California multifamily developer guides
Site Selection & Development Due Diligence
The pre-LOI screens that keep a California multifamily deal out of trouble: verifying zoning and entitlement paths, using housing-element sites data and builder's-remedy status, screening overlays and hazards (coastal, historic, fire, flood), and diligencing title covenants and existing tenancies.
The zoning and entitlement audit: what to verify before the LOI
Roughly 540 California city and county codes say what a site can hold — the audit turns the right one into a path, a timeline and a price before the LOI is signed.
Read the guide →Housing-element sites and builder's-remedy status: reading a city's cards
The sites inventory is a list of parcels the city has already told the state can hold housing — and HCD's compliance status tells you how much leverage rides along.
Read the guide →Overlay and hazard screening: the maps that reprice a site
Seven maps decide whether a site's price is right: two can change the entitlement path itself, and the other five bill you in consultants, construction and insurance.
Read the guide →Title, tenancy and covenant diligence: the paper that binds the dirt
Zoning tells you what the city allows; the recorded documents and the rent roll tell you what the dirt has already promised someone else.
Read the guide →More developer guides
- Density Bonus & Zoning Incentives
- Entitlements & Streamlined Approvals
- Rent Control & Tenant Protections
- Demolition, Replacement Housing & Relocation
- Impact Fees, Exactions & Special Taxes
- CEQA & Environmental Review
- Affordable Housing Finance: LIHTC, Bonds & Rental Subsidies
- Building Codes & Construction Standards
- Subdivision, Condo Maps & Development Agreements
Every rule cited in these guides links to the verbatim statute or regulation in the California Code Library and the federal housing-law library.
Apply these rules to a real parcel
Ask the AI how site selection & diligence play out in a specific city or county — grounded in the code text.