Don’t sell your land to a developer. Hire one on your side.
When a developer offers to buy your property, they are pricing it to raw land and keeping the entitlement, construction, and lease-up profit. I am a commercial broker with real development experience — so I can value your site the way a developer does, and negotiate to keep more of that upside with you.
A direct sale to a developer prices you at rung one. Knowing the whole ladder — and having someone who can navigate entitlement, contract composition, environmental review, GC selection, and lease-up — is how you sell closer to what your land can actually become.
Truly A-to-Z
Most brokers stop at the raw-land comp. I can speak to — and negotiate around — every stage that moves value: acquisition, zoning & entitlement, contract composition, environmental (Phase I/II), general-contractor selection, construction, certificate-of-occupancy value, lease-up, and stabilized value. That is the difference between listing your dirt and pricing your opportunity.
How it works
Got an offer — or think you might? Start here.
Tell me about the property (address, size, zoning) and any offer on the table. I’ll come back with a real value ladder and a straight read on whether to sell, entitle first, or hold. Free, and I represent you.
Justin Crow is a Florida-licensed commercial real estate broker with Mattis Advisors and hands-on development experience. Nothing here is an appraisal or legal advice.
Frequently asked
Why use a broker instead of selling straight to the developer who approached me?
A developer who approaches you directly is on the other side of the table — their offer is built to capture the development profit for them. A broker with development experience represents you: I can price your site to its entitled and developed potential, run a competitive process so buyers compete, and structure the deal (participation, earnout, or entitle-then-sell) so more of the upside stays with you.
What does A-to-Z development expertise actually mean?
It means I can speak to every stage that drives your land’s value: acquisition, zoning and entitlement, contract composition, environmental (Phase I/II), general-contractor selection and construction, certificate-of-occupancy value, lease-up, and stabilized value. Most brokers stop at the raw-land comp. Understanding the full ladder is what lets me price and negotiate for the value your site can reach, not just what it is today.
Do you buy properties yourself?
My role here is to represent you as the seller or the buyer — not to compete with you as a principal. That alignment is the point: a developer’s offer serves the developer; my job is your outcome.
What kinds of sites is this for?
Underused or infill land, obsolete buildings on valuable land (tired retail, dark big-box, older industrial), teardown and redevelopment parcels, assemblage opportunities, and any owner who has received — or expects — an unsolicited offer from a developer across Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach.
Should I get my property entitled before selling it?
It depends on time, money and appetite for risk. Entitling removes the buyer's uncertainty and captures the value step for the seller, but it costs real money over a long period and can fail at a public hearing. Selling as-is is fast and certain but hands the increment to the buyer. A contract with a long feasibility period is often the middle path: the developer pursues approvals at their cost while the owner keeps title.
What is the difference between zoning and future land use?
Zoning is the current rule governing what may be built. The future land-use designation in the comprehensive plan sets the outer envelope of what the jurisdiction contemplates for that parcel. Where zoning sits below the land-use designation, a rezoning may unlock additional value, and whoever establishes it captures it.
Should adjacent owners sell their parcels together?
Often yes, and often for materially more than the sum of individual sales, because an assembled site can support a project no single parcel can. It requires coordination and an agreement on how proceeds are split before anyone talks to a buyer. Selling individually into an assembly a developer is quietly building is usually the worst outcome for every owner involved.
Four in ten commercial parcels are worth more empty than built
The most expensive assumption an owner can make is that they are selling a building. Frequently they are selling the ground it sits on, and the building is a depreciating structure that happens to be in the way.
County assessments split every parcel's value into land and improvement. Across the tri-county commercial parcels where both are recorded — 50,986 of them — the land is assessed higher than the building on 20,987. That is 41%. On 13,921 the land is worth at least twice the improvement. And 15,113 of those land-heavy parcels carry a building put up before 1985.
| Tri-county commercial parcels | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Land assessed above the improvement | 20,987 | 41.2% |
| Land at 2× the improvement or more | 13,921 | 27.3% |
| Land above improvement, built before 1985 | 15,113 | 29.6% |
Parcels with a structure and both a land and an improvement value on the county roll, August 2026. n = 50,986. Median land share of total assessed value: 41.7%.
One caution, and it matters. The three county appraisers do not allocate value between land and improvement the same way — the share of parcels where land leads runs from about 10% in Broward to over 70% in Miami-Dade, and a gap that wide is telling you as much about assessment practice as about economics. So do not read your own parcel's split as an answer. Read it as a reason to ask the question properly, with comparable land sales rather than an assessor's allocation.
The pattern underneath it is real regardless. An old, low-density building on a parcel that zoning would now allow far more of is the most common form of trapped value in South Florida, and the owner is usually the last person to find out.
Why the unsolicited offer is almost never the number
Here is how it normally starts. A letter arrives, or somebody knocks, and the number is well above what you thought the building was worth. It feels like a windfall. It is being priced by someone who has already done the work you have not.
A developer approaching you directly has run the density, checked the land-use designation, priced the entitlement risk and modelled the residual — what the finished project supports, minus construction, minus their profit, equals what they can pay for the dirt. Their offer sits comfortably below that ceiling, because there is no competition in the room and no reason for it to sit anywhere else.
The offer is not dishonest. It is simply the price of a negotiation with one participant. What changes it is not haggling; it is a second developer with the same analysis, and a third. I have watched sites move a long way once the seller stopped responding to an offer and started running a process.
The residual land value calculator will walk you through the arithmetic the buyer is doing. It is worth an hour before you answer anyone.
What actually sets what a site is worth
Density, and what is permitted rather than what exists
Units per acre, floor-area ratio, height limit, setbacks and parking requirements determine how much building the parcel supports. Every one of those is a lever on the price, and several are negotiable through the entitlement process rather than fixed. A site is worth what can be built on it, not what stands on it.
The gap between land-use designation and zoning
These are two different things and owners routinely conflate them. The comprehensive plan's future land-use designation sets the outer envelope; zoning is the current rule. Where zoning sits below what the land-use map allows, there is value available through a rezoning — and that value belongs to whoever captures it. Sell before it is established and the buyer captures it. That is frequently the single largest number in the whole transaction.
Concurrency, utilities and the things that quietly kill a site
Water and sewer capacity, traffic concurrency, drainage, wetlands, easements, and whether the parcel can achieve the access a project needs. A site that cannot get a left turn in is a different asset from the one next door. These are knowable in advance, and finding them yourself is far better than having a buyer find them during due diligence and reprice.
Assembly
Your parcel alone may be marginal while your parcel plus the two next to it is a project. Assembly value is real and it is the reason developers approach quietly — a neighbour who learns what is happening becomes an expensive neighbour. If your site is part of a plausible assembly, that changes both the strategy and who you should be talking to.
Entitle first, or sell as-is?
This is the real decision, and there is no general answer — only a calculation.
Selling as-is is fast, certain, and cheap to execute. The buyer takes the entitlement risk and prices for it, which means you are handing over the increment that the approvals would have created. For an owner who wants out, or who has no appetite for a two-year process with a public hearing at the end, that is an entirely reasonable trade.
Entitling first means carrying the cost and the risk — planners, engineers, traffic studies, legal, hearings, time — in exchange for selling a site with the uncertainty removed. When it works the value step is substantial, because you have converted a maybe into a permitted project. When it fails you have spent real money and the site is worth what it was before, minus what you spent.
The structures in between are where most of these land. A contract with a long feasibility period lets the developer pursue approvals at their cost while you keep title, with the price adjusting to what they achieve. A joint venture keeps you in for a share of the finished value. A land lease keeps the asset in the family and turns it into income. Each shifts risk and reward differently and each is negotiable.
Which one fits depends on your timeline, your tolerance for a process that can genuinely fail, and what you need the money for. That is the conversation worth having before you pick a path, and the owner goal planner is a reasonable place to start it on your own.
I am a broker, not a land-use attorney, a planner or an engineer. On any entitlement path you want all three, and the good ones early. My part is what the site is worth under each scenario and how to run the market so more than one buyer is competing for it.
Questions owners ask about land and development sites
How do I know if my property is worth more as a redevelopment site?
Start with the county's split between land and improvement value, then check the parcel's zoning and future land-use designation against what is actually built on it. Across the tri-county commercial roll, land is assessed above the improvement on about 41% of parcels, and on 27% it is worth at least double. But the three counties allocate that split differently, so treat your own as a prompt rather than a conclusion and confirm it against comparable land sales.
A developer offered to buy my property. Should I take it?
Not before you know what a second developer would pay. An unsolicited offer is priced by someone who has already run the density and the residual, and it is made in a negotiation with one participant. Getting a competing analysis and, ideally, a competing bid is what moves the number — not negotiating harder against a single buyer.
Should I get the property entitled before selling it?
It depends on time, money and appetite for risk. Entitling removes the buyer's uncertainty and captures the value step for you, but it costs real money over a long period and it can fail at a public hearing. Selling as-is is fast and certain but hands the increment to the buyer. A contract with a long feasibility period is often the middle path: the developer pursues approvals at their cost while you keep title.
What is the difference between zoning and land use?
Zoning is the current rule governing what you may build. The future land-use designation in the comprehensive plan sets the outer envelope of what the jurisdiction contemplates for that parcel. Where zoning sits below the land-use designation, a rezoning may unlock additional value — and whoever establishes it captures it, which is why the sequence matters more than most owners expect.
My neighbours and I all own adjacent parcels. Should we sell together?
Often yes, and often for materially more than the sum of the individual sales, because an assembled site can support a project that no single parcel can. It requires coordination and an agreement among owners about how proceeds are split before anyone talks to a buyer. Selling individually into an assembly a developer is quietly building is usually the worst outcome for everyone except the developer.
What does it cost to have you represent me on a land sale?
A listing engagement is paid through the transaction commission at closing, not out of pocket. The initial conversation about what the site is worth under different scenarios is free, and there is no obligation to list anything after it.
