Lupine Development & Consulting

10/26/2026

What a minor replat actually takes in Hutto, and why people get surprised by it.

A replat sounds like paperwork. It is, but it's paperwork with a sequence, and the sequence is where the time goes.

The good news first. If you're combining or adjusting four or fewer lots, every lot fronts an existing street, you aren't creating new streets, and you don't need a variance, the city can approve it at staff level. No public hearing. State law also puts the city on a 30-day clock once the application is complete.

The surprises are in that last word. Complete.

A licensed surveyor has to prepare the plat. Not a sketch, a plat.

Tax certificates showing every taxing entity is paid current have to be attached, or the county won't record it.

Any utility easement along a lot line you're removing has to be dealt with, either abandoned or relocated, and the utility provider has its own process for that.

Any new easement the city needs gets dedicated on the plat, which means it has to be drawn correctly the first time.

If any of those are missing, the application isn't complete, and the clock hasn't started.

Then the plat is recorded with Williamson County, and only then is it a lot you can permit on.

Done right, it's a few weeks. Done in the wrong order, it's a few months. The difference is knowing the sequence before you start.

10/25/2026

10/23/2026

The order things have to happen in.

Most projects that go sideways didn't have a bad idea. They had the right steps in the wrong order. Here's the sequence that holds up on almost every project in Central Texas:

1. Feasibility. What does the zoning allow, is it a legal lot, can it be served, what's physically in the way. An hour of work that decides everything after it.

2. Survey. A current boundary and topographic survey. Not the one from the closing, which usually shows lines and nothing else.

3. Site plan. Setbacks, impervious cover, parking, drainage, utilities, laid out against the survey. This is where the building gets sized.

4. Design. Now the floor plans and elevations, drawn to fit the site plan instead of the other way around.

5. Engineering. Structural, civil, MEP, each working from the same set. They can overlap with design, but not start before it.

6. Permitting. A complete submittal to every agency that gets a say, run in parallel where the agencies allow it.

7. Construction.

The expensive version of this is starting at step 4. The floor plan is the part everyone wants to see, so it gets drawn first, then the survey shows a creek nobody knew about, and the plan gets drawn again.

If you're not sure what step your project is on, that's a good question to ask before spending money on the next one.

10/21/2026

What I look at in the first hour on any site.

Before anyone sketches a building, I want to know what the land will allow. Same list every time:
• Zoning and allowed uses, including whether the plan needs a rezoning or a conditional use.
• Platting status. Is it a legal lot, and does the plan require a replat?
• Setbacks, height, impervious cover, and parking. These set the building envelope before design starts.
• Floodplain and drainage. FEMA maps, local floodplain overlays, and detention requirements.
• Utilities. Who serves it, where the lines are, and whether capacity exists.
• Easements, deed restrictions, and anything else recorded against the property.
• Tree survey requirements and any environmental overlays.
• The jurisdiction itself. City limits versus ETJ changes the entire process.

Most of this is public record. The value isn't in finding it. It's in knowing which items will cost time, which will cost money, and which ones mean walk away.

If you've got a site you're weighing, this is the conversation I like having.

10/19/2026

Why ADU projects in Austin stall before design even starts.

Most people start with the floor plan. The ones that stall usually hit one of these first:

1. Impervious cover. The lot is often already near its limit with the house, driveway, and patio. The ADU has to fit in what's left, and that math decides the size before anyone draws anything.

2. Trees. Protected and heritage trees have root zones you can't build in without a permit, and sometimes not at all. One big oak in the backyard can move the whole project.

3. Utilities. The existing water and wastewater service may not have capacity for a second unit. A new tap or an upsized line is a separate cost and a separate review.

4. Drainage. Even a small structure changes how water leaves the lot, and some areas have drainage requirements that surprise people.

5. Deed restrictions. The city doesn't enforce them, but your neighbors will, and some older subdivisions prohibit second units outright.

Run those five before the floor plan. It's an hour of work and it changes everything that comes after.

Impossible just means not permitted yet.

10/16/2026

Two parcels, one owner, and a replat nobody saw coming.

An owner came to us with two adjacent lots they'd held for years. The plan was simple: one building, sitting across both. They'd already talked to a builder. Then the city told them they couldn't permit a building across a lot line.

That's not a wall. It's a replat. The two lots get combined into one through a minor replat, which in most Central Texas cities is a staff-level review instead of a public hearing, as long as you aren't creating new lots or changing the street layout. A survey, a new plat drawing, a check for easements along the old shared line, a few weeks of review, and a recorded plat.

The part that catches people is the utility easement that often runs along the old lot line. If one is there, it has to be abandoned or relocated before anything gets built over it, and that is its own process with its own timeline.

None of this is hard if you know it's coming. It only becomes a problem when it shows up after the builder has a start date.

If you've got a project on more than one lot, that's the first thing to check.

10/14/2026

If you're listing a lot, a few questions will come up from every serious buyer. Having the answers ready keeps the deal moving.

1. What's the zoning, and does the buyer's plan actually fit it?
2. Is it platted as a legal lot? Unplatted land can mean months of extra work.
3. Is any of it in the floodplain?
4. Where are water, wastewater, and electric, and who provides them? In the ETJ, septic suitability matters a lot.
5. Are there easements, deed restrictions, or HOA rules?
6. What are the setbacks and impervious cover limits?

Most stalled land deals I see come down to one of these six. None of them are deal killers on their own. They just need to be known before the buyer falls in love with the lot.

If you've got a listing with a question mark on any of these, send it my way.

10/12/2026

"Impossible" just means "not permitted yet."

I've been saying that for years, and people usually hear it as a joke. It isn't.

Almost every project that gets called impossible is really one of four things:

1. The zoning doesn't allow it yet.
2. The lot isn't platted the way it needs to be yet.
3. The utilities aren't where they need to be yet.
4. Somebody got a review comment they didn't understand and gave up.

None of those are walls. They're hurdles, and each one has a process behind it. Rezoning, replatting, a utility extension, a variance, a different code path. The process is slow and it's tedious, but it exists, and if you know it well enough, you know which hurdles are worth clearing and which ones mean walk away.

That's the work. Over 20 years in Texas development, from master planning for national builders to small lots nobody else wanted, the projects I'm proudest of are the ones that showed up with a "no" already attached.

If you've got one of those on your desk, send it my way. I'd like to look at it.

09/12/2026

I wrote up the thinking behind next month's ASES SOLAR 2026 talk: why floating solar only makes sense once you stop treating water infrastructure and power generation as two separate budgets.

Land is expensive. Water loss is expensive. Most solar gets bolted onto a site afterward instead of being designed into it from day one, and that's the piece I dig into on the blog.

Full post here: https://zurl.co/J8a8G

09/12/2026

Excited to share that I'll be speaking at ASES SOLAR 2026, the American Solar Energy Society's national conference, October 19-21 in Austin.

I'm presenting on the floating solar piece of our closed-loop water and energy system, how putting panels directly over water storage cuts evaporation loss, adds clean generation, and does it all without using an extra acre of land.

If you're going to be at SOLAR 2026, or you just want to talk solar and water infrastructure, come find me. Would love to compare notes.