If you are used to selling property, the first thing that will surprise you is how little of this process involves a price. The price is agreed early and then spends a year being tested against things nobody knows yet.
Stage 1 — Screening (days to weeks)
Your parcel comes off a GIS screen for acreage and transmission proximity. A land agent calls. Nothing is committed on either side. What to say and not say →
Stage 2 — Option or LOI (2 to 8 weeks)
This is where most landowners sign their first binding document, and where most of the damage gets done.
Parcel control is secured before utility commitments — that is standard practice, and it is rational from the developer's side. They are not going to spend six figures on interconnection studies for land they might not get. But it means you are tying up your land before they have committed to anything.
Key terms: option payment amount, whether it credits against purchase price, option length, extension rights and their cost, and what happens to your land during diligence. Full breakdown →
Stage 3 — Diligence (6 to 18 months)
The long middle. Running roughly in parallel:
- Utility load study and interconnection. The critical path, almost always. Queue studies run 24 to 36 months in constrained markets. This is what the whole deal waits on.
- Phase I environmental, and Phase II if Phase I finds anything.
- Geotechnical — borings, soil, rock depth, bearing capacity.
- Survey and title. ALTA survey, boundary resolution, easement review.
- Wetlands delineation and FEMA flood confirmation.
- Zoning and entitlement, which may involve public hearings. Permitting runs six months to three years or more.
- Fiber route confirmation — two diverse paths.
Your land will have people and equipment on it during this. The agreement should say who, when, with what notice, and who restores any damage.
Stage 4 — Entitlement and approvals (variable)
If rezoning or a special use permit is needed, this is public. Your neighbours will find out. In a growing number of jurisdictions this is where projects die, not for technical reasons but political ones. Moratoriums are spreading.
Stage 5 — Closing (30 to 90 days)
Once the developer exercises, closing is relatively conventional. Title, survey, payoff of any liens, deed.
Where deals fall apart
- Power. The load study comes back and the capacity is not there, or the upgrade cost is prohibitive, or the timeline runs years past the project's requirement. Build.inc identifies insufficient available load or slow time to energize as the most likely cause of a failed deal.
- Entitlement. The county says no, or says yes with conditions that break the economics.
- Environmental. Phase I surfaces something. Wetlands come back larger than mapped.
- The developer's own circumstances. Their customer changes plans, their capital moves, their regional strategy shifts. This has nothing to do with your land and you will likely never learn the real reason.
A landowner should go in assuming the deal may not close. That assumption should shape the terms: option payments that are not fully credited, reasonable time limits, and compensation for the period your land was off the market.
What you should be doing meanwhile
- Keep your own counsel. A real property attorney in the state where the land sits, working for you.
- Keep paying attention to your own obligations — taxes, leases, insurance. An option does not suspend them.
- Understand the tax consequences before closing, not after. A large capital gain on land held for decades deserves a conversation with a CPA while there is still time to structure anything. A 1031 exchange has deadlines that start at closing.
- Do not spend it yet. Options expire.
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General description of transaction practice as of 2026. Not legal, tax or investment advice. Timelines vary widely by market and project.