This episode analyzes two major acquisitions: a $400K Texas property potentially doubling to $800K+ and a $460K Louisiana minor subdivide targeting $900K-$1.1M exits through strategic forced appreciation. The breakdown reveals how clearing ($130K Louisiana investment) and water line extensions ($2-5K per Texas parcel) create 75%+ price-per-acre increases in buyer’s markets, why turnkey solutions overcome inventory saturation, and how Texas 10-acre exemptions require creative credit structures to avoid platting complications.
Key Takeaways:
- Clearing and Driveways Can Jump Price Per Acre 75% Louisiana realtor confirmed $20K/acre raw land becomes $35K/acre with foliage removal and driveway installation, justified by comparable sales showing buyers pay premiums for visualization and immediate buildability.
- Texas 10-Acre Exemption Blocks Pre-Sale Improvements State subdivision rules prohibit infrastructure installation before child parcel sales close, requiring hard-quoted water line credits instead of actual pre-construction to maintain exemption benefits.
- Buyer’s Markets Demand Turnkey Over As-Is Growing inventory and economic pressure force value-add strategies (septic, wells, clearing, utilities) to generate 90-120 day exits on high-dollar properties instead of price arbitrage alone.
Hear the complete deal structure breakdown including contractor coordination, regulatory navigation, and when to provide credits versus physical improvements for maximum exit velocity.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. today I wanted to discuss a bit more on just providing turnkey solutions to end buyers. so we’ve been, this has been extremely busy past week and a half. I know I commented, on some previous podcasts about some
massive deals we’re looking at. We’re about to close on a 400K purchase tomorrow. That’s, in our opinion, one of the best properties we’ve ever looked at. Probably top three, maybe even the best one overall. That could possibly, conservatively, 2X. Decent chance more than that. And we’re also looking at another
property in Louisiana that could be upwards of a 500k, slightly less, maybe 460ishk all out on the deal for another minor subdivide and could potentially get upwards of like $1.1 million exit, conservatively, maybe closer to 900k for a
three parcel minor split in both of those cases, know, really drilling down into the details and following up with the realtors that know the area very well. You know, we’re trying to stay focused. Okay, you you guys look for fast timelines here, you know, to move things within.
90, 120 days, especially higher price properties. You really have to stand out. And I know on Seth’s pod with Neil and if you follow any like the Revencher guy, I forget the name of him, but yeah, you can look at some of the overall macro indicators where we’ve been in a growing buyers market across the country, largely across the country for
a couple of years at this point, um, in, most areas of the country. And so, you know, to stand out, uh, to buyers, like you just have to be that much more focused with ensuring that you’re really nailing the buy price, um, when you’re acquiring a property and that, you know, you’re standing out. Whether it’s just from a pricing side or a characteristic side, um, to your potential and buyer pool. So.
Uh, we are much more focused on, that, uh, Avenue nowadays, especially as we go after some of these higher priced properties, like how can we force that appreciation? Not even necessarily from a, uh, you know, subdivision, minor subdivision perspective, but also, um, from making properties more turnkey to possible buyers because, you know, as we know, the economy is still tight for a lot of people and
If you’re going to ask them to spend potentially a few hundred grand into a property, then they also have to account for, in a lot of areas, raw land, 20 to maybe 50 grand of basic improvements that could cover clearing as needed, driveway, culvert installation, potentially septic in a lot of areas, well installation or running a water line.
setting up a water meter on the property. All of those items can really influence a buyer’s potential decision on whether they’re going to pull a trigger or not. And they just have more options available. There’s just more inventory of open land here. So the easier you can make it for them to visualize their anticipated usage of a property and the less work that they’re going to have to do.
that is a critical consideration and one that we’re a lot more open to. In the past, hey, let’s just try to do this as is. And we’ve tried doing some clearing sometimes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it didn’t. It didn’t really bump the price and end up just being an extra expense that collapsed our margins further in a deal. So you really have to be strategic and understand which comps
in the market actually justify the true value add that you can do from forcing appreciation from various improvements or, again, carving up the parcel into smaller acreage. So there’s a couple of avenues that you can also consider in certain situations. So just to…
know, comment on those two large parcels that we’re looking at. For Louisiana subdivide, the realtor really seemed to indicate, hey, to stand out here first, like when he walked the property, you know, just the overall foliage is a bit thicker here, especially, you know, post winter, which we’re going to be coming up on in a couple of months or less in a lot of parts, many parts of the country, especially Louisiana.
you know, you, you got to clear out a lot of this foliage, like give people the sense of where their home is going to be. get, get, lay down the driveway, and, let them understand, okay, they can just walk onto this and understand precisely where they can set up their house. Plus there’s already electricity and public water at the street. so all they’re going to need to do is get a septic involved or a septic, installed.
and start laying down the foundation for their home. He’s like, you know, hey, you do that. All of sudden, what might be an exit of like 20,000 price per acre turns in like 35,000. Usually you’re not going to see that big of a bump in forced appreciation there. But when we really dove into the comps and looked thoroughly at that and like, yeah, this is actually justified. Like it’s not that common, but.
That’s why it really pays off to understand, okay, what are all of your characteristics in relation to the other comps that have sold or are still on market? So doing that level of work for that property might run us close to like 130-ish grand to do on top of a over $300,000 purchase price property for 32 acres. But it could be justified.
given both the total exit price per acre as well as reducing your time on market because again, even if it’s more upfront costs, if you can exit that quicker, that’s only gonna serve to your advantage for putting your dollars to work again faster and less inherent market risk for staying on market longer with potentially a lot more dollars at stake. So that’s just something to…
Keep in mind from that perspective and then the Texas property, again, what might be the best one we’ve ever looked at. That one does have public water at the street, but it’s on the other side of the street. or there’s a same side of the street water line, but it’s not directly in front of the frontage that we have. It’s at the neighboring, the next door neighbor parcel. So the line would need to be extended.
So that’s really the only hair on that particular parcel. But we already were getting soft quotes, okay, what would it cost to bore down underneath the street, run water lines from what’s across the street to the same side street as the subject property. And we were getting quotes of like, you know, maybe it could be two to five grand for each parcel. We’re trying to do three child parcels. So we were considering, okay, do we just do that for…
the end buyers or as another avenue is we could just provide it as a credit and negotiation tactic. You know, maybe these things fly off the shelves. You don’t need to negotiate. Don’t need to worry about that, but we could dangle it as a carrot for people who might be, you know, feeling a little bit more trepidation before they finalize a purchase of the property. Also within Texas too, you know, we’re trying to abide by the, you know, 10 acre plus
state exemption criteria, which if you’re not familiar, basically you can take a property that is at least over 10 acres. I mean, it would really have to be over 20 acres really and be able to subdivide and have any child parcels be greater or 10 acres or greater and not have to go through a…
plat review process because the state allows for a simple survey to set new legal descriptions for whatever child partial acreage it is delineated on a map so long as it’s above 10 acres. So that’s a key play within Texas. But the problem is that you can’t improve the property until it’s sold off. So that was something else we were learning today, actually.
So you kind of have to work through a loophole of, know, potentially providing a credit to an end buyer and then having, you know, what, once you sell off a certain child parcel, then like the subdivision is fully approved and then, you, you can start installing infrastructure because now there’s like a true end buyer to at least one of the parcels. So that’s still something we’re figuring out, but you you have to be, you have to be very, very careful about getting tied up in some of these local.
regulations here before you might mess up your whole process, especially when there’s a lot of money at stake. So that’s just to show, know, hey, we were thinking, hey, we could, you know, spend an extra 15 grand, get these water lines moved over to the property. So it’s even more turnkey for the buyer. But now because it might mess up our subdivision process, we’ll at least have full hard quotes from an engineer, an exact timeline on how to do this. So we’re still removing effort.
from, from an un-buyer perspective, cause it’s like, okay, even if they might still technically need to do it under their name, we’ve already done the work for them. we, we’ve already quoted it out, know exactly how much, it’s going to cost them, how long it’s going to take. and we can even get that process rolling for them upon, you know, the, close of the property and include it, you know, as a credit to them, for purchasing. you know, we, we can still make it turnkey even if it’s a little bit more nuanced from.
doing the work previously ourselves and it saves us some upfront costs until we already have a buyer ready to go for the property. So that’s just some thoughts there. There’s a million other avenues can take this into, but you know, bottom line, more of buyer’s market now, you have to be more strategic with how you position your properties. Consider doing that extra value at work, especially for more expensive properties to stand out. With that, any funding requests?
Send over to seriousland.capital. There’s a submission forum on our site. Check out Land Daily Diligence, the Zero Cost Facebook group for any land deals you want a review on. And then landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to price land. With that, take care.
