Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Buying "junk" property.

Thinking about buying a small property to fart around with. Almost 20 acres cheap.. in a flood plain and undesirable because it has a wet weather creek that runs directly through the entire length of the property. What I really like about it is that it's a split property with about 4 acres across the road on high flat land that would be perfect a new location for our shop. The 16 acres is also trashed. Not unfixable, but it would be beautiful with lots of hard work and cleaning . Like a mini private park. Looks like it was a dump site for a very very long time. Very old tires, general household junk, trash and rusty junk. From what we saw looks like someone started dumping there a long time ago. Would take a roll off or two and a schitt ton of work to get it cleared but could be a beautiful little getaway guest cabin site or something? Very rough terrain because of the creek so I'd probably have to build a couple of bridges to get an ATV across the creek in different areas. Don't think getting a full size truck back there is possible without filling the creek and major filling and leveling. Saw lots of deer and hog tracks there and there are a couple of blinds and a hog trap in place. Don't know. Heavily wooded. Before you get excited about the deer and hog tracks understand the place is heavily trashed in quite a few areas and didn't even walk the entire length of the property. Love hard work and not afraid of it at all .just asking for opinions. Lots of trash. Ideas?

Sounds like a lot of work.

Another thing to maybe be concerned about is what sort of chemicals got dumped there.

Yep. The flat 4 acres across is mainly what is enticing me but dealing with the 16 across the road... not sure. Lots of potential for something though.

Sounds like a couple of the places I've bought. I don't mind investing the sweat equity. Those are the types I've made the most money on. Buy it right. Clean it up. Sell it for a premium.

If the price is right and the property is dividable it maybe a hidden gem. Cleaning is cheap and easy!

C H E A P?

70 grand ish.

I've never been afraid of hard work. Lots of people are, which makes properties like that cheap.

Flood plain! $3500 an acre I wouldn't call cheap. But I don't know your market so maybe it is. I would go all in (IF) I could subdivide and keep the High acreage and sell the rest for either my cost or my cost plus of the purchase. Key here is if I could clean up the property and for sure find a buyer for no less than $70K.

Doesn't even sound like hard work. More time consuming than hard. If there is really that much junk there and it is metal, you have the scrape metal as income as well.

Figure in the cost of a decent sized dump trailer, and do yourself a favor.

3500/ acre here is cheap if it has any use at all.

Before proceeding further research how high the water gets in the creek during wet weather. I have access to a hunting lease with a creek that runs through the middle with 2 bridges. Much of this season access was impossible to at least half of the acreage due to high water making the bridges impassable. Raising the bridges is prohibitively expensive. This spring the whole lease flooded due to the Army Corp of Engineers water control policies. Fooding damaged a tractor, atv and 2 electric carts resulting in thousands of dollars of repairs.

I have several parcels of "junk" property that someday I'll improve enough to sell and make a profit. Every millionaire I know personally has made their money on capitalizing on good deals on property.

In the mean time, I'm having my lunch money stolen on property taxes. I'm up to almost $8K a year on property taxes for basically useless property that I got a good deal on at the time.

B&B, are the land sales around the area significantly more as a sales price?

The flood zone with the creek probably means just that. They can be problematic to navigate (as you already know), and hard to keep fenced with water gaps, etc.

It may make you some good money, and give you some good working therapy while working towards that end.

Good luck with it!

A friend of mine got something like you're looking at. As he went through the trash he discovered lots of antique dishes and other stuff. He was able to recover lots of his cost from selling them.

It sounds like you have it figured out. Would have to build cabin on pilings like a beach house?

Soil samples would be a very good idea. If the ground is contaminated with chemicals or heavy metals, that would be the last piece of property I would want to buy. To many potential headaches with EPA, not to mention your $70k investment would likely shrink tremendously in value.

Study up on the local soil conservation and/or watershed district to see what you are allowed to do on the dirt work - my guess would be very little. Filling wetlands or lands with hydrophilic soils is a no-no. Some might suggest sneaking some work in, but I've seen that turn bad plenty of times especially when trying to re-sell or applying for building permits.