This episode dissects a 30-acre Virginia property analysis from Land Daily Diligence, revealing how multiple red flags (odd shape, HOA restrictions, ag zoning near suburbs, 90% seller loss from 2006 peak) create deceptive opportunity traps. The seller bought at $670K in 2006 (equivalent to $1.1M today adjusted for inflation) and now seeks exit at roughly 10% of inflation-adjusted cost, demonstrating brutal market psychology when overleveraged positions meet reality.
Key Takeaways:
- Recently Listed Properties Signal Desperation, Not Opportunity When sellers can’t offload at listing price and accept offers at less than half asking from investors, cut that price in half again to approach actual market value (this property’s listing history across 2017 and 2024 proves zero genuine buyer interest).
- Hunting Land Requires Isolation, Not Just Acreage Thirty acres surrounded by single-family homes in an HOA won’t attract game regardless of terrain features, and local gun discharge regulations near populated areas eliminate the primary use case that justifies raw land pricing.
- Discount Old Comps Regardless of Proximity A neighboring lot selling for $170K two years ago carries less weight than recent sales of similar terrain elsewhere, the older comp included substantial improvements (utilities, clearing, driveway) and potentially undisclosed mobile home value in the mortgage.
Understanding seller psychology when they’re 90% underwater reveals why some properties remain unsold despite apparent underpricing—the full context explains the current desperate pricing better than surface-level analysis.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. Today, just wanted to share a few lessons from the earlier land daily diligence session. think there’s always something that both I learned as well as just kind of lessons that come up again and again in maybe a more unique format.
that hadn’t been identically been seen before by other properties here. And some can just have a whole bunch of red flags that are more routine, but all put together in a mishmash. So there was one property we viewing today. It was like almost 30 acres in Virginia.
It was like just Southwest of DC. So it wasn’t like that rural. Yeah. So finding 30 acres out there, it’s going to be pretty interesting in and of itself. And it was a very oddly shaped property. There was probably three, three direct road frontage points. And there was, you know, some juts.
jutting in areas of where, you know, some parcels had been subdivided off probably from the original parent parcel and had homes built on them. And the whole property was like pretty much surrounded by other…
other single-family residences. And it appeared to be in an HOA as well and was technically ag land, which again, all of this is just pretty unique for the given situation. And the land investor who sent us a deal was like, you know, this is, it would probably make sense to subdivide this, but it would need to be rezoned first. At least I’m taking their word for this property.
By the time they had sent this to us and like rezoning could take upwards of a year Which is you know, not something you want to get involved in especially in this environment So they thought okay, maybe it’d be considered for rack or Hunting property. Yeah hunting would be considered rack. Anyway, it really suggests. Okay, could you just have like a single Family home on one part of the property and then the rest is just larger acreage for a buyer. It’s possible as well
Um, that’s just something I would, would have considered as well. Uh, but like when you look at it hunting, yes, normally when properties are, you know, 10 acres plus, maybe a little bit less than that, depending on what area that you’re in, you could be thinking about, yeah, possible hunting features, especially if there’s some contour and vegetation built in, maybe a creek running through to attract game. Um,
And there was a creek that was like kind of approaching one of the borders of the subject property. Again, I know it might be a little hard to paint a full picture here, so I’m trying to be as relatively detailed as possible about this. But, you know, when the 30 acres is, again, pretty thin as well, too, and it’s like surrounded in every direction from.
or with a single family homes. I would be astonished if hunting was allowed on a property like that, especially in an HOA. And I would just make the blanket assumption that, you know, whenever there’s people kind of living nearby, there’s going to be some type of local regulation to enforce, you know, guns going off. mean, I guess if it’s bow and arrow.
stuff that probably doesn’t matter as much. know some areas are like way more lenient about that and there’s, you know, less risk of, you know, a person just out in their yard and all of sudden getting shot. So, yeah, there may be, if you’re doing bow hunting, it could be a different story versus using rifles. I don’t know. You’d have to check on that, but that is something we kind of encountered recently as well.
But, know, taking even a step back, like when, you know, 30 acres is surrounded by other single family homes, like it’s probably not gonna attract that much game anyway. I you probably get some, but, you know, it’s not like there’s a lot of other directions for game to come out of the property. Like there’s not other rural areas from like much larger.
kind of natural landscapes for them to come onto the subject property. They’d have to be crossing, you know, pretty fairly densely populated areas in order to even get to this 30 acres. So I would think it’s higher risk from that standpoint anyway, but let’s okay, get past that factor and let’s just consider, okay, maybe there is game and you know, bow hunting, who knows.
Possibly that could be done versus yeah, could you really fire off guns? And even if that was allowed in the area or not like outright banned I know in some other areas You know, even if there aren’t like direct city level regulations on gunfire in certain directions if neighbors are concerned law enforcement might be called And like to check it. Hey, is this like okay and all that?
and you might be attracting increased scrutiny, from that perspective again. mean, can you imagine the tragedy there is even if you’re trying to be safe out hunting and whatever, I don’t know something goes wrong and you just misjudged the direction or get startled or whatever. And then all of sudden there’s, you know, severely injured neighbor or worse, that was in the direction of your gunfire. So, that would be something to note. mean, here in.
In Austin, and my wife and I have a house that is in a larger master plan community. Um, that was, yeah, like much more recently developed within like the last five years or so. And it used to be like way more rural than this. there’s kind of a holdout, uh, gun club would be, uh, maybe the nice way to nice way to say it.
but yeah, I mean, there, there, there’s some old family on like 10 acres that still like, they, they don’t want to get up their land. All the big builders around here and just still firing off guns routinely. But I know for a fact, like neighbors in our area, they’ve just, cause this is like right next to subdivision, they’re getting calls and who wants to deal with like law enforcement. Kind of maybe coming out and checking what’s going on. just, it, it, sets a different set of expectations for whoever’s living nearby. So that to me was like a major concern there.
to consider, so that’s why I was thinking, okay, possibly you could sell it for like a single family home, but without subdividing, because clearly there was some zoning issues and long length of time to even do that. Then there was another piece where first this buyer seemed to have bought it peak market like 2005, 2006 for almost 700 grand. And
You know, again, sometimes it’s astonished, like even accounting for inflation, some of those prices that were in mid 2000s, like were never even seen even 20 years later. mean, some pockets, yeah, they did get back or even exceed some of those pricing from 20 years ago, but most parts of the country, it was just such a, like people think we’re in a real estate bubble now. And I largely agree, especially in a lot of parts of the country, but
you know, the mid 2000s, like you take a look at some of those sales prices and areas that are like, you know, still not even that developed. And it’s just crazy how, how much equity was just lost from people getting stuck in some terrible deals. So it was person bought for almost 700 grand again, you know, net of inflation 20 years later, like who knows what that is. You know, it’s, it’s well over a million dollars.
Definitely. Actually, I’m going to run the calculation live here on the podcast. with me. like, let’s just say 670,000 USD in 2006 and 20, $25. So they’re saying, yeah, that’s the equivalent to almost $1.1 million. So it’s pretty much close to it. Not quite a double in inflation, but
And it could be even more because they think about that opportunity costs, you’ve got to return on your money. not, you know, it’s even net of inflation plus opportunity costs. Like that’s even more funds out the door. So they are like deep in the red here and they’ve tried listing this property multiple times, sometimes like 2017. I think a couple of times like in North. I forget how much it was listed for that. Maybe it wasn’t didn’t have that listing price, but then it was also listed early 2024.
for a little less than 500 grand, sometimes 400 something. Maybe it was right around 400. Yeah, I think it was listed for like 395 actually. Now it’s coming back to me. So again, net of inflation, that’s at like 33%. Recoup potentially if they got it at listing price, it went under contract, the buyer bailed and then it was, you know.
the listing had taken off the market again. And now, you know, this seller is trying to offload to a flipper and the current price agreed on it was, I can’t reveal all of it, but it was like less than half. It was less than half of their asking price from the, from the initial listing. And so that just tells you again, I’ve,
made this warning a number of times, like, okay, if you have a recently active listing or an actual active listing and you’re not doing a ton of value add or subdivide on it, like that means that the seller hasn’t gotten any firm offers, not even low ball ones, because they’re willing to, to offload just to get out of it.
by you, the land investor buying at such a reduced price from what’s even listed. So usually I would just like take that price, cut it in half again, and then maybe you might be in range for possibly buying that property. But I’d be so skeptical of that one, multiple listing, not able to offload. You know, basically trying to exit at 10 % of, you know, their inflation adjusted cost of this property, just like brutal loss, brutal. I definitely made some bad investments in the past.
I feel for this guy like that is that’s a nasty, a nasty investment to be bailing out of at this point in time. So, yeah, but that’s kind of the nature of nature of the markets, right? You got to work with what’s possible. So that’s how I’d be thinking about that particular property.
And again, you also have to account for the black mark of this property being listed. Um, you know, just recently for almost a year, not selling, you know, it was pending before. then now it’s going to be listed by you as a new owner again, too. Like that’s just, and you’re not planning on doing any value add that is a really tough situation. So, um, again, like I mentioned, that’s like multiple red flags.
all wrapped into one for a parcel like that. So just keep that in mind and these lessons will guide you true. And especially in a market like this, a couple of other listings that we were working on for months to get these purchased. I probably wouldn’t have bought these in the current environment. It’s just we had so many sunk costs. were working on these literally for like nine months to close.
And have actually some very strong buyer interest right away. It’s just like even last week, interest rates were shooting up. This isn’t South Carolina and land interest rates for conventional financing. It’s like over 10 % now, which was a bigger bump. And so that’s going to put extra pricing pressure and say, yeah, yeah, maybe the tariffs get through. I’m not betting on that. That’s why I’m like, okay, I want to offload these properties.
will work with these buyers. What we’re understanding of these interest rate environments, I want to recapitalize. Doesn’t matter if I break even on some of these smaller deals, just get me out of them ASAP here because I’m not expecting things to change for the better anytime soon. Hope I’m wrong, but that’s not the bet I’m willing to make. So just FYI, even on this most recent data over the last week, even over the last hour to keep in mind here. So
With that serious land dot capital for any of your funding needs, zero cost review of your land deals at land daily diligence, Facebook group obviously is reported on one from today. Ran out of time to review all the deals. we have more coming. Well, not this Thursday because Thursday we have a hot seat virtual unconference session at 1 30 PM central. Hope to see you there with myself, Dave Deniston, Justin Sleva, and then landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to Priceland. I was just meeting with my CTO.
earlier, right before this, and we think we found a really solid LLM model that could reduce a lot of the time needed from the user based on the script that we wrote. I think the LLMs have gotten so much better even over the past few months that this is going to be a pretty interesting direction to take it. More testing to come over like the next 24 hours, but wanted to let you know about our continued progress there.
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