Beth:
Hi, I am Beth with TB Properties Buys Land. In the last several episodes, we’ve discussed scam offer letters, and how to protect yourself. The first question that most people ask when they’re trying to assess whether a scam offer letter is indeed a scam is, “How is this going to work? How does the transaction work?” While I cannot speak for other land investors, I can walk you through how TB Properties Buys Land goes through the process.
It generally begins by you as the land seller, reaching out to us. You may have received a letter in the mail from TB Properties Buys Land with an offer to purchase your property. Or you could have received a letter from someone else and went looking online to see if they are legit, but found us instead. Or you could be ready to sell your land and just found us in a general online search. Whatever way you found us, reaching out to us is the first step.
It is important to note that for us to be able to provide you a quote on your land, we need to know about your property itself. If you’re reaching out via email, or on our website, or you’re leaving us a voicemail, that kind of thing, the information that we need to know is (1) where is your property located? The county and the state in which your property is located is extremely important. We’re not asking for the address that you live in right now. We would only need the property’s address that you’re interested in selling and since most vacant land doesn’t have an address, we have to rely on State, County and APN or assessor’s parcel number. Please don’t assume that we know what state you’re calling from either since we do have people reaching out to us from all over the country.
Back to the information needed in order to identify your property: on your property tax bill or statement, it may say something like APN or Assessor’s Parcel Number. That APN, or that parcel number, along with the state and county where your property is located is going to allow us to look up your property in a public database. Please understand that your parcel number is considered public information so with that we can log into county data and look up your parcel. This allows us to figure out where your property is located and we should be able to do some basic research in order to provide you with an offer price on your property.
This is important: we are never going to ask you for personal information like your social security number. We don’t need debit card numbers. We don’t need anything like that. We’re only going to look into public information. So the county, and state, the assessor’s parcel number, and any information that you can provide about your property is going to help us provide you with an offer to purchase your bare land.
If this was inherited property, and it’s not in your name, but it was in your great, great-grandmother’s name, but everyone else is deceased, and you’re the only living heir, or there’s a hundred heirs, etc. – the more information that we know, the better. If your property has physical access, or if it only has legal access, but not physical access, if you know that there’s an old cabin out there that’s falling apart, or if there’s an old well, any information about your property will help us provide you a better quote on your property.
In sum, the very first step is reaching out to us, and then offering you a price and finally coming to an agreement on a price to purchase your property from you. We’ll offer you what we are willing to pay; sometimes it works out and other times it does not. That is okay. Here at TB Properties Buys Land, we’re always going to pay for your closing fees, and that includes the following: the escrow fees to the Title Company for you as the seller, as well as for us as the buyer. It includes recording fees and if there are any excise taxes when it comes to the sale of the property. We state all of this explicitly within our contract, which is important. This video’s already getting a little bit long, so I’ll break this into a couple different videos on how we work, and what our process is. The first step is reaching out to us: we need property information, but we don’t need personal information. I would be very wary of people asking too much personal information of you. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to working with you, and next time, we’ll talk about the contract. Thanks.