How do you go about estimating impact fees for apartment development?

I seem to have a good bit of difficulty determining what each municipality charges for impact fees. I was told the bulk of the impact fees would be the water and sewer taps and then we can just add an estimate to cover the rest of the smaller fees. What are some ways that you all go about finding the impact fees? Do you get on the phone with a certain city department, etc. As of now I usually just google search to death the words impact fees and fee schedule for whichever city I'm looking in and come across a bunch of different things, and occasionally get lucky but it's still a pain in the ass to get super accurate numbers.

8 Comments
 

All of these are public record and don't really need to be estimated. In fact, they shouldn't, as they can vary wildly.

In big municipalities they are easily looked up on the municipal website. In smaller places, you'll probably have to do some digging and make some phone calls.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Here's a tip: Keep a running log of all the various types of impact fees you encounter for each project.

Different jurisdictions will have different types of fees and/or call fees by different names. By keeping a master list...it'll make it easier to compute the impact fees for projects moving forward. You'll know what to look for and can even run down your master list with someone from planning/development staff to determine what's applicable.

 

New to the development analyst position but correct me if I'm wrong in that your not calling the civil engineer about impact fees when your quickly throwing together an underwriting of a site that you may have just heard about.

As for the info on impact fees being public record I seem to understand that this stuff could be found by digging around on the internet, but each municipality is very different. Should I just be calling the planning and zoning department each time I can't find something online, or is there a more applicable general department across municipalities that would know more about impact fees.

 

Correct. Do not waste people's time on deals that are not real yet. Just carry plug numbers based on historical knowledge or whatever you can dig up quickly on their website. Burning out your consultants is a great way to fatigue them before you get the deal going.

 

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