Parking Lot Investing in DFW

[Tamara Paz]

BP- my name is Tamara and I live in the DFW area. I've spent the last year following the real estate market and learning more about it, finally feel ready to make the jump to invest (especially since the deals are coming out to light). 

To start, I would like to own a parking lot since it's less hands on than other CRE properties. However, having difficulty finding the price per sq ft of parking spaces. Does someone know a range of how much $/sq ft a parking space costs in a busy area say downtown Dallas vs non busy area? Additionally, the costs on installing parking meters please?

My model won't make sense until I have the land cost figured out :) thanks in advance BP!

Also if you know of anyone selling a parking lot in DFW send me a message please

[Bruce Lynn]

My wife has probably been looking for a parking lot for 10+ years.  We found two in 10 years.  One in downtown Carrollton and one in downtown Dalllas.  The one in Dallas was a partial interest, so our attorney advised against it.  Still have some regrets on that one, but probably good advice from him.   We weren't fast enough on the one in Carrollton.   Economics on both probably didn't make sense.  It's a bet on the future appreciation, maybe generates enough income in the meantime to pay taxes and insurance, chances are no cash flow.  Not sure if you need to think about budget or not, but downtown will be very very expensive.

I don't think there are enough lots that trade that there would be any time of accurate or even ballpark pricing.

I don't know anything about it, but there does seem to be some good demand in self storage parking and also in truck parking.  Self storage trades fairly frequently.   That's probably not a pure parking play though.   I don't see many truck parking spaces for sale, but I'm sure there is some, or you could create your own.  Buy a lot, install fence and lighting and gate access.