Successful developments tend to share the same handful of habits. None of them are complicated, and all of them happen before a bulldozer arrives.
Survey, geotechnical borings, utility research, and a zoning review cost a fraction of one percent of a project budget. They are the only reliable way to know whether the yield in your pro forma is achievable. Buying land on an assumption about sewer capacity is the most expensive shortcut in this business.
If the site plan is finished before anyone studies the grading, the grading will be expensive. Balancing cut and fill, setting building pads to work with the natural contours, and locating detention where water already wants to go are decisions made in the first two weeks or not at all.
Detention, water quality treatment, and outfall capacity consume real acreage. Sites that reserve that space up front keep their unit counts. Sites that leave it for later lose lots or absorb an underground system nobody budgeted for.
A pre-application meeting with the city, county, or utility district costs an hour and routinely saves a full review cycle. Reviewers will tell you what they want to see. It is worth asking.
Infrastructure that serves five phases does not have to be built for five phases on day one, but it does have to be designed that way. Sizing the trunk lines, the road sections, and the basins for the full build-out while constructing only phase one keeps the later phases from re-engineering the earlier ones.
Projects that follow these five hold their schedules. Projects that skip them spend the savings twice over in change orders.