Beth:
Hi, I’m Beth with TB Properties Buys Land.
If you’re ready to sell your rural vacant land, you probably understand that when selling property, there may be a cost involved. We’re going to talk over the series of a couple of videos on what the costs are when it comes to selling your vacant land. We will break this down into the cost of getting it ready to list, what it might entail in terms of marketing costs, and also what closing costs might look like. There are multiple ways in which you can sell your property: You can take on the sale of your property yourself in which you market it as a for sale by owner, or you can work with a realtor and they may take care of some of the costs that are involved in this, but you ultimately pay them in the end.
We will start with getting your property ready for sale. Before we talk about making it pretty and presentable, let’s talk about any legal obstacles that may need to be cleared up in order to first list your property. Do you know when was the last time your property was surveyed? If this land was passed on to you, or if it’s been in the family for many, many years and if that survey is really old, you may not be able to sell the property without a survey. People may not be interested in moving forward on the sale of your property without a survey or the Title Company might require a new survey in order to close. A saavy buyer may want to make sure that they are indeed getting that number of acreage as listed, or they may simply need to know where the property begins and ends. They’re going to want to be able to walk to the corners of the property and they may be asking you questions such as, “where are the stakes out here? Are the corners flagged? What are the coordinates? I want to be able to see where my property begins and ends.”
A survey is something to add to your cost consideration if it has not been done fairly recently. What’s the cost of that? Well, it depends on how big your property is. It depends on how old or how long it’s been since it’s been surveyed. It could depend on also with how many times the property was cut up and if it was partitioned well or ineptly. We’ve seen small properties in which the survey cost may be only $1,500 to $2,500. On the flip side, right now we’re currently working with a small property in which the survey will cost over $6,000 because of how ill documented the process was, and the property was broken up and subdivided incorrectly over the years. The survey cost will really depend on the property and its circumstances. It’s best for you to get in touch with a local surveyor and get a quote on surveying your particular property, but do consider that as a potential cost when getting ready to sell your land.
What about attorney fees? If this property was passed onto you, if this was inherited, there may be a cloud in the chain of title that you’ll have to clear up. You would need to get with a real estate attorney in order to understand what that’s going to take in terms of cost and in terms of time in order to do so. It could be quick or it could take months or you might find it is not possible at all. In any case, these are just a few legal issues that you may have to clear up before getting it ready to list, especially if you have inherited land. They would be cost considerations you would want to account for.
Let’s talk about making your property pretty in order to get it ready. If we understand that marketing is really important when it comes to selling your property, people want to be able to see the property and that initial image needs to be able to grab them, enough to want to visit your property. Do you have professional pictures? How about video? Is your property even worthy of pictures and video just yet or do you need to do some cleanup work first? Do you need to hire somebody to get out there to clean up brush? Maybe that road into the property, if it’s not a county road but a private road, needs some attention so that people can actually drive out there with their pickup truck. Do you need to hire someone with a brush hog or even a mulcher to do this kind of work? Again, this is something to consider. Do you need to make it pretty so that people can feel like they can pull up and have a place to put their tent or their RV or their camper? Do you need to clear some trees for that to happen? Has your area become a dumping ground for some people in the area? Do you need to clean up some of the trash? These are all things to consider before listing your property.
In sum, today we have discussed just a few things to consider when it comes to prepping your property and getting it ready to sell and what the costs include within that context. In the next videos, we’ll talk about the cost of marketing your property, whether you are using a realtor (there’s still a cost!) or if you’re going to market it yourself. After that we’ll also talk about closing costs.
If you’ve got land that you want to sell and you don’t want to deal with these costs or you don’t want to put the work into it, there is another way. You can “for sale by owner” and work with a real estate investor like TB Properties Buys Land. Please feel free to reach out to us, give us a call, shoot us an email or fill out the little form on our website. We’re happy to work with you. We purchase property, vacant land, with cash and we close through reputable Title Companies to keep you protected. I hope this video helped and look forward to talking with you soon. Thanks.