The playbook
11 tactics, in the order you will need them. Each one is something you can act on tomorrow morning without buying anything.
Phase 01
Look wider
The cheap land is not on the big listing sites, and that is not an accident.
A property that is easy to find is priced against everybody who found it. Everything in this phase is about getting in front of that -- different counties, different channels, and the listings that are badly marketed rather than badly priced.
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Move one county over, not one town out
The same drive time costs twenty to forty per cent less on the other side of a county line, because the line is where the tax rate and the school district change.
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Learn the eleven channels that are not a listing site
Most rural land changes hands without ever appearing on a national search. Each of these channels has almost no competition, because using it requires knowing it exists.
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Hunt the badly marketed, not the badly priced
A listing with four dark photographs and no description is competing against nothing, and the discount has nothing to do with the land.
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Ring the three people who already know every parcel in the county
The well driller, the septic installer and the county assessor know which land is good, which is trouble, and what is about to come up for sale. All three will talk to you for free.
Phase 02
Read closer
Every genuine bargain has a reason. Your job is to find out which reason.
A discount is always attached to a defect. Some defects are a weekend and some are forty thousand dollars or a lawsuit, and the listing describes both in the same cheerful sentence. This phase is how to tell them apart before you are committed.
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Buy the cheap defect, never the expensive one
Every real bargain has something wrong with it. The whole skill is telling a weekend of work apart from forty thousand dollars or a lawsuit.
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Price per usable acre, because price per acre is a story
Forty acres with eight you could build on is an eight-acre property with thirty-two acres of view, and it should be priced like one.
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Find out what you are actually buying, which is rarely all of it
"No zoning" cuts both ways, and the mineral rights under a lot of cheap acreage belong to somebody else entirely.
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Walk it in the worst month, and walk the boundary
Every property is good in October. The one that is also good in March, after three days of rain, is the one to buy.
Phase 03
Offer smarter
The highest offer does not always win, which is the only good news in a bidding war.
Rural sellers often want things other than the biggest number: a fast close, a slow close, no contingencies, an income stream, or simply somebody who will not pull out in three weeks. Those are cheaper to give than cash is.
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Find the seller's clock, and sell them time instead of money
A seller who needs certainty, speed or an income stream will take less cash to get it, and those are three things you can give away cheaply.
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Keep two contingencies, and never waive these two
A clean offer wins, and you can make an offer almost perfectly clean while still keeping the only two protections that stand between you and an unbuildable parcel.
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Check the USDA programmes before you accept the down payment you were quoted
Raw land wants twenty to fifty per cent down. A house in a rural area can be nought per cent down, and the income limits are far higher than people assume.
The county research checklist
One email. The twelve things to check on a rural parcel before you make an offer, in the order that costs least to find out — and the four that should stop a purchase outright. Then we leave you alone until there is something genuinely worth sending.
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