In this episode, the central Louisiana 32-acre subdivide into three 10-11 acre turnkey parcels reached development completion, implementing a 3-tier pricing strategy: $45K/acre for the premium flag lot with extensive driveway work absorbing over half the total development cost, $40K/acre for the middle parcel, and $35K/acre ($50K price reduction from initial $40K/acre) for the street-closest lot after testing market response with significant online views but no site visits.
Key Takeaways:
- Flag Lots Become Premium When Development Work Is Completed The longest driveway parcel priced highest at $45K/acre because extensive clearing and installation eliminated the typical buyer cost disadvantage, transforming the usual negative into the most spectacular property.
- At-Cost Contractor With Pride in Craftsmanship Absorbs Overruns The early-20s contractor worked 4AM starts, took pride in pitch-perfect execution, absorbed budget overruns, and added value-add touches like reseeding cleared areas for future aesthetic appeal.
- Caution Tape on Driveways Forces Broker Contact Physically restricting immediate access with tape prevents anonymous visits, creates urgency by requiring scheduled viewings, and provides accurate tracking of genuine buyer interest versus passive lookers.
Listen to the full episode to understand the complete Louisiana subdivide execution and three-tier pricing rationale.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious pretty exciting update here today that the Louisiana or central Louisiana subdivide that we’ve been working on for months now. The development work is now fully complete as of today. So we are finally going to
checking if the market actually accepts what our plans were and what our price point is, you know, hoping to be for these properties. So to give a little bit of backstory for those of you who are just tuning in now, we bought a roughly 32 acre tract that we split into three child parcels of roughly 10 to 11 acres each, one of which was a flag lot.
and then the two others had home sites closer to the road. So the flag lot was on one of the ends of the property. Naturally, that driveway is going to be much longer to get to the home site. The middle property has kind of an in-between case of a little bit of a longer driveway and a home site more tucked away. And then the third…
Child parcel has a home site closer to the road. So they’re all a bit more staggered giving privacy for all three of the properties and different options at different price points for various buyers here and You we made these as turnkey as possible did a ton of clearing driveway installation the home site clearing so really all a buyer needs to do is
lay down a foundation and build a home on it as there’s already electricity and water at the street. So, there was a lot more to the development work than we were expecting, a lot of rain delays, but finally wrapped up here. And just to share a few other tidbits regarding our strategy and just finding an excellent broker.
As well as contracted to work on this first, just the contractor. He’s, um, know, younger guy in his early to mid twenties. Um, but just excellent work ethic was just, you know, out there as many days as he could be, you know, barring weather. And sometimes, you know, like starting at 4 a.m. in the morning to be working on, uh, the property and just stay keen eye for detail. Um, just really ensuring everything was pitch perfect took a lot of pride in his work.
That’s always what you want to see especially when you’re working on a large project like that. So whenever you can investigate People’s past work before hiring them Even if you’re not inspecting them personally, but having another trusted third party to look at it That’s gonna be critical and we really struck gold with finding this guy who’s also a willing to work at cost because some of his Items came a bit over budget from what we were initially promised and just taking and
So just running down a couple other features here might be just a little bit of a grab bag, but I just want to mention where we’re at. So traditionally, flag lots are going to be tougher to sell on average because it’s going to be longer. Well, usually if somebody hasn’t installed a driver or anything, it’s going to be more costly to do that, which on our end, probably more than half the cost of all the development work went to the flag lot by itself. So we took care of that on behalf of the buyer.
So it makes it more premium. You know, they’re still going to have to extend the utilities down there, but you know, it’s far less of an issue compared to if we hadn’t done that work and just the scope of, you know, it’s tough for me to describe without sharing a picture. And so my blog post in serious land capital have it, but just an absolutely grand wide rolling driveway that follows the train. Yeah, it’s, it’s a truly
Spectacular property and everybody who’s been on it the broker or the workers they’re working on it other agents who have looked at the property like yeah, this is just tremendously You know just an excellent job that was done here and just really displays the beauty of the land So we think that one’s going to be the most premium property and probably the first one off the shelf If we were to guess here that we are going to
price it at 45k an acre at the most premium price just given the work involved and we think it’s going to be the most valuable lot. The middle lot we’re pricing in the middle at 40k per acre which is actually what we started. So we initially listed the property that has the home site closest to the road a few weeks ago and it’s been getting significant online views but no real site visits calls yet.
So it was more testing the market plus not the entire development wasn’t done yet. So we didn’t have the gravel lay down or anything like that. Not looking as beautiful from the photos or having again just the home site and driveway all fully set.
But we also weren’t really sure where the market was going to be at because there’s significant variation in the market. Plus there was a lot of rain going on there, so people didn’t want to hike out there in boots and so forth. So now we are planning to drop that price. It was already at 40k per acre for, again, roughly 10 acres. So we’re going to drop it to 35k an acre, or like, let’s say 50k price cut.
And so then it’s really staggered across these three properties based on what we think, you know, the most premium position lots are going to be. And to jump back to wrap up the development work is that again, we just are working with like really excellent contractors and broker and you know, at cost, they re seeded all of the
area that was cleared that wasn’t covered by the gravel driveway. And so the broker just like, yeah, this is going to green up within the next couple of months here, you know, with a few other other rains and it’s just going to look even more spectacular than it does right now. And so they’re just, you know, looking out for that aesthetic value for buyers, you know, to really appreciate what they’re buying into and you know, just again,
literally planting the seeds in order to you know, just make it as pitch perfect as possible. So that was also very much appreciated something I wouldn’t even have considered prior to undertaking this project. And so with the pricing as well in the marketing, just because I’ve like told the broker, hey, like if we get a good result on this property, like this opens up so many more opportunities within our business. We have a lot of institutional capital involved, like we go after
many more large value deals more routinely if we get a good result. So like if something good happens on this property, even if that’s the only thing for the remainder of this year, like I would be feeling ecstatic about that and just being patient with the growth that we’re trying to accomplish and knowing what it’s going to do for us. like, and he’s already been trying to position other properties or starting to think of other ones that we could reinvest profits into. I’m like, yeah.
Just keep those on the back burner here. Let’s get a good result. Would love to work with you again. And I feel like we’ve come into a better understanding with that market as our first Louisiana deal as well. So, you know, and, you know, just to give an idea of the numbers here is like the way we underwrote this deal to our investors was that we were expecting a
Underwriting it to be a blended 29 K per acre total exit So we have a lot of room on this deal to work with you know, if one of these is priced at 45 the other 40 one at 35 I mean if who knows if you can ever get anything truly at list price. I’m always surprised when that happens nowadays But you know that would be roughly a blended 40 K an acre way above but you know to be conservative Which is always what we’re pricing properties at
Our online pricing is closer to $15k per acre or so, even including the development costs. So if we can get, again, a rough double, we will be in very good shape. Anything above that is going to be gravy. So broker is on the same page as what we need to see. And really try to juice the returns as much as we can, obviously. But still being mindful of the market and not letting it sit forever.
You know, fortunately the brokers also mentioned, you know, while there is a decent amount of inventory on the markets, like most of these other lots, pretty much all of them are, you know, it’s wooded. haven’t had the value at work done. So, you know, you can rest assured that the lots that you’re bringing to the market, there’s nothing else like it available. Um, so to me that that’s always the best position to be in for obvious reasons, but you know, even if you’re in a market where not a ton is moving, like
you may as well have the most superior assets available because you good stuff tends to always move similar for that 50 acre that we had south of Dallas you know there was decent amount of movement but you know there was still plenty of sitting but you know we just had a really premium asset and so like he was getting a lot of attention quickly like good stuff moves so you know while I haven’t seen it in person but seeing all these photos particularly the flag lot like
Yeah, it just it looks absolutely beautiful. It would be hard to imagine the market won’t respond to that You whether it’s at the price that we fully desire. We’ll see that’s expensive lot right almost half a million dollars To buy 10 acres. There’s not a ton of buyers in that vicinity, but it’s possible who knows the macro situation looks a little bit better Stock markets back to all-time highs, you know doesn’t always translate to the home Real estate market, but it doesn’t hurt either. So let’s see if we can
capture some of that remaining momentum as much as we can, even when that’s outside of our control more generally. Plus the broker is just going to be strategizing as far as his physical sign marketing. He’s going to be posting a much larger sign that is advertising
three of the lots to look at and then he’s gonna have separate small signs at the entrance ways for each of them plus as of today they’re gonna be putting up caution tape for the entrances of each of the lots both because the ground still needs to settle a little bit more you don’t want a ton of traffic going back and forth on these you newly done driveways and also because
Um, you know, putting tape up there will dissuade people from just visiting on their own and, you know, prompting a call to the broker so that he can actually walk them through and, you know, work some persuasion and some salesmanship as well. And we get a better idea on what the true visits are because sometimes, yeah, it’s tough with land people in this visit and they never say anything. You have no idea what’s going on, um, without monitoring. So that’s another strategy that we’re using. um, you know, also the fact that the first lot that we listed, you
Big 50k price cut people notice that that might have been following But also realizing hey, there’s two other lots listed here They’re all different from each other. And so maybe you can go up market or if you want to stay down market You know and kind of these first movers that are taking a look like you get your first pick your letter You know, if you want that premium flag lot great, you know, it’s probably gonna be the first one to go if I were to estimate You know, you can start building in some urgency
addition to scarcities and so each of these lots are one-offs and that’s all that’s available so That’s another part of the strategy that is coming into play here. You know, were across every Avenue MLS land calm, etc push push push so Yeah, again, but this is Our most critical piece that we need to get a very very solid result on for the remainder of this year I don’t think we could be
Positioned any better at this point. We have all the key team members in place best brokerage in the area super hard-working primary broker with excellent commission rate Beneficial to us So, you know, I’m saying all of that here to say, you know These are the tactics and strategies that we’re using here and let’s see if they pay off I’ll be updating you guys along the way knock on wood. We will get some activity here shortly
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