buying land

denny80689

denny80689

Member
The wife and I bought a townhouse as an investment (and our first home) but I only planned to live there for 1 -2 years max. Its been just about a year now so I have been looking for a piece of raw land for sale. The idea being to buy the land and in a year or so sell the townhouse to pay for the cost of building a new place. The problem is finding usable land for a reasonable price. Were in eastern PA and all of the land that realestate agnets have is over $100k an acre.... way out of my range! So basicly Im looking for advice on ways to find land for sale by owner. I did lots of online searches with no luck. anyone else recenlty buy land or have any experiance in this area???
thanks!
 
tangman99

tangman99

Active Member
Your going to be all over the place depending on where you want the land. I have 2 acres out in the middle of nowhere in Florida and it's worth about $10,000. My lot in my subdivision that I live on right now is a little smaller than 1/4 of an acre and it's worth almost $200,000 without the house being on it.
Even if you find someone that is selling the land "by owner", they are going to have it priced according to comparable values if they are smart. They can just negotiate a little better because they will not have any realtor fees.
 
jhill5

jhill5

Member
tang, what makes the subdivision lot that expensive, is there anything special about it? Is it on the water? I understand that ocean lots can easily be 7 figures.
 
tangman99

tangman99

Active Member
Mainly, "Location, Location, Location". It's in one of the nicest subdivisions in a 6000 home community in one of the most desirable sections of the city, it's an estate lot (when they map out lots for a subdivision, they usually make a certain number larger than the rest and refer to them as estate lots) and it's on the golf course.
My 2 acres is where I grew up which is a little rural city 30 miles from the closest large city and not much else around it.
 
maeistero

maeistero

Active Member
only paid 18k for our 1/3acre lot here in a newly developing town. what really seems to hike up prices around here is the availability of city utilities. i can get acres for 500, but paying for running lines out to them, sewage options, even water blows the prices out of proportion if i was to plan on living on the property. it's a great investment for the future, but to build on.... i don't think so. not unless i was planning on developing an entire neighborbood on the land which takes permits to split large acreage up.
 
fuax

fuax

Member
I live in south fla where land and home prices are out of control, I purchased 40 acres of land in north fla for $65,000 2 years ago, I got a great deal because even those lots are going for triple that price now.
Tangman99 is correct it all depends on the LOCATION, my advise buy some land (way out in the middle of nowhere) to retire on and use it as an investment for the future to get the best price per acre. (If thats what you plan on doing with the land.)
If you plan on building and living on the land that you purchase with in the next few years or so, you may have to sacrafice location for price or price for location.
DO NOT RUSH into buying anything check on forclosed porperties and goverment seizers you can sometimes get those for a steal.
Good luck, it my wife and I 4 years to find the peice of land we wanted at the price we wanted in an area we like and we checked 6 states.
 
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