Been following a vacant lot near me and I'm a little skeptical about the price drops

Someone dropped a house in my area to 225k and I thought the same. Someone bought it and sold it for 310k 2 months later. Someone people get hard up for money.

Get a printout of the past years lot sales
Are they going up/down ?
What have other corner lots sold for ?
Some corner lots buildable areas get eatin up by having front and side street servitudes
Most corner lots have the garage on the side/rear . Do the restictions only allow for a front garage, which would be stupid ?

Maybe some weird servitudes?
is the side street a main entrance street, traffic ?

quote:

---

In your experience what sort of questions should I be asking before I pursue this?

---

Basic things like underground ROW/utilities/pipelines that may limit development, surface rights, title search, etc. After that I wouldn't be overly worried about it. Likely someone who bought it years ago expecting to develop and never did. So now they're just trying to get off of it. $15k reduction in 3 months isn't that outlandish in this market, properties are getting stale and sellers are getting worried it may get worse.

Even at $67k I would go in much lower, knowing that they are showing desperate/flexible pricing.

This is a little out of what you're asking about so not much relevance. There is a golf course in Weatherford Tx (Canyon West). The houses out there are what I would call mid-high end homes. I'd say homes are in the $800k+ range. There are two houses on the 4th hole that got to the end of the framing stage, then they just sat for the last several years. They have the OSB on the roof but no shingles. Tyvek siding on the outside but no masonry done. Wood is absolutely toast at this point. I got paired up with a guy that lived on the course, and he said that they didn't pour any piers for the house and the soil out there called for it. Apparently the builder ran out of money. At this point, anyone buying the lot, is going to have to absolutely tear everything down and start from 0. Builders do run out of money, and especially given the instability over the last few years of building materials, could be anything.

I'd be mostly concerned about if there is any nuisances on neighboring lots, building restrictions for the lot, and like someone else said, is there anything under the ground that's going to prevent you from doing what you want to do. Is the lot an awkward size or similar sized to the neighbors?

Make an offer contingent on feasibility study.

Check with the county/parish to make sure it’s a permittable lot of record.

Wetland delineation study if there are wetlands in the area.

Geotechnical survey if soil conditions are sketchy in the surrounding area.

Verify setbacks to make sure there are no easements or other issues.

Construction costs are out of whack in relation to the value of surrounding housing would be my guess.

If you haven’t already get a copy of the plat, maybe location of easements and/or building lot line restrictions are hurting value.