How to Choose a Site Selection Consultant: 10 Questions to Ask Before You Hire

To choose a site selection consultant, start with how the firm gets paid, then test who will actually do the work, how deep their data and labor analysis goes, what their incentive negotiation record looks like, and whether they stay with you after the award. Site selection consultants come from four main backgrounds (independent boutiques, accounting firms, commercial real estate brokerages, and engineering or design-build firms), and each brings real strengths and different incentives. The right firm is the one whose fee structure, team, and track record line up with your project, not the one with the biggest logo or the lowest fee. The ten questions below work for any firm you interview, including ours.

What a site selection consultant actually does

A site selection consultant runs your location decision as a structured process. That means defining requirements and deal-breakers, screening regions and communities with data, analyzing workforce and operating costs, shortlisting sites, negotiating incentives between competing jurisdictions, and supporting the project through diligence and announcement. On good projects, it also means making sure the incentives you were promised are the incentives you actually collect.

The value is not a list of available buildings; plenty of sources can give you that. The value is discipline and leverage: a decision grounded in evidence instead of sales pitches, and an incentive package produced by real competition rather than a single conversation with one community.

In nearly 20 years of doing this work, the pattern I see most often is a company that makes this decision once a decade, sitting across the table from economic developers and landowners who do it every week. A consultant evens out that imbalance.

The four types of site selection consultants, and how each gets paid

“Site selection consultant” is not a licensed title, so very different firms use it. None of these models is wrong. What matters is knowing which one you are hiring, so you can ask the right follow-up questions.

Type of firm	Where they tend to be strong	How they are commonly paid	What to ask
Independent boutique consultancies	Senior attention, focus on the location decision and incentives, flexibility	Professional fees (fixed, hourly, retainer, or phased), sometimes with a success component	Is the bench deep enough for my project’s size and timeline?
Accounting and tax advisory firms (including the Big Four)	Tax modeling, credits and incentives expertise, global reach	Fees, and in some engagements a percentage of incentives captured	If you also audit us, how do independence rules affect this engagement and fee?
Commercial real estate brokerages	Market and transaction knowledge, large networks, execution on the lease or purchase	Commissions, typically paid by the landlord or seller and tied to the size of the deal; some also charge consulting fees	Do you earn anything from the transaction, and from whom?
Engineering, architecture, and design-build firms	Site technical due diligence, utilities, constructability, cost estimating	Fees, often as part of a larger design or construction engagement	Is site selection a standalone scope, or a lead-in to a design or build contract?

A few facts worth knowing as you read that table. A commercial leasing commission is generally paid by the landlord and calculated as a percentage of total rent over the lease term, which means it grows with the size and length of the deal. If you are a public company and your auditor offers incentive work, SEC independence rules say an accountant is not independent if it provides any service to an audit client for a contingent fee or commission. And some states and incentive programs have scrutinized or restricted consultant fees tied to the size of an incentive award, so a percentage-of-incentives model is not always available.

None of this makes one model better than another. It tells you where to look for alignment. A fee calculated on the size of the transaction rewards a transaction. A fee paid for the analysis rewards the analysis. You want to know which one you are buying.

When to hire, and what timeline to expect

The best time to engage a site selection consultant is before you have signaled a preferred location to anyone. Incentive leverage is highest while the outcome is genuinely undecided. Once a community knows it is the favorite, there is less reason for it to sharpen its offer.

For most projects, we recommend starting 18 to 24 months before you need to be operational. A disciplined process typically runs three to nine months from kickoff to a negotiated finalist, depending on complexity. The long poles are usually external: utility confirmation, zoning and entitlement, and incentive approvals that may need a board vote or a legislative calendar. That is why we start those threads during screening rather than after it.

Over the years, I have worked with a number of companies that brought us in “late” in the site selection process, after early conversations with state and local officials had already signaled that the company intended to move forward with a particular site. In reality, no senior-level decision had been finalized, and significant negotiation on both incentives and real estate still lay ahead.

In one case, the company had told state and local officials that the project would represent a major capital investment and thousands of high-paying jobs. When we were engaged and began reviewing the underlying assumptions with the company’s HR, real estate, and accounting teams, we determined that the project would realistically reach less than half of those figures over a 10-year period. We then spent several months carefully resetting expectations with the public partners.

Our due diligence also revealed that the company’s preferred site had no wastewater or power service within a mile. Making the site viable would require new electrical substations, a new wastewater treatment facility, and significant upgrades to the surrounding roads.

The project ultimately proved highly successful, but the early missteps added time and transaction costs that could have been avoided.

10 questions to ask a site selection consultant before you hire

Ask every firm the same questions, in writing, and compare the answers side by side.

1. How are you paid, and do you earn anything from the real estate transaction or from any party other than us? This is the first question for a reason. Ask every firm, including us. Our answer is that Vista is independent of real estate brokerage commissions and is paid by the client for the work. Whatever answer you get, it should be clear, in writing, and part of the engagement letter.
2. Who will actually do the work? Senior people often win the pitch. Ask for the names of the people who will run the analysis, lead the community visits, and sit at the negotiating table, and how much of their time your project gets.
3. What have you done in our industry and at our project size? A distribution center, a data center, and an aerospace plant turn on very different variables. Ask for comparable projects (anonymized is fine) and what the firm learned from them.
4. Show me your data. Where does it come from and how deep does it go? Ask whether the firm builds its own analysis or repackages public dashboards. Labor analysis should go down to the occupations you actually need to hire, not just county unemployment rates.
5. What is your incentive negotiation track record? Ask how the firm runs competition between jurisdictions, how it values a package (cash is not the same as an abatement over 15 years), and how it structures terms you can realistically meet.
6. How do you keep our project confidential? Look for code names, staged outreach, and a clear plan for who learns what and when. Premature disclosure moves land prices, wages, and politics.
7. What happens after the award? Incentive agreements carry job, wage, investment, and reporting commitments that can run for years. It is estimated that up to 50% of awarded incentives are never realized. Ask who tracks compliance and who files the reports. (More on this in how incentive clawbacks actually work.)
8. How will you show your work to our board? Ask for a sample scoring matrix or decision memo. You need a recommendation leadership can see, defend, and approve.
9. Can you model the economic and fiscal case? Many incentive programs expect an economic impact analysis. A firm that can produce one credibly helps the community justify the award.
10. Can we speak with two or three past clients? Ask references what surprised them, what the firm did when something went wrong, and whether they would hire the same team again.

Red flags to watch for

• A shortlist before the requirements are set. If a firm shows up with recommended sites before it understands your workforce, power, logistics, and timeline, the list came from somewhere other than your project.
• Vague answers about compensation. Any reluctance to explain exactly how and by whom the firm is paid is a reason to slow down.
• Incentives quoted before the search starts. Nobody knows what a package is worth until jurisdictions compete for it. Early promises usually mean early assumptions.
• A disappearing senior team. The partner who pitched should be visible at key decision points, not only at kickoff.
• No plan for after the announcement. If compliance is “your problem” once the agreement is signed, a meaningful share of the value you negotiated is at risk.

On many projects, we have found that power capacity that appeared to be available based on desktop work was in fact already committed to another future project under a non-public agreement with the utility provider. This is why on-the-ground due diligence at the finalist-site stage is essential. When it comes to criteria this critical to a project’s success, desktop analysis alone will never be enough.

How to compare site selection consultants side by side

Once you have answers to the ten questions, score each firm on the same handful of criteria: alignment of compensation with your interests, relevance of experience, depth of data and labor analysis, negotiation approach, continuity of the team, and support after the award. Weight them for your project: a first-time, single-site manufacturer may lean on negotiation and compliance support, while a multi-site rollout may lean on data capability and speed.

Interview the working team, not just the partners. Ask each firm to walk through how it would frame your specific decision in the first 30 days. The quality of that answer tells you more than any capabilities deck.

Finally, compare fees against what is at stake. The fee for a well-run process is usually small next to the operating cost difference between locations over 10 to 20 years, and next to the value of incentives secured through real competition.

In nearly every case, a comprehensive site selection and incentives process, paired with rigorous economic impact analysis, generates greater competition and better outcomes for a project. Across more projects than I can count, I have seen the competitive nature of the process lead states and local jurisdictions to tailor their offerings and directly address a location’s shortcomings in order to significantly improve their odds of winning. The result is a stronger outcome not only for the company, but also for the state and community that will partner with the project for years to come.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a site selection consultant cost?

It depends on scope: how many markets are screened, how deep the labor and cost modeling goes, and how many jurisdictions enter incentive negotiation. Firms charge fixed fees, hourly or phased fees, retainers, success-based components, or commissions, depending on their model. Ask for pricing against your specific requirements and compare what is included, especially support after the award.

Who pays a site selection consultant?

It depends on the firm. Consulting firms are typically paid by the company that hires them, while brokerages are commonly paid through commissions funded by the landlord or seller. Always ask, and get the answer in the engagement letter.

What is the difference between a site selection consultant and a commercial real estate broker?

A broker’s core job is executing a real estate transaction, and brokers bring valuable market and deal knowledge within a specific geography. I’ve never met a broker who has a real estate license in more than one or two jurisdictions, and they tend to be focused on specific areas of one city’s geography (for example, Uptown or the CBD). A site selection consultant’s core job is the location decision itself: requirements, market screening, workforce and cost analysis, and incentive negotiation, often before any specific building or piece of land is on the table. Many projects use both, with the consultant running the decision and (as needed) a local broker executing the transaction.

Are independent site selection consultants better?

Not automatically. Independence from the transaction removes one source of conflict, but you still need the right experience, data, team, and negotiation record. Use the ten questions above with every firm, independent or not.

How long does the site selection process take?

A disciplined process typically runs three to nine months from kickoff to a negotiated finalist. Plan to start 18 to 24 months before you need to be operational, because utility, entitlement, and incentive approval timelines often run longer than project plans assume.

Next step

If you are weighing a new facility, expansion, or relocation, start with the questions above, whoever you end up hiring. Vista’s site selection consulting team has supported more than 1,000 projects across 40+ states and negotiated more than $4 billion in incentives, and our incentives strategy and compliance practice stays with clients after the award. If you would like to talk through your project, contact us here.

Sources

• 17 CFR 210.2-01 (SEC Regulation S-X, qualifications of accountants), paragraph (c)(5) on contingent fees: law.cornell.edu
• “Leasing commission,” Wikipedia (who pays and how commercial leasing commissions are calculated): wikipedia.org
• Don Durfee, “Divided Loyalties,” CFO.com, December 29, 2005 (broker conflicts of interest; requiring conflict disclosure in RFPs; aligning fee structures): cfo.com
• Vista Site Selection, Site Selection Consulting service page (timeline, engagement timing, confidentiality)