ingham county residents will have a chance to take a workshop to learn how planning and zoning works. This would be an excellent class for anyone interest in learning about board procedures, or just curious about getting involved in our region with development issues. The workshop is being put on by Ingham Economic Development Corporation. This group is dedicated to helping communities and businesses develop through education and links to local, state, and federal funding and other services. I am looking forward to attending this seminar to learn more about the process. The cost of $35 seems more than fair for this course. Here is the Link for Ingham Economic Development if you would like to learn more about them, www.ingham.org/DV/developm.htm . To register for this course, you can contact Susan at spigg@ingham.org or find out more at Lansing area events under the lecture and Seminar section. As always, with any question, or comments, please email me brent@lansingrealestate.com