Here's One........???
I am a real estate investor who has never dabbled in purchasing raw land.
I suddenly have the need to acquire a lot of land (for my own home to be built) on the other side of the country.
So the problems existing are these:
1.) I only have the MLS available to me on a national level to find lots for sale (will have to work with a realestate agent)
2.) I don't have anyone in this town to scout for me.
3.) I can afford to make a trip there when I have an appropriate list of lots available.
I guess my question is, what are the best sources of finding available lots besides MLS?? Or are there any?
Why dont you use some real-estate agents in that area to scout some land for you. If you are going to build your house on it, I would think it would be wise to go check out and find out what area you want to be in????
You could spend some time driving around and write down some vacant lot info. Then you could research and send out some letters to the owners. One way to find out the Assessors Parcel Number is to write down the street address and the addresses of the houses are on the left side and right side of the property. Then you can pull up the address of the houses next door to the lot and look at the plot map to find out the APN and see who owns it....
Best Riches,
Jeff Adam
_________________
"The only place success comes before work
is in the dictionary."[ Edited by JeffreyAdam on Date 08/06/2004 ]
You should post what part of the country you are looking at. You might find someone here that might bird-dog for you. I would probably use a realtor until I was familiar with the particular market.
Good luck.
There are several ways of finding land potentially for sale besides the MLS. The methods, however, can be time consuming. After consulting zoning and tax assessor info, tax plat and utility mapping, you can contact owners of specific properties in your target areas. You can also find out from the municipality what properties are currently in the subdivision/development pipeline and contact those owners as well as owners of properties nearby. You can also contact owners of properties that were in the MLS, didn't sell and so are expired and withdrawn listings. Lastly, you can look at the municipality's master or comprehensive plan to get a sense of what's going to be happening where, which properties may be ripe for development, and contact those owners. If you're looking for just 1 lot, maybe this last method wouldn't be worthwhile.
There is some confusion about the "nationwide MLS" www.realtor.com ...
The data is obtained from the local MLS board and sent to the "nationwide MLS" to report.
There is also the local boards have their own public access MLS. Call the local board for the public access MLS website for your search for your residential land to build your home.
Cheryl Lopez [ Edited by cheryllopez on Date 08/12/2004 ]
I would take a few days, go visit the area I was interested in, ask around about land brokers and attnys. I'd ask the attny's for broker recomendations and brokers for Attny recomendations. The names that come up most frequently I'd sit with and tell them what you are looking for.
Find a guy (or woman) who is reasonably competent, sign an agreement so they know you won't go around them. Leave your e-mail address and go home. Let them do the leg work, send you photos, etc.