Land Assembly in Victoria BC

Should You Sell If a Developer Approaches You?

Not automatically. An unsolicited offer is information, not a valuation. It tells you a developer sees potential in the area. It does not tell you what the land is worth as part of an assembly, whether your neighbours have been approached, or what the site would support once the planning work is done.

Before answering, it is worth knowing the property's value as it stands, its likely value inside an assembly, what the municipality has signalled for the area, and whether the neighbours are interested at all. An owner who answers the first offer without those four things is negotiating blind.

How Do You Know If Your Lot Has Assembly Potential?

The factors that matter most are location relative to transit and village centres, the configuration of the neighbouring lots, what the municipality has designated for the area in its Official Community Plan and Local Area Plan, and whether the site can be serviced.

A corner lot, a wide frontage, a flat site, and neighbours with the same zoning all help. Protected trees, a watercourse, steep topography, limited servicing capacity, or a covenant on title all work against it. None of this can be settled from a map. A municipal pre application meeting is what confirms what a specific property will support.

What Goes Wrong in a Land Assembly?

Four things, in roughly this order of frequency.

A neighbour changes their mind partway through, and the site falls apart. Owners price their own lot against recent house sales on the street rather than against what the finished development is worth, so the group asks for the wrong number. A developer ties the land up under a long subject period or an option to purchase, with nothing non refundable behind it, and the owners carry the risk while financing or rezoning is sorted out. Or the title turns out to carry a covenant or building scheme that overrides the zoning, which nobody checked at the start.

All four are avoidable. None of them are obvious at the time.

How Dallas King Handles a Land Assembly

1. Confirm what the land is actually allowed to hold. Zoning, Official Community Plan designation, Local Area Plan designation, servicing, and whether the site sits inside a Transit Oriented Area. What the legislation permits in general is not the same as what a particular lot will support, so this stage ends at the municipality rather than at an assumption.
2. Read the title before anything else. A restrictive covenant or a building scheme registered on title can override what the zoning allows. This is the step most owners skip.
3. Work out what it costs to build, not only what is permitted. Twenty years in the trades before he was licensed means construction cost is first hand knowledge rather than a referral to somebody else. An entitlement that does not pencil out is not an opportunity.
4. Talk to the neighbours, in the right order, at the right time. An assembly needs several owners holding the same line on price and timing. Approaching them badly is usually what ends it.
5. Take it to developers as a package. A builder ready parcel with the planning work already done is a different proposition from three separate houses for sale on the same street.
6. Structure the contract so the land cannot be tied up for free. Long subject periods and options to purchase are normal in this business. Non refundable deposits and firm expiry dates are what keep an owner from carrying a developer's risk.

Land assembly work is numbers heavy and there are not many agents doing it in Greater Victoria. Dallas King is licensed with RE/MAX Generation and works across all thirteen Greater Victoria municipalities.