Anyone got any resources about how to best navigating getting your feet wet when looking at raw land? What to look for, look out for, how loans differ versus buying a home, etc.

I'd also be extremely grateful for any resources like OP is requesting.

Thanks for the info.

Call/text me. My partners and I did several land syndications in Q4, including a nice site in your hood (Cane Island and I-10), and I've got more in the hopper. Farm and ranch is still my favorite though. Happy to talk land with you any time.

AgStuckinLBK said:

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Since it's a general question, I'll put out some general goals.

Determine what your goals are
Determine what your geographic limits are
Determine what your budget is
Look for land that is currently being used in the way your goals match up.
If you look at land that isn't being used for what your goals are and you have different goals, find people who do that for their daily job and consult them on if this particular land will match your goals.
Use a local real estate agent in your geographic point of interest as a buying agent in the area (unless you have some strong reason not to).

Thinking on it. I will say also:

Look for easements, look for leases on land, look for water access, electricity access, is it in the flood plain.

Most land websites like landwatch should have a good junk of that information. Understand what the average $/acre value is and if the land you are interested in is way above or way below that, ask questions until you get a good answer for why.

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This

Great advice & pretty much what we just did.

We wanted at least 20 acres, close to town with a timber plan to keep the taxes low. We keep an eye on listings and eventually found almost exactly what we were looking for.

Our wants were the low tax rate, very close to home - a place to hunt if we want to & mess around on our little UTV, access to a water coop if we eventually want to hook up or sell to someone that wants to build, etc.

We found 32 acres. Had to get a timber management plan & file it with the county - it had been years since it had one. It's about 10 miles from home in a beautiful location with some elevations that make it interesting, loaded with mature pine & hardwoods that we plan to leave for now. Easy to just run out there when we want to. When looking, we kept in mind road frontage & things that would make it dividable - we could sell 10 acres and keep our Timber exemption, if we ever wanted to. Our eventual plan might be to divide into 3/10 acre or 4/8 acre plots but that will be way later - for now we are land banking some money, using it for recreation & hoping it continues to increase in value. We just kept our mind open to options as we looked. Only downside to this purchase was price, but it was just we we wanted in a very desirable area.

We also used google maps to see what's in the area (although outdated in most places) and the Texas RR Commission's site to see what kind of abandoned/orphaned wells & pipeline easements are in the area - that took some locations completely out of consideration. If your county gives you access to BIS maps that is handy, too. You can see adjacent owners, topography, etc. Those maps helped with our decision a lot.

We saw our realtor yesterday on another property & she said we've already made money on it if we want to sell - nope, just bought. That said, after hearing that land prices South of Tyler are going wild we told her to bring any offers.

She just had multiple offers on 10 acres - listed for $300K+ that sold for over $400K+. Granted, it's closer to Tyler & Tyler is growing like crazy, but that price is just stupid crazy.

PM sent

mwp02ag said:

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My wife and I started buying and selling vacant land last year. We send offer letters to owners based on a percentage of what we believe to be market price per acre(PPA). We started this to find our own land without paying retail.

We break PPA down by zip code and an acreage range like 1-3, 3-10, 10-20 etc since different areas have different amenities and the bigger the tract the lower the PPA. That helps us avoid offering too much or too little depending on the type of property.

Once we have that we buy the ownership data for every property owner in a county in our parameters and send actual offer letters and wait for potential sellers to call us.

We look in rural areas within 2 hours of major metros that have amenities such as rivers, lakes and/hunting and ideally 5-50 acre parcels. We are also looking in areas with less than 150 days on market typically. Another metric is to look for areas that have a low active to sold properties ratio, or more sold than for sale. Those all drive demand.

Once we've closed on the deal we market them aggressively with attractive listing photos and drone work. Our goal is to list between 80-90% of retail and to be able to double our money in 90 days or so.

We have a lot of fun with this and believe it or not our first deal is one that meets all our personal wants and will be worth a lot of money with a little elbow grease. It's a nice little side hustle that we can do anywhere that has internet connection.

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Great information...thanks for being open to sharing the high-level details. Sounds like it takes a decent amount of legwork to get some good deals, but if you can potentially double your investment in 90 days, I'd say it's worth it.

A few questions:

1.) Do try and wholesale the land or do you close on the purchase then market it?

2.) Are you finding hard/private money lenders that will do land deals with you, similar to residential flips?

3.) Do you market them yourself or through a local realtor, and if you market them yourself, how are you getting the word out without putting it on a listing service (assuming you're not)?


Thanks again!

Our goal is to close every deal, but we use a simple Purchase Agreement that does allow us to flip the contract if a particular deal dictates it. We fund deals ourselves when we can and have access to a pool investor dollars when needed. We are closing on a two acre parcel on the Nueces river on the 25th and I'm trying to get a line of credit on another deal we are keeping so I can max our return. Otherwise we will use investors to fund 100% of the deal for 50% of the return.

Most of our group uses local agents to help with pricing and listing. My wife is a Realtor and lists the ones we can be confident on pricing. For the deals we can't be sure about we will use a local agent. We have a signed PA for example that could be a great deal but this parcel is 53 acres of very remote hunting property in an area of Uvalde Country that doesn't have a lot of land go to market. The comps say its worth somewhere between $2800-4000/ac and that depends on how accessible the land is. This parcel is 1/2 mile from the caliche county road and is 4wd access only for that portion of the road. I have a local agent trying to get out to look at it to give me a brokers opinion. At $2800/ac I'll try and double close that one but if its on the higher side I'll use deal funding.

I am getting started with raw land buying too and have a couple detailed questions. Can I contact you to discuss them?

Sure. figtreehomessa at gmail

I do a lot of deals with land investors. Something that I would point out to anyone interested in investing in raw land is to take great care when using debt. Especially if you're planning to go 80%. If you can't move it as quickly as you hope, or if the music stop you can be stuck holding the bag.

The real estate economy in Texas is about as perfect as it gets from an investment standpoint and that won't always be the case. I know that isn't breaking news, but I see deals that make me shake my head.

Agreed. I wouldn't think of using debt for a non cash flow deal normally but I have some things that made me want to investigate it. First the 15 ac deal was a way better deal than we could ever have imagined and the things we had used to subtract value (in the flood plain, no well, no electric service installed) were actually benefits. We purchased it for $5600/ac thinking it was worth $10k/ac. After seeing the property we would list it for $15k/ac and it would sell fast. Here is the best comparable and we thought ours was less desirable than this one until we saw it. It's actually more desirable and an absolute accidental home run.

So it took most of our investment cash to purchase it, but I've slept like a baby since we got that money out of cash and more that doubled it's value. We found out from the neighbor that our property does have a well and power and that the neighborhood was about to start improving the roads, including adding caliche to the dirt road up to our lot. The topo on the lot provides stunning views from the top and we have our very own little mountain top. We also found out that the sloped part has a perfect little buildable plateau that is out of the FP and that we also have deeded access to the road to the top of the property.

We will have two full hook up rv spots on the property by summer and think they will cash flow very nicely. More than enough to service a ~$25k LOC to purchase the 2 ac. Eventually, we are going to put a 3/2 container home on each lot for STR and those will bank. We also have a cash our refi that will close mid March and net us more than enough to pay back the LOC so I really only need a short bridge loan.

I feel very confident I can do the 2 ac deal with debt and sell it 10% below market quickly. I also know that I have investors who will fully fund this deal for me if I can't get the LOC.

Looks like a sweet. Get it done!

Just wanted to bump this thread as I I know myself and others here are looking for advice on buying land.

This is some good stuff, mwp