Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire land beside my place is up for sale

It's Virginia and things are going to get far worse tax wise. Like in anything you make your money when you buy. Good luck, that sounds like a heck of a nut to crack to me.

Things are starting to fall into place for me to make my move on this. Last summer they did a series of price drops, 10-20k every two weeks or so, up until the end of September and have held firm since then. The asking price is down from the original 10k/acre to about 6130/acre. The highest I am willing to go is 5k/acre. The tax appraisal is about 4300/acre. I think the appraisal is high, but that is my target price. I will probably start at 3800/acre hoping to end up no more than 4300/acre. I'm afraid if I start too low and have it backfire.

I had a buddy of mine who is an agent contact the sellers agent. He said the owners have been unreasonable from the go on asking price, but he will try to sell any reasonable offer to them.

There is a similarly sized, somewhat more desirable property about 10 miles away that I have had my eye on as a sort of bellwether property, figuring anybody in the market for that size rural land would go for this other property first, as it is a bit nicer and more reasonably priced. It sold over Christmas after several years on and off the market, for $4400/acre. This makes me a little nervous and somewhat eager to move.

I have two homes out of town that are rentals. One of the tenants got military orders in September. This lease was until next summer and I have good chunk of equity, planned to sell when the lease is up. The moved out in December and I just closed on the property. Hit the market just right and so have a good chunk of change from that. I plan to sell the other one in a few months when that lease is up. I don't have to wait for that one to sell though.

With the sale of the house, an uptick in the stock market, and steady work in the fall I have been able to save a reasonable amount, enough to make a reasonable play for this property as long as I can get financing the remainder. Last summer, the farm loan agent said this won't likely appraise for more than $3500/acre at the most, possibly as low as $2500/acre. A 140 acre property with over 1 million board feet of yellow poplar just sold last week in this area for $2700/acre at auction. So I do have some concerns with appraisal and where that will leave me with financing.

At some point in the next month or two, probably after doing 2020 taxes, I will start the process for getting pre-approved and then start the process of visiting the land and making an offer. Fingers crossed. I now start feeling concerned about who else might be interested in the property, etc. Need to keep a level head.

Stuff is just worth what someone will pay for it. How bad do you want it?

Make your move, take your best shot, good luck.

If it’s priced at double what the agents think it’s worth and double what it appraises at then I wouldn’t worry about losing it to someone else, especially if there are similar sized, more desirable pieces for much less.

Good luck. 👍

tuff place to be in ,i don't envy you , i own a good river front piece 6 hours away after a 2 hour ferry ride , do i sell it to buy something 2.5 times bigger at 3 times the value only 1 hour away and closer to 2 of my kids familys, life is fun is'nt it.

norm

Yes.

Life is so much richer when you can share it with loved ones.

The most beautiful places, be it property you own or a mountain in the wilderness, are always best enjoyed when shared with a loved one/s. 👍

Well this place closed today and somebody else bought it. They changed the listing in mid-Feb, separating the parcel across the highway, and had accepted an offer within 48 hours. I only found out when the public sites like zillow showed it as pending. I put in a 2nd place offer that would have won the day, but it was too late.

I don't know who buyer is but I do know they maxed out the financing and their deal would not have gone through if it didn't appraise....but it did and sold for over 4400/acre.

My mistake was not going straight to the sellers agent in the first place. I tried to go through a friend, but he didn't even give me a head's up when the listing change, because he didn't flag it for alerts ([bleep]). He had told me he would contact me if anything started to move with it. That didn't happen. The seller's agent may have had both sides of the deal and no reason to contact my agent.

There was only a small window when I could have made a move, after I had sold a rental house in late January, so about 3 weeks. But I definitely could have bought it for what it sold for and at that time. The finance lady last summer told me it wouldn't have appraised for more than 3500 and I would have to make up the difference. I was waiting to get my taxes done and be prepared to go to the table to get the place.

Not happy, but looking at the [bleep] year some folk have had, I can suck this one up.

Looks like you sat on your hands and missed out. Nothing wrong with that and I’m sure you already have a great place so enjoy what you have.

A bought a few hundred acres a couple of years ago that the neighbors wanted but thought the price was to high. It was sale for seven years when I made an offer and bought it for 40% of the asking price. The neighbors went nuts when they found out, especially the one that had his garage and front yard on my land.

You can’t buy something you never offer on. I hope you get a nice neighbor but most people are a pain to deal with

Good luck.

Everything happens for a reason. My wife and I worked hard and had good paying jobs and saved almost all our extra income. I started looking for land in about 2005 where I was living. Way to high. So I started looking where I was planning on spending most of my free time AFTER I retired in 2018. Well in 2008 I lost all access to my favorite hunting spot I had for 14 yrs.(too expensive to buy). So I really concentrated on finding a good chunk of land because I loved hunting and I was retiring in 10 years. Well in June of 2009 I found and purchased 99 wooded acers(149000) with 2 gas wells on the property. I wisely spent 5000 and had land resurveyed.(hadnt been surveyed since 1864!) Turns out I now owned 107.4 acres, money well spent! I steadily improved this property(food plots, pruned 125 yr old apple trees....) the next 5 years. Hunting got better every year. We also took every dime of the gas royalties and paid on the principle of the property loan. Now the year is 2014 and The loan is almost paid off. I get a tip about another 60 wooded (125000) acer property thats outstanding hunting and all woods surrounded by corn and soy bean crops and other large tracts of woods. Now since our loan on the first property is almost gone we use it to buy this second property(bank knows we are good for the cash). So when I retired in 2018 we owned 167(paid in full) acers of awesome deer, bear and turkey hunting. the silver lining is the 107 acers hasnt had ANY logging on it since 1985. The timber is easily worth over 200 grand(prices going nuts) if we wanted to have a select cut done. Retirement has been way better than I imagined it would be. When one door closes another one opens. Good luck and dont ever give up!

In VA.