The housing and land market continued to be on fire throughout the fall with no signs of slowing and yet everything told us to pause and hold fast. We made the decision to wait until after November 3rd before making any major movement financially. This was the first exercise in patience in the process and one we have no regrets for opting to do.
This isn’t a statement of politics but we all know the election continued to be volatile, to say the least, and with previously mentioned unknowns we decided that though we would risk losing the property, to stand fast, and wait for it. We reached out to the realtor in early October to inform her we were still interested in the property but wanted to wait a little bit to confirm our decision – as well as keep us informed if any other offers came up.
The months that passed since our first visit felt like we were in a holding pattern waiting and watching all fronts: was the land still there? Is the market going to crash? What will happen to the election? What will happen ‘after’ the election, and around and around… We were naive to think that 200 years of elections would serve as a guidepost and that November 3rd would provide us a clear picture of the future of our government. However, the next week found us with a little more than faith that the process of checks and balances within our Constitution would somehow prevail, and, with all other indicators moving in a positive direction, we decided to move cautiously forward.
In preparation for our offer, we pulled a list of 25 plus vacant land properties in the area and reviewed the acreage listed. We divided the acreage with the total price which gave us an average acreage amount to compare against our property. Next, we reviewed our property’s benefits with what we had seen during our search, such as the potential views, river proximity, privacy, and the wooded lot. We found that the asking price was still a few hundred more an acre than the average we established. We then dug into other considerations like last known land survey, no established road, electric, well and septic test not available. Most other properties listed had easier access to all of the above or one or more easily attainable. While we expected surprises in this type of purchase, we knew each item that came up adds to the future costs of land development. We took all of these considerations, paired with other traditional ones to consider such as ‘time on the market’ and ‘never pay full asking,’ and put together our offer.
The offer was nearly twenty-thousand below ‘asking.’ This was likely not to be accepted, but we also knew it wasn’t up to us to accept; so if the seller said yes, then there was no harm in asking (and better for us). Unfortunately this was not the case, the sellers did counter as expected, but to a price nearer to the actual listing. To avoid further back and forth we called and spoke to the realtor directly. We increased our offer, but only slightly, with a clear statement this was a final offer as we were willing to wait or move on.
Our research and deliberate approach helped us feel confident that what we were offering was more than fair, and kept us from being caught up in the land frenzy we were seeing all around us. We also had to be comfortable with walking away, while hard in an immediate gratification environment, it was something we were both aligned to do.
48 hours later we had our answer…we just purchased 67 acres of forest!!!! So we thought…
Tenir Bon House 