Site Selection: The 10 Factors That Matter Most

Every development begins with dirt. Before the financing, before the architecture, before the community meetings, there is a piece of land and a question: is this the right site?

I have evaluated sites from two very different chairs. As Chairman of the Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee on the Kansas City City Council from 2003 to 2007, I presided over the largest economic development boom in the city's history, directly impacting over $10 billion in development. I saw every kind of project come before the committee. I learned what made sites work and what made them fail. Later, as Vice Chairman of the Missouri Housing Development Commission from 2009 to 2017, I reviewed hundreds of LIHTC applications and saw firsthand how site selection determined whether a project scored well enough to get funded.

Today, as a developer building 254 or more affordable housing units across Kansas City and St. Louis, I apply those lessons to every deal we pursue. Here are the 10 factors that matter most.

Before you fall in love with a site, find out what you are allowed to build on it. Zoning determines density, use, setbacks, height, and parking requirements. If the site is not zoned for your intended use, you are looking at a rezoning process that adds time, cost, and political risk. I chaired the committee that heard those rezoning cases. I can tell you that a project with clean zoning has a fundamentally different trajectory than one that requires a public hearing and a council vote.

Check the entitlements early. Check them thoroughly. And if the zoning does not match your project, factor the time and uncertainty of a change into your decision before you commit.

For affordable housing, access to public transit is not a luxury. It is a necessity. The families we serve depend on buses, streetcars, and other transit options to get to work, school, and health care. A site that is disconnected from transit is a site that isolates the people it is supposed to help.

Beyond transit, evaluate the existing infrastructure: water, sewer, electrical capacity, road access. Infrastructure deficiencies can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a project budget. At the City Council, I saw projects stall because developers underestimated the cost of bringing basic infrastructure to a site that looked affordable on paper but was expensive to develop in practice.

State housing finance agencies score LIHTC applications partly on the services and amenities near the proposed site. Grocery stores, pharmacies, schools, health care facilities, and employment centers all matter. At MHDC, I saw applications score poorly because the developer chose a site in a service desert and could not demonstrate that residents would have access to basic needs.

This is also a matter of principle. At The Nash Group, we believe that affordable housing is an essential social determinant of health. If your home life is unstable, everything in your life is going to be unstable. But housing alone is not enough. The site has to connect residents to the services that support healthy, stable lives. That is why the Ville Wellness Campus in North St. Louis integrates 120 affordable housing units with a 45,000 square foot health center. The site was chosen specifically because of the opportunity to co-locate housing and health care.

No factor sinks more projects than community opposition. I have seen it from the council dais and I have seen it from the developer's side. A technically perfect site with hostile neighbors is a site that will cost you time, money, and potentially the project itself.

Do the community engagement before you commit to the site, not after. Talk to neighborhood associations, faith communities, local businesses, and elected officials. Understand the concerns. Address them honestly. When we broke ground on The Mabion in October 2024, Mayor Quinton Lucas and city leaders were at the ceremony. That did not happen by accident. It happened because we invested in the relationships long before we broke ground.

Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments are not optional. They are essential. Brownfield sites can be excellent development opportunities, but the remediation costs have to be accounted for in your budget from day one. I have seen developers acquire sites at attractive prices only to discover contamination that consumed their entire contingency and then some.

Environmental conditions also affect your timeline. Remediation takes time, and lenders and investors need certainty about when a site will be clean and ready for construction. Factor environmental risk into your site selection decision, not just your budget.

A site can check every physical and political box and still be the wrong choice if the market cannot absorb the units you intend to build. Market studies are required for LIHTC applications, and they should be required for your own decision making whether or not a state agency mandates them.

Understand the demand for affordable housing in the specific submarket where your site is located. How many income qualified households are in the area? What is the vacancy rate at comparable properties? Are there other developments in the pipeline that will compete for the same residents? These questions determine whether your project leases up on schedule or struggles to fill units.

Not all land is created equal. Topography, soil conditions, lot shape, and size all affect what you can build and what it will cost. A large flat site with good soil is a different proposition than a steep, irregularly shaped parcel that requires extensive grading and foundation work.

Per unit development costs are scrutinized by state housing finance agencies, investors, and lenders. A site that drives up construction costs without adding units can make an otherwise viable deal unworkable. Evaluate the physical characteristics of the site with your architect and general contractor before you finalize acquisition.

The price you pay for the land directly affects your eligible basis in a LIHTC deal, your total development cost, and your ability to structure a deal that pencils. Land that is donated, discounted, or publicly held can fundamentally change the economics of a project.

This is where municipal relationships matter. Cities and counties that are serious about affordable housing sometimes make publicly owned land available at below market prices or contribute land as part of a larger incentive package. As Promise Place demonstrates, significant city resources can make a 4% deal viable where it otherwise would not be. Land is often the first and most important city contribution.

If you are pursuing LIHTC, your site selection should be informed by your state's Qualified Allocation Plan. The QAP sets the scoring criteria for competitive 9% applications and the threshold requirements for 4% deals. Different states prioritize different site characteristics: some reward proximity to transit, others reward location in high opportunity areas, others reward community revitalization efforts.

At MHDC, I saw applications that were strong in every other respect fall short because the site did not align with what the commission was prioritizing in that funding round. Read the QAP before you select your site. Understand what the state is looking for. Then choose a site that gives your application the strongest possible position.

This is the factor that separates experienced developers from first timers. A site exists in a neighborhood, and that neighborhood is either improving, stable, or declining. Your project will be affected by that trajectory for the entire 15 year compliance period and beyond.

Look at the neighborhood with a 20 year lens. Is there public investment coming? Are there other developments in the pipeline? Is the population growing or shrinking? Are schools improving? Is there a comprehensive plan or an economic development corridor plan that signals where the city is directing resources?

When I was on the City Council, I helped create economic development corridor plans that directed investment to underserved neighborhoods. I camped out for six days at 39th and Prospect to focus attention on decades of poor urban planning, redlining, and discrimination. Those efforts resulted in a citizen driven economic development corridor plan and attracted multimillion dollar investments to the area. The developers who paid attention to where the city was investing were the ones who selected the best sites.

These 10 factors are not a checklist you run through once and file away. They are a framework for thinking about how a piece of land connects to the families who will eventually live on it. Zoning, transit, services, community support, environmental conditions, market demand, site configuration, acquisition cost, scoring criteria, and neighborhood trajectory. Every one of them affects whether a project succeeds or fails, whether families get housed or do not.

At The Nash Group, every site we select reflects a simple conviction: where you live shapes who you become. We bring lived experience to that decision, because we know what is at stake when it is wrong. The dirt matters. Choose it carefully.

Dr. Troy Nash is CEO and Co-Founder of The Nash Group, LLC. He served as Chairman of the Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee on the Kansas City City Council (2003-2007) and as Vice Chairman of the Missouri Housing Development Commission (2009-2017). He currently serves as a Professor in the Executive MBA Program and Director of the Lewis White Real Estate Center at the UMKC Henry W. Bloch School of Management.