What do I check before buying a lot to build on?

The four that decide whether you can build your plan

• Zoning and setbacks. A sixty-foot lot with seven-and-a-half-foot sides changes the whole footprint, and no amount of design work recovers it.
• Utilities. Water, sewer and power at the street is a different budget from a well and a septic system, and septic capacity is tied to bedroom count.
• Soil. This is the one people skip.
• Flood zone, which drives both what you can build and what it costs to insure.

The surveys and the soil boring

Get a boundary survey and a topographic survey. The boundary tells you where the lot actually is, which is not always where the fence is; the topo tells you how water moves across it, which decides your fill and your drainage.

Then order a soil boring. A test that costs around a thousand dollars can find muck that adds tens of thousands in fill or piers, and it is the single cheapest way to avoid the worst surprise in custom building. If the boring comes back badly, you renegotiate or you walk, and either is better than discovering it after closing.

The costs that surprise people

• Impact fees. Ask the county directly what they are for your parcel and your house size before you budget. They are not trivial in Central Florida and they vary by jurisdiction.
• Plat restrictions or an old HOA that limits square footage, metal roofs or outbuildings, even where zoning would allow them.
• Clearing, fill and a long driveway, which are site costs and belong nowhere near a per-square-foot figure.

Protect yourself in the contract

1. 1Write a due diligence period into the purchase contract and make it long enough to get the surveys and the boring back.
2. 2Make the deposit refundable inside that period.
3. 3Confirm in writing what the seller knows about prior fill, prior structures and any easements.

Lot selection is where most custom builds quietly go over budget, well before anyone argues about tile. Once the lot is right, the next question is what a realistic build cost looks like, and the contractor side explains how I run a build from here.

Questions for the seller, in writing

• Has anything been built here before, and was it demolished with a permit?
• Has fill been brought in, and is there any documentation of it?
• Are there easements, and where do they run?
• Is there a current survey, a soil report or a percolation test?

Written answers matter because they become part of the record if something turns up later. A seller who does not know is a fine answer; a seller who will not put it in writing is information of a different kind.