Welcome to Land Development 101. Everything you need to know about land development.

So if you're looking to be a real estate developer yourself, or if you want to work with a big home builder, or if this is
something that just piques your interest and you simply just want to learn more, this is the place for you. Here we're
going to talk about what land development is. We're going to go through the basics. We're going to talk about tips and
tricks, what to look out for. It's going to be a lot of good things here.

introduction to land development.

So what is land development?

Land development is the process of converting raw land into construction-ready property.
It's all the improvements that need to happen before houses can be built on it.
So what are the trades that make up land development? Well, there's your core nine right there.
The first one out of the gate being rough grading, and then wet utilities, dry utilities, street improvements, walls,
fencing, finish grading, flat work, and landscaping.

1.ROUGH GRADING. - That's the process of shaping the site.

You're leveling the ground and creating specific slopes, and you're providing proper drainage in order to direct
stormwater run off away from the site, which is always a big deal.
Now, when you buy raw property, a lot of times it's going to be very uneven.
You're going to have a lot of hills and a lot of slopes and topography everywhere.
And so the rough grader is going to go through and he's going to basically be moving a lot of dirt around.
He's going to be cutting dirt down or even building it up to get these nice, flat-level pads to build houses on that you can
see there in the picture on the right.

2. WET UTILITIES. That's your installation of pipe for sewer, storm drain, and water.
Now, the picture there on the left shows PVC for sewer.
PVC, that's the most common material that we use for sewer and water.
And storm drain right there in the middle, we typically use reinforced concrete pipe or RCP.
Now, of course, there's other materials such as vitrified clay pipe or VCP as shown there on the right.
There's also HDPE and ductile iron.

3. DRY UTILITIES, that's the installation of conduit or pipe for the electricity, as well as telecommunications, such as TV,
telephone, and internet and gas.

4. STREET IMPROVEMENTS.
Your curb and gutter installation as well as asphalt paving.
The street improvements also includes your street signage and your striping.

5. WALLS.
Now, the main type of wall that we use is CMU or concrete masonry unit.
And I'm sure you've all seen this when you're driving through neighborhoods.
The picture there on the left, that's a masonry he's constructing the wall with CMU.
And another type of wall that's used or can be used is MSE or mechanically stabilized earth walls.
And what that is, that's a structural retaining wall that's meant to hold up just a massive amount of earth.
So if you look at the picture on the right, that's a type of MSE wall.
But you can just see how massive that hill is that that wall needs to hold up.
And the nice thing about those are those are plantable.
So over time, it's going to have some nice greenery hanging over it.
So it's not, you're not just looking at these nasty tall ugly tan walls.
So, going back to the CMU walls, there's mainly two different types of things that we use it for.
When you see a MU wall just for a typical freestanding wall, you can also use it for a structural retaining wall.
Right there in the middle, you can see that that's going to be a retaining wall.
All that reinforcement and steel that goes in there, that's what's inside the CMU walls.
But you can even just see that that drop off on the left, that wall, in that picture, that's going to be the earth that the
wall is going to be holding up,
thus called a retaining wall.
You can also have combo walls, which is basically a freestanding wall sitting on top of retaining walls.
Number six is fencing.
The different types of fencing you can use is vinyl, tube steel, view walls, or wood.
The main types that are used is vinyl.
And of course, view walls, you can see it there on the left.
If you have houses that overlook some really cool scenery and you want, obviously the homeowners to see it, you would
use view walls.
There's also tube steel right there in the middle.
And number seven is finish grading.
That's the final elevation and contour of the ground.
It's the final shaping of the lot.
Typically, the finish graders are removing or adding anywhere from one to two inches of the existing grade, sometimes
even more.
It's also the preparation for landscaping and flat work.
Now, this is so important because from the time the rough grader goes in, to the time you're actually ready to start
building houses,
there's actually a lot of time that's passed by and there's a lot of trade that have gone through and have done their
installation of their own particular work.
And so what happens there is just a lot of dirt gets kicked around and unfortunately your site doesn't always necessarily
match what the rough grader left it as.
So that's where the finished grader comes in and we'll really just clean it up and make it nice and get it back to the
precise grade.
You can see in these two pictures here, this is kind of like a before and after.
The one on the left shows a basin right after the rough grader graded it.
And then on the right there, that's what it looks like after the what utilities guy went in there and installed his structures
and his pipe.
You can just see how much more dirt is just, the amounts of dirt are there.
And so the finished grader is going in there and really cleaning that up.
Number eight is flat work.
It's your concrete work for driveways, porches, patios, walkways and concrete stoops.
So there on the right you can see the flat work guys are installing our flat work for the models.
So they formed it, they poured concrete and now what these two guys are doing right there, they're holding a what you
call the screed board and they're screeding the concrete.
Basically just getting it nice and level and they're moving the concrete around to make that look good.
Number nine is landscaping.
It's basically all the planting you see of shrubs, trees as well as ground cover including DG, mulch, rock, sod, etc.
And they also install irrigation.
And in addition to just planting and irrigation, they also install a lot of the amenities that you see around in your
neighborhoods,
including playground equipment, park benches, monuments, furniture, overhead trellises, etc.
You can see right there in the middle, you've got a playground equipment right there, one of the tracks.
And landscaping is so important because this is basically the final tray that gets in there and it's really what makes your
property look good.
So when you obviously you're looking to sell your homes and you got potential buyers driving through the
neighborhood,
it's the landscaping that's really going to complement the homes and really it's going to be what's going to sell it.
So that's land development, that's the basics and a nutshell.
I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions or comments whatsoever, please leave it below.
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If you want to learn more, please visit our website at landdevelopment101.com.