Civil engineering that turns an approved site into a buildable one.

It comes down to how many parcels you are creating. Under California’s Subdivision Map Act, four or fewer parcels is a tentative parcel map and a comparatively simpler review. Five or more is a tentative tract map, which usually means a Planning Commission hearing and a fuller review including environmental analysis. That threshold changes the schedule and the cost more than almost any other decision early in a project.

The tentative map is the proposal. It shows how the land would be divided and what infrastructure would serve it, and it is what the agency reviews, conditions and approves. The final map comes after, once the conditions of approval have been satisfied and the survey work is complete. The final map is what gets recorded and what actually creates the legal lots.

Before you buy, if you can. The questions that decide whether a site is worth pursuing are engineering questions: what the site will yield, what the constraints are, what the entitlement path looks like, and what the drainage is going to cost you. Those answers are far cheaper to get early than to discover later, and they are the difference between walking away from a bad site and finding out mid-entitlement.