Mike Browning

Tag: Rural Property

  • Everyone But Me

    Everyone But Me

    As it turns out, not everyone.

    I never got into gaming.

    But it felt like everybody else had a console, a headset, and a whole second life happening on a screen I wasn’t looking at. My kids, their friends, plenty of adults…even some older than me. So I made an assumption and never questioned it.

    If everybody’s playing, somebody must be making a fortune.

    Then I read something about Microsoft and the Xbox recently.

    They have spent billions building games, buying studios, and chasing market share, only to discover that popularity and profitability aren’t the same thing. From the outside it looked like an easy business. From the inside it was far more complicated.

    It’s a good reminder that what “everybody knows” is often just the part everyone can see.

    Land works the same way.

    If you own property anywhere near the DFW growth path, you’ve probably heard the stories.

    A neighbor sold for three times what he paid. Somebody got bought out for a data center. A family down the road suddenly became millionaires.

    Those stories spread fast. Before long, they become what “everyone knows.”

    Sometimes they’re even true.

    The problem is that they usually don’t tell you much about your property.

    Land values can change from one road to the next. Sometimes from one side of the fence to the other. Access, utilities, topography, floodplain, buyer demand, surrounding uses, and dozens of other factors can push one tract well above or well below the one everyone keeps talking about.

    That’s why I think there’s a difference between hearing what land is worth and knowing what your land is worth.

    Most people don’t need that answer today. You’re probably not considering selling. You may even plan to never sell.

    But when life changes, a health issue, an estate, a buyer calling unexpectedly, or a family decision, that’s a terrible time to discover you’ve been relying on local folklore instead of current market information.

    P.S.– Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell.

    They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer.

    The report includes recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today, without any obligation to sell.

    Is it a bad idea to know?

    Get It Here

    P.P.S.– If you’re not interested in a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and North Texas growth, you can subscribe to my occasional emails below.

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  • Somebody Should Own This by Now.

    Somebody Should Own This by Now.

    Don’t be sorry you missed it.

    If you’re interested in Flower Mound or are an agent working with people looking there, you’ve probably seen this listing already.

    4.38 acres on Hawk Road, room for a horse inside the city. That combination doesn’t come up often out here.

    The price just dropped to $1,225,000, down from $1,245,000, and further down from where it opened back in January. Not a fire sale, just a seller adjusting to a market that hasn’t moved as fast as everyone assumed it would.

    The size is more unique than people give it credit for. Smaller tracts don’t qualify for a horse under Flower Mound’s rules. Bigger tracts jump into a different price bracket and a different kind of buyer. This one sits in the gap between those two, and there isn’t much else sitting there with it.

    There’s a 2005 mobile home on the property, valued at zero. Three bedroom, two bath, 1,512 square feet, sellers live there now. May work as a caretaker setup, or a place to live while a buyer plans something bigger. Flower Mound may have something to say about that (they do about most things), so check with them. There’s a chicken coop too. Not a selling point for everyone, but it tells you something about how the place has actually been lived on.

    It backs up to the future Eden Ranch subdivision without being part of it. No HOA. No committee approving your paint color. Denton ISD schools, Adkins, Harpool, Guyer.

    Seller to keep the minerals and they will need a short leaseback.

    In MLS as both land (#21161389) and residential (#21144467), pictures and aerial are below, also a flyer is linked below.

    Showings are by confirmed appointment only. The land can be shown most any time, but the sellers still live on the property so advance notice is required. The home won’t be shown initially since the value is primarily in the land, but it can be made available later if needed.

    Get the Flyer Here

    PS If you’d rather just keep an eye on what’s moving in this market before it shows up somewhere else, you can sign up below.

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  • 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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