This episode documents a property acquisition that stretched from August 2024 into early 2025, consuming $7,500 in survey costs while revealing how local approval processes, communication failures with vendors, and extended timelines create mounting pressure to close deals even as market conditions shift. The two-parcel lakefront deal required surveys that took far longer than the promised 35 business days, followed by an unexpected four to six week planning and zoning approval process that wasn’t completed simultaneously for both properties despite assurances.
Key Takeaways:
- Sunk Costs Create Dangerous Deal Pressure Once $7,500 in surveys are committed, you’re psychologically pressured to close even if the market shifts negatively, making you more permissive toward declining comps rather than walking away from a bad deal.
- Local Approval Processes Vary Wildly by Jurisdiction Surveys in some locations require full planning and zoning approval plus recording to official records before title work can even begin, adding months beyond standard timelines that catch national operators off guard.
- Verify Vendor Communication Don’t Assume The survey company submitted one property for approval in mid-November but didn’t submit the second until weeks later without communicating the delay, costing an additional month and requiring discovery through direct calls to planning and zoning.
- Time Lag Between Contract and Close Invites Market Risk Six-month delays from acquisition to market create substantial risk as conditions change, requiring active monthly check-ins with brokers to assess whether proceeding still makes financial sense or if cutting losses becomes the better option.
Listen to the full episode for detailed insights on navigating survey requirements, managing vendor relationships, and protecting against timeline risks in land acquisitions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hey, Chris Duff here at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. Today, it’s pretty frustrating info that we just got back for a deal that we’ve been looking to acquire for several months now. So this is actually a
Two parcel, well really three parcel, but two of the three parcels are connected. They would be sold together. But yeah, two parcel deal, both residential lots that initially came into our system last summer. I want to say we initially started looking at this one in early August of 2024.
And the main issue with getting these closed was we needed surveys done for them for TIDAL to…
you know, confirm that we’d be able to move forward. couldn’t even get a title commitment outside of getting the surveys done. you know, we just, we’re going to have to incur some potential sunk costs anyway. One of them might not have been completely necessary to close on, but once we saw some existing plat maps, the roads were
just out of sorts, they didn’t look accurate based on the current map of the neighborhood. we just figured, and there were some easements that we’re going through and figured, if we’re going to get one survey, let’s get this on one survey, prevent some possible and buyer confusion anyway here. But it was pretty steep costs, seven, I think it was,
I think it was 7,500 bucks for both the surveys and they weren’t huge lots either. One’s five and a half acres, the other roughly 10 acres or so. So usually you can find some surveys for much larger acreage, especially in places like Texas and so forth that are gonna cost a fraction of what it costs there, but that was just the going rate and it just took forever. So I think we spent, or they,
promised that they would get the surveys done within 35 business days. So, you know, equates to seven weeks. But then on one of the properties, there were just incorrect legal descriptions. And so they had to keep going back to official records and sort things out. But it was just
like pulling teeth, trying to get communication from the survey company. And, you we already, we had to pay half the fees upfront. and, I’m, I, I’m always kind of hesitant about throwing in, you know, larger sunk costs into deals because yeah, markets can change so
quickly and this has happened to us in the past where we had like a six month lag time from when a deal came into us and similar issues. Just crazy amount of work trying to get surveys done and replat and all that and endless approvals, delays within the local municipality that the market shifted on us by the time we actually took it to market. But because we had so many some costs into the deal,
kind of incentivizes a, you know, pressure to, move forward. So, you know, we, we got smarter from our past experience towards like, okay, every, you know, month, six weeks or so we’re, you know, checking in, you know, has the market really shifted that much on, on us? You know, we have a broker involved seeing, okay, how are things moving?
is land still dispelling properly in the area and any key changes here. And so we’re paying more active attention. But the problem is that even if it shifts in a bit more negative direction, we’re still going to be more incentivized to complete the deal, even if the margin slims a bit because of the significant sum costs that we’ve thrown into a deal.
Seven grand is, it’s not nothing. You know, cause if you bail on the deal and that’s just a straight loss, you know, is it as bad as the loss as if you take a bad deal and lose money on something? Yeah, probably not. But nevertheless, I kind of hate having that pressure built into a deal where we were not expecting nearly that amount of
of lag time. And ultimately that’s our fault. We should have figured out, what’s kind of typical length of times to get surveys done and so forth. And we thought, okay, still, seven weeks, it’s not terrible. But then we only found out that any survey that gets done, usually you get a survey done, you can throw the…
map over to the title company if they need it, they can look it over and, you know, approve whatever they need to do on the title commitment. In this particular location, the surveys have to go through a full approval process through the local planning and zoning department and then a subsequent recording to the official records. And then and only then can the title company actually
consider them viable for whatever title work they need to do and prepping full commitment. And so we got these surveys done. Again, we had an even longer delay trying to get that one where there was all the legal description issues going on. And then, yeah, again, the fault of us for not understanding the full process. And this is what I always remark on. We operate nationally, but we have to be even extra conservative because
so many times we can get caught up in, you know, local issues in terms of timelines and various approvals that, you know, when you’re trying to run a business on, all kinds of corners of the U S occasionally it can be easy to get tripped up and, know, not, not cross every T and dot every I, when it comes from a procedural standpoint and, and, you know, local realtors aren’t always going to know all this either. So
You know may a culpa on our side, but again ultimately we already sunk so many so many funds into the deal plus Now we’re gonna have to go through this approval process and that would have required a lot of physical mailing and so forth on our side So, you know the survey company who we were already disappointed with We just hired their services for you know a fee to get the Planning and zoning to approve
But this was right before Thanksgiving and they quoted four to six week timeline may be delayed because of just the holidays, worst time of year to be submitting something, especially to government agencies. But again, we were so far along. Okay, let’s get that started. And we did get good news that one of them, one of the two properties was approved, but then…
still need to go through the recording process. Usually most countings, recording that shouldn’t take more than one or two business days. This has been taking close to a week, having to be hand-delivered and all that. It’s so backwards from, again, of procedure perspective here. But then the survey team updated that one of the…
surveys was still being approved by planning and zoning. And so I was inquiring, right, what’s the delay here? Is there any type ETA? And so I had my team call in and we were told from the planning and zoning that this other survey was only submitted last week. And so we weren’t expected to get a approval response until another month from now, mid February, when we initially
thought we were submitting both of these at the same time in mid November. And none of this was communicated to us to the survey company. I kind of ripped into that a bit via an email. course, backing off to a certain degree in case, hey, I’m, you know, could be ignorant of the local procedure here. Maybe planning and zoning can only take one survey at a time and you have to submit each.
separately, but our understanding was that both would be submitted at the same time. You know, I regret that, you know, we didn’t just handle the process on our own. seems like it could have been done faster. And, you know, the fact that we had to figure this out on our own rather than this being communicated to us, you know, is just very frustrating to be frank. Like, can you guys rectify this? You know, is there any way we get some…
know, discount money back, who knows? Plus, we still haven’t closed on the property yet anyway, so the seller who’s already been getting cagey about not getting their money in all these months later, now we’re gonna have to build in another month delay when it’s entirely possible that she could just walk and we’re stuck having paid for all these surveys and no property in our name yet. So, you know, it becomes a risky game.
when there are some of these initial requirements even to close deals where you might not have title and we couldn’t even have required title without getting the surveys anyway. And just these endless delays that we just did not expect or were even promised in this latest iteration of.
The deal here. So again, this puts even more pressure on us from just some cost perspective as well as the market potentially turning on us even more when we’ve already put so much time and effort into these deals where it’s still like, I really regret kind of getting involved in this deal. But now that we’re so committed,
you know, so long as we still think there’s a pretty reliable margin in the deal, checking in with our broker, re-looking at comps and so forth. Okay, we’re still gonna move forward, but I do know that subconsciously I’m going to be a bit more permissive towards, you know, potentially more negative recent comps because I know that we’ve already committed so many resources to this deal.
I really, really hate getting stuck into a place like this with deals. Not a good feeling, try to avoid it, but sometimes it happens and you just kind of have to learn and move on. just thought that I would share that lesson. Hopefully this helps you all. Of note, again, funding, you can get it at SiriusLang.Capital.
when daily diligence, zero cost reviews on Mondays and Thursdays, landpricer.ai for our simple and accurate land pricing tool. Also, I want to mention, that I do have a discount code for Dave Denniston’s on conference. I know I mentioned a couple of times in this podcast. so you can just, you know, easily Google search, Dave Denniston land on conference and it’ll pull up the, site for the August, August 8th and 9th.
larger conference in Minneapolis this year. And you do have to apply to go. You need to be earning at least six figures in revenue. you know, most solid land investors should be able to pull that off. And assuming you do get accepted for that, for the actual payment link, you can just use my last name, all lowercase, Duff, D-U-F-F, and get $200 off.
of your cost of admission there. So, you know, that that’s the only large conference that I’m planning on going to this year. It transformed my business initially going, you know, I’ve been to four on conferences now, clearly a fan. So I hope to see you there. But with that, we will end this podcast today. See you tomorrow.
