We want to buy your land

   / We want to buy your land #1  

caver

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
1,609
Location
Southeast Missouri
Tractor
Fisher Price, toddlers first tractor.
I started getting these solicitations in the snail mail a few years ago. I've owned my place for 14 years. They get the info from the courthouse on your parcel. The words vacant land is always used. It has an offer for the property. Often if you look them up it's in a small strip mall. I have two identical 20 acre parcels end to end and it's always the eastern one. I guess that parcel looks more vacant but in reality the old cabin is almost cut in half by the parcels. I think my surveyor even mentioned that. Since it's always the same parcel they offer to buy I imagine someone did the leg work initially and then sold my information to other real estate companies that do the same thing. The offer is always half what I paid for it. Yes you guessed it, I got another one today. Now I just find them on google maps and leave them a one star review. The recent one said we are actually wanting the property as investment. Well dummy maybe that's partly why I bought it but it being a poor county it's not the best place to invest in real estate. In the past year though I have watched places on the market for a long time suddenly sell. I just felt like a small rant.
 
   / We want to buy your land #2  
Love the old one about the city dude who accosts an old farmer, "Hey Pops, got some land you want to sell for $50.00?"
"I'll get my wheelbarrow and bring it around front."
 
   / We want to buy your land #3  
We get those as well. Some guy that advertises that he sells hunting land and game preserves and wants to buy our land to do the same.

We also get offers from lumber companies to manage our forest for us.
 
   / We want to buy your land #4  
It’s a boom business these days. Rural property sells here (25+ acres) very fast.

However, there are very few listings. Last I looked, our rural counties had 4 listings of 25+ acres. If you can get land to sell, you don’t need to be a great salesman to get it sold.

MoKelly
 
   / We want to buy your land #5  
In our county, you cannot put a house on less than 20 acres if it doesn't have at least 600' of road frontage without first getting a variance from the board of zoning appeals. Therefore, anything under 20 acres that is already zoned residential goes for very high prices, because they are few and far between. Likewise, anything over 20 acres that's zoned agricultural is going for around $8000 an acre, last I checked.

It's easier to find 40 acres with a dilapidated house on it than it is to find vacant land.

When we bought our 20 acres back around 1989, it was $1500 per acre. Two years later the realtor that sold it to use made us an offer to double our money. We said no thanks. We've had offers of $7K per acre. Still not going to sell it. It's too hard to find anything similar for the price we'd get. Crazy.
 
   / We want to buy your land #6  
When we bought our 80 acres - we were not very savvy in the ways of rural life at the time - it was at the end of a 2.5 mile road where the land was bordered by a river.

It was pretty and isolated.

We bought the land.

2 years later we are contracting to build a house and the builder asks where is the electricity? Uh oh. I never thought about electricity. Doesn’t everyone have electricity? It’s inside the switches you put in the house!

Turns out the nearest electric is at a house 1.2 miles back down the road.

My wife calls the electric utility and they say they can run the electric to our property —- but it costs $20,000 for the poles to be put in to run the wires. They need lots of poles to go 1.2 miles down the road.

My wife spoke to a lawyer friend who did some research and it turned out (this is not technically exact but close) the property was originally designated as a “subdivision” when the original owner subdivided into 50-80 acre lots such that the utility had to provide power for no cost to the homeowner.

One letter from the lawyer and the utility agreed and ran the wires 2 weeks later. They even buried the wires from the last pole into the basement at no charge.

So, as the saying goes, it’s better to be lucky than good.

Then the builder asks about plumbing? Uh oh!

MoKelly
 
   / We want to buy your land #7  
In our county, you cannot put a house on less than 20 acres if it doesn't have at least 600' of road frontage without first getting a variance from the board of zoning appeals. Therefore, anything under 20 acres that is already zoned residential goes for very high prices, because they are few and far between. Likewise, anything over 20 acres that's zoned agricultural is going for around $8000 an acre, last I checked.

It's easier to find 40 acres with a dilapidated house on it than it is to find vacant land.

When we bought our 20 acres back around 1989, it was $1500 per acre. Two years later the realtor that sold it to use made us an offer to double our money. We said no thanks. We've had offers of $7K per acre. Still not going to sell it. It's too hard to find anything similar for the price we'd get. Crazy.
When I took out a home improvement loan 5 years ago my 20 acres was appraised at $10,000, land value only; one acre as a $7500 house lot, and the remaining at $250/acre. With the buildings and proposed improvements the value still was 25% lower than my accessed value; I warned the town that if they tried to raise my taxes after the $20,000 improvements we were going to have a discussion about it.
 
   / We want to buy your land #8  
My 156 acre piece in NW Michigan is always getting inquired about and I round file them all.
 
   / We want to buy your land #9  
It's just like telemarketers. They're a PITA unless it's something you're interested in buying or selling.
 
   / We want to buy your land #10  
My 156 acre piece in NW Michigan is always getting inquired about and I round file them all.
Just try to imagine 11.7 acres of water view (ocean).
The nuisance calls & letters never stop!
Developers want it,..... would be too pricey for most individuals.
 
 
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