It is important to understand the relative advantages a potential sites over other sites in the area, so here are some screening criteria for considering where to invest time and attention in a given city.

Where can you have the most impact while building a stable portfolio of income properties that will become more valuable with time, reinforcing their neighborhood? What projects present the best return on the inevitable brain damage and learning curve that doing this kind of work brings with it? What is the Return On Brain Damage (ROBD)? When it comes to picking sites and building types, Opportunity Cost is about trying to understand what else you could have done with your time, attention and other resources compared with committing to a particular piece of property. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp

To be extra clear, I personally don't want to spend a minute pursuing numbers 4 - 6 when there are opportunities for 1 - 3 .

Which kind of building in what kind of location?

1.  Single story commercial, 2 and 3 story rental walk up mixed use and apartment buildings in locations with reasonable rents, and potential for catalytic upside and/or flywheel effect for the neighborhood.
2.  Two and Three story rental walk-up mixed use and apartment buildings in locations with reasonable rents, but no catalytic upside or flywheel effect.
3. Small houses and atypical building types for rent on infill parcels close to food and drink and transit (bungalow courts of small rental units and live/works are appealing to me).
4. Small houses, rowhouses, and live-works for sale.
5. Houses for sale in locations where appraisers will look to conventional subdivisions for comparable sales.
6. Multifamily in sprawling locations typical for conventional Garden Apartments

Here is a list for sorting sites that meet the first criteria for catalytic upside and potential flywheel. 

• Look for sites with the following:
• Proximity to Food and Drink.
• Your proposed buildings and site plan can be built as of right, with no discretionary approvals.
• Discretionary approvals needed, but room to build a brand and reputation as the preferred developer/builder.
• Chances for actually fixing the street on the horizon; public investment in correcting the streets looks sure to likely.

Watch out for Potential Deal Killers:

• Site constraints; topo, utilities.
• Proximity to a horrible big wide fast arterial street (Stroad).
• Level of Administrative Contamination; Excessive Minimum Parking, Fire Code Appendix D adopted.

Maybe we should construct a matrix for ranking sites, building types and tenure by their potential return on brain damage.

Several people have told me that I really do need to get a new video up to cover a lot of the basics.  After a couple of awkward GoToMeeting sessions and some adventures with Google HangOut walking folks  through the basic back of the envelope pro forma ,I have to admit they are right.  Until such time as I can wade through the QuickTime tutorial and put a new video together, here are links to the content that we have been able to collect (largely because someone else was in charge of the production effort).

This podcast with Chuck Marohn of Strongtowns.org opens with the ritual greeting of two Minnesotans, 5 minutes of us talking about the weather.  From there is gets into how folks typically get started in real estate development.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/3/podcast-show-180-john-anderson.html

Will Pierce told me that this video The Dark Art of Developing Small Projects from the U of Miami's Masters in Real Estate Development + Urbanism was worth watching more than once since it covers the basic business model math of production homebuilding and the basics of land development and deal structures.  Will Pierce subsequently went to the Miami MRED+U program and landed a gig with Grass River Properties in Miami http://grassriverproperty.com/who-we-are/  If you are a rookie developer in in the Miami region, you should make a point ot meet Will Pierce and  Andrew Frey of  the Townhouse Center. http://townhousecenter.org/

U of Miami Video: https://vimeo.com/31441603

A friend recently asked me what policies I would put in place to address housing affordability?  This came up after an exchange of emails on the screwy way that folks calculate housing affordability as a percentage of gross income.  I think that is a good way to measure how much housing in sprawl costs, but it does not take into account things like the cost of transportation. For a more thorough exploration of this problem of lousy metrics I recommend the work of Scott Bernstein and the capable folks at the Center for Neighborhood Technology.  Their Housing+Transportation Index is particularly good.  http://www.cnt.org/tcd/projects/ht/

So what policies would I put in place to solve a problem that is poorly defined and badly measured?

Zero. If the game is rigged, why would the score matter?

What policies would I put in place to reform the culture of building?  That's actually a question I would rather answer, (even though nobody asked it.) Here's a list of those reforms with the likely level of authority needed to implement each measure in parentheses:

• Eliminate off-street parking minimums. (Local)

• Up-zone any parcel that is limited to one dwelling unit to four units plus 35% of conditioned space as workspace as of right.  I think spending time and calories fighting to get ADU's as-or-right is a waste of resources.  The goal is too timid, a half measure that will bring out all the same NIMBY's anyway with a fraction of the benefit. (Local)

• Revise the FHA, FAnnie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage underwriting requirements for 30 year loans to reflect the 4 unit/35% workspace frame.

• Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. It is a moral hazard. (Federal)

• Get municipal building departments out of the business of issuing building permits for buildings for which they bear no liability. (State)

• Open the licensing of Architects to anyone with a contractor's license or with four years experience in a skilled trade, who can pass the exam. (State)

• Eliminate the upfront fees charged for new construction or renovation work by utility companies, public or private.  They can roll the cost of their administrative, engineering, and inspection staff into the operating budgets approved by each state's utility commission and recovered through the rates they are allowed to charge. (State)

• Get the SEC to complete the Rules for crowd sourced investments in real estate for non-accredited investors (Federal)

• Pitch John Oliver on a piece pointing out how ridiculous it is to believe that anyone is entitled to stable or  ever-increasing  real estate value. (some guy who knows John Oliver's producer)