Mike Browning

Tag: Acreage Sales

  • You Did All That Without Visiting the Property?

    You Did All That Without Visiting the Property?

    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?

    Check It Out Here

    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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  • It’s Not Free To Try

    It’s Not Free To Try

    At least not on my end of the deal.

    One thing that makes land different from houses is that having it sit on the market a little while usually doesn’t damage it the same way.

    A house sitting unsold starts raising questions pretty quickly.

    Land is slower by nature.

    So after a Land Reality Check, sometimes the conversation becomes:

    “Okay, if you think this is worth around $8,500 an acre, why don’t we just throw it out there at $14,000 and see what happens?”

    And within reason, that’s not necessarily crazy.

    If somebody is willing to sell around market value, but wants to push a little first just to make sure we’re not leaving money on the table, fine. I understand that completely.

    You’ve probably noticed if you’ve read any of my Land Reality Checks that I tend to lean conservative anyway.

    I’d rather be slightly conservative than explain later why fairy tales didn’t happen.

    But there’s another side to this too.

    If you’re selling a small residential lot, it usually doesn’t take much more than a yard sign and an MLS listing. Which isn’t free, but usually doesn’t involve substantial upfront expense either.

    If somebody wants to throw one of those out there at an unrealistic number “just to see,” I might play along.

    Maybe.

    But marketing a larger tract correctly usually costs real money up front.

    Larger signs.
    Drone photography.
    Aerials.
    Professional brochures.
    Landing pages.
    Targeted marketing.
    Industry websites.
    Paid Google ads sometimes.
    Mailers sometimes.

    It adds up faster than people think.

    A decent custom sign can easily run $500 to $1,000 depending on what’s needed. Drone photography might be another few hundred. Professionally printed brochures are expensive if you want them done correctly.

    And that’s before getting into the less visible costs, the platforms, memberships, advertising accounts, and all the little things that make the marketing possible in the first place.

    Depending on the tract, it’s not unusual for me to spend $1,500 to $2,000 or more getting a property positioned before anything even happens.

    When I take a listing, I’m basically betting a substantial amount on my ability to get it done for you.

    That doesn’t mean every listing sells.

    Markets change.

    Sometimes sellers change their minds. Sometimes buyers disappear. Sometimes a property just sits there longer than expected.

    That’s business.

    But there still has to be some reasonable overlap between where a seller is realistically willing to sell and where the market is realistically willing to buy.

    Otherwise everybody is mostly participating in a very expensive form of wishful thinking.

    PS – Most landowners are not planning to sell today.

    But markets change, family situations change, and sometimes opportunities show up when you aren’t expecting them. The people who already understand roughly where they stand usually make better decisions than the ones trying to figure everything out under pressure.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.

    It looks at nearby sales, current competition, development activity, utility considerations, and the things affecting value that most people never think about until it matters.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Check it out.

    PPS – If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy thinking about land, markets, negotiation, and how this business actually works, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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  • Aggressive, Not Reckless

    Aggressive, Not Reckless

    The way my wife describes my driving.

    I’m working on a deal involving some lake acreage in Fannin County. I have part of it under contract for a few of my clients.

    We’re under contract at a price we believe is solid relative to the market. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be buying it as investors. Even so, I’m always researching the area. I watch new listings and recent sales to make sure the numbers still make sense and that we’re doing the right thing.

    So far, so good.

    Yesterday a new listing popped up on a tract that’s fairly similar. Small parts of it are definitely better because it’s actual waterfront instead of just near the lake. A large portion of it, though, is very comparable to what we have under contract.

    The asking price on that tract is roughly twenty times what we’re paying.

    I like to think I’m a good negotiator, but I’m not going to claim I’m getting my guys in at 5% of market value. Our price is good, but this example is really about something else.

    It shows what a lot of listing agents will do just to get a listing. They’ll take it at almost any price the owner wants, no matter how unrealistic, and worry about walking them back later.

    I don’t operate that way. I don’t have the time, and besides it doesn’t make sense to spend money on signs, marketing, drone shots, professionally done brochures etc. for something that has no hope of performing as advertised.

    And if it does sell, it usually happens at a steep discount from what the owner was originally told, which leads to frustration and bad feelings.

    Of course this doesn’t mean I’m not aggressive, or I only list properties that are at no-brainer prices. Higher prices are good for me of course, partially because of commissions but more because the more I sell your property for the more likely it is your neighbors might want to sell too.

    So I push it as much as I can, within reason. But you’re going to hear what I think the market is going to bear before we do it, so you’re not surprised or upset.

    If you want an honest analysis of what a property might be worth, not a computer-generated estimate, you can reach out. Anything non-residential. I’ll do it for free and update it as needed within reason.

    Click here to start

    PS – If this was useful, feel free to forward it to someone who might need it.