It can’t all be done from afar, but a lot of it can if you know what you’re doing.
I recently did a Land Reality Check for someone in Alvarado.
I was up front when I sent it. The property was a couple hours away so I hadn’t actually been there. What he was getting was what I call a desk valuation.
So I did what I could from here. Pulled comparable sales, looked at competing listings, checked aerial imagery, topography, floodplain data, road access, utility providers, ownership history, and what’s been developing in the surrounding area. Put it together into a pretty good picture of both the property and the market around it.
When I asked what surprised him most, he said it was how much data I’d been able to pull without ever setting foot on the ground.
Here’s the thing about land. A lot of what drives value isn’t on the property. It’s around it. Who’s been buying nearby. What they’ve been paying. How much competing inventory is sitting on the market. Where the development pressure is coming from, if any. What infrastructure exists in the corridor.
None of that requires walking the dirt. It requires understanding what’s happening in the market.
Of course, site visits matter. There are things you won’t know until you’re there. If we get a little further along and he’s considering selling, I’ll get out there. And it could change things some if there are things I couldn’t see from hours away. A neighbor situation. A drainage problem. A view that the aerials don’t capture. A transmission line sitting just outside the frame. When talking about selling a million dollar property, you need to see it obviously.
But the assumption that useful information only comes from physically visiting a property, that one’s not right. In a lot of cases, the most important questions get answered before anyone starts the truck.
Which is part of why the Land Reality Check works for people who aren’t ready to sell. He is thinking about maybe selling, but not immediately. The report was still useful. He wanted to understand what he owned, what the market around it looked like, whether anything had changed.
That’s a reasonable thing to want to know. And it’s easy to get.
PS- Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.
But things can change quickly. When the time comes, the people who already understand the market tend to make better decisions.
That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.
Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?
PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.
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