I had a 6.2 acre lot in an area that was zoned for 3.3 acre lots. I could not get a variance, so I purchased a tiny sliver of useless land from a neighbor. It was a strip of land on a gas line easement and thus totally unusable. It only connected to my property for 10 feet of property line, but I was able to purchase the neighbors unusable land (he had 4.5 acres to start with, losing .4 left him with 4.1 and still over the 3.3 minimum). So I combined the 6.2 and .4 acre lots into one and then re-split them.

So the order of operations was: 1 Buy 6.2 acre lot 2 buy .4 acre slice of easement 3 get lots surveyed and combined 4 survey lots again for split 5 apply to county for split 6 get split but have to sell both halves on the same day because mortgage company would not release the lien on only one half of original property. 7 $$Profit$$

about 2 years and made about $100,000 net. Total sale was $440,000 of both properties and one house.