This episode details a near-miss on a $70K Tennessee infill lot that appeared solid until deep zoning analysis revealed a 50-foot width requirement measured at the building line setback. With street frontage measuring exactly 50 feet and the lot narrowing toward the rear, the property sat dangerously close to unbuildable status—a mistake that could have created a worse loss than any previous deal.
Key Takeaways:
- Building Line Width Measurements Create Hidden Traps The zoning required 50 feet of width measured 25 feet back from street frontage at the building line—not at street frontage itself—making aerial measurements insufficient for buildability confirmation.
- Three-Month Zoning Changes Don’t Guarantee Safety While the planning department indicated the confusing regulation would likely be removed after a three-month approval process, betting $70K on an uncertain regulatory change creates unacceptable risk.
- Survey Timing Balances Risk Against Speed Paying $1,500 for a survey that measures the specific building line width before the zoning change risks upfront capital but could enable faster closing if the lot clears 50 feet versus waiting three months for regulatory clarity.
Recent painful losses on Tennessee infill lots drove extraordinarily high diligence thresholds—this property would have closed with multiple funders before this zoning issue was caught through direct planning department calls.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. So today I wanted to talk about another, Gold line catch on an infill lot that we were set to fund, and highly relevant. you know, the day I’m recording this, had a guest post go out on our tipster about a couple of the infill lots that we have lost money on.
or the two largest losses we’ve ever had in land. Luckily, they’re few and far between, but those ones have hurt. And one is not fully closed yet. It’s just on paper, we’re expecting to eat this 10K loss on it. Both of them were infill lots, primarily related to price per acre not being relevant. I know I’ve talked about this often. And to jump into the issue we were encountering with this lot is that
It’s also in Tennessee, so an area that we’ve got burned pretty hard in, at least escaped by the skin of our teeth with that auction property this year. And so my threshold for doing anything in fill or anything in Tennessee is like extraordinarily high from very recent pain. But this lot had a very solid underlying market to it, seemed to be at the right price. There was a…
significant lean on the property. So huge financial motivation for the buyer to move on from this property is actually not making anything. It’s just going down to paying, paying down the lean from the bank, which luckily agreed to a partial release here. So, you know, kind of a nice setup. It’s been maintained nice and clear other multifamily lots that are selling in the area, people moving out of Nashville. There’s a lot more growth in this particular area, close to Nashville.
had a very solid realtor who had just had a similar property go under contract in like two weeks ago within one day of being listed. Full price offers are like, okay, this is like a pretty interesting market here. We think we have major downside protection, certainly won’t lose money on the deal was the thinking. But, you know, again, diligence is not complete until the wire is at the door, out the door. So the main thing that was really sticking out to me was
you know, it’s a pretty narrow lot. And so I wanted to understand the zoning more and what were the setbacks? Is there anything we should understand about this zoning? Plus we didn’t have a survey on file. The most recent one was from 1984 and it was pretty hard to read. So the intention was, okay, let’s get an extension with the seller first just to get a new survey. So we better understand this because when we first looked at the zoning, looked like the
lot needed to be 50 foot, 50 feet wide in order to allow for any building on the property. And I didn’t know whether that was at street frontage or not, because looking at the street frontage, was like almost exactly 50 feet roughly. But again, if you’re using aerial measurements, land ID, if you’re even slightly off with your calculation, you could come too short, a little bit too long.
So getting a survey in this case would just make a lot of sense because if we mess that up, like the lot might not be viable for building. But then I had my team go in further and I’m like, we need it. We should understand this further. Let’s call the planning and zoning department. Let’s figure out, you know, this 50 foot, um, width requirement. that related to street frontage or is it, you know, the average width of the full lot? Because the lot kind of narrows the further you go deep into the property.
So I had some concern about that. And then the zoning department was like, okay, it’s 50 foot with requirement at the point of the building line. So wherever you’re putting your building, you know, the very, the part closest to the street frontage is what’s being counted. and the setback for the front of lot is 25 feet. So you gotta go back 25 feet and then measure the building.
with line at that point. And so I was roughly calculating again, the lot kind of narrows the further it goes back, you know, using the aerial software and like it was right on the line. I mean, we’re again, it could have been like 48 and a half feet, 49 and a half feet, a little over 50 feet, but it was so close that it would be so foolhardy to invest in that property without having a survey.
And to jump back to the planning department, we were on the line with them. They’re like, yeah, it’s a confusing requirement. The town is growing. We have this part of the zoning for this, you know, our, our two zoning expected to be removed. After it goes through approval from the planning board and then the eventual city approval, it’s probably going to be like a three month process to do that. We’re expecting to have it removed because it’s just too confusing for people.
but it’s not guaranteed. So, you know, a very risky bet would be like, okay, it seems like it’s heading in the direction where the regulation is going to be removed and we could just buy this property and try to exit it. But if it doesn’t turn out that way, all of a sudden it could be an unbuildable property, especially if the survey came back where the building line area was
you know, sub 50 feet because it is right on that margin. So in our mind, we’re like, okay, you know, best case if the seller is amenable and who knows they’re kind of at the behest of their bank, they could push the or we could extend this out another three months. We had already bought another month. We were supposed to close in like a few days here. Um, but you know, cause we were going to have to get a survey done, but now it’s like,
with this questionable zoning, I’d rather have the full three months. Let’s get full clarity on that. So we have a kind of the lowest risk position possible. And at the same time, we already got a quote for the survey, 1,500 bucks for like a two to three week time turnaround. But if we were going to do the survey prior to this zoning change going through, I would only want to do it if they could.
firm, hey, they can measure 25 foot setback and then do another, you know, measurement for where the building line would be. It’s kind of a unique request for a boundary survey. I’m not sure if the survey would do that. So we’re still waiting to figure that out with them. We haven’t put any money down, but if they’re not going to do that, then for sure we’re going to wait. Okay. Three months extended out already talked to the land investor Ross’s deal, um, to, uh, to handle that.
But if the surveyor is willing to do that, then we have to kind of risk. Okay. Is it worth risking 1500 bucks to get the survey done? Because if it turns out in our favor that there’s still at least 50 feet of width at that point, then we could go ahead and purchase the property anyway, regardless of the zoning change. And if it wasn’t, then we kind of hope that the zoning change works in our favor three months down the line, but you know, at worst we’re possibly out 1500 bucks.
To try to move things a little bit faster. So that’s the calculus here waiting to hear back from the survey company, but Again, you got it. You got to turn over every single rock for these infill lots. So yeah, we’ve got burned. We’ve lost money. We’ve felt the pain so You know this property was set to be funded, you know both by us and some others before us so like, you know, we caught the DD at the end here and I’m just learned from
and you gotta learn from your pain where to turn over all those other rocks. Like this is getting pretty deep in the weeds, right? This question related to zoning and doing the proper measurements here. But you really, really have to be certain that you are nailing every last item and not getting caught somewhere because yeah, worst case scenario, you spend 70K and all of sudden that property width,
is not 50 feet, like what if it comes back at 49 feet and 10 inches or whatever, and the zoning change does not pass. And so all of a sudden you’re stuck with an unbuildable lot, effectively useless, right? So again, infill lots, if you lose out on your specific buyer type, you no recourse, you’re screwed. And we could be staring down an even worse loss than we ever considered for these other infill lots. So we caught ourselves for this one.
To stay focused out there. Don’t get caught. It’s a tough market for many land investors I keep talking to other folks again some folks doing better than others Maybe only a handful or like, know better than ever at the moment But I think again on average folks are having a tougher time at the moment. So you got to really stay focused and Don’t
don’t make a catastrophic mistake that could put you out of business. So key things to keep in mind, SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs, Land Daily Diligence Facebook group just got off one earlier today for zero cost review of your land deals and landpricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Subscribe and share, talk to you soon, bye.
