Financing Major Development

Scenario as follows :

Friend has piece of development zoned land worth about €1m, however, we are contemplating joint venturing and actually going ahead and building about 30 houses on it. How might we look to finance this ?

One option we discussed was that we'd set up a company and the company will buy the land from him, but not pay any cash yet, simply defer the payment until we are finished the building. Could we then mortgage the land in the company name to finance the intial build of 5-10 houses ?

What other options exist ?

At where the irish property market is at in the cycle advise you approach the development projects very carefully particularly as you do not appear experienced in this. Given the price it looks like it is well outside major suburban centres which increases the risk profile further.

IMO best to get a few auctioneers to look at it and test what price you would get for it. If builders really want it they will pay you a good price for it, ideally bidding against each other- remember you will be very lucky to make 50% of what an experienced developer will make out the major development. They would access to alot cheaper finance than you not to mind actually designing , sourcing, building, marketing and selling.

How could it be only worth 1 million if you can put 30 houses on it?