Land for sale for CHEAP, can I do anything with it?

[Nichole Wall]

Hi everyone, I have a question about a chunk of land I found for $25,000. The original asking price was $49,000. He bought it 10 years ago for $32,000. There's never any appreciation in my area so I bet it's still worth the same. This guy has to sell. But I know nothing about land development and was wondering if this is something I should get into because my thought is if no one else is buying it (off the MLS) maybe it's not worth anything to do with.

The land has 37 acres to it. There are 3 parcels. 24 acres are wetlands being one of them. The rest is 12 acres of open land. I'm not sure if all 12 acres are cleared out but there is a sizable chunk that is. The idea was this guy wanted to build his house on this property because it's secluded and it has a beautiful view of the changing scenery from the wetland. I don't know if there is well and septic on it. One of the little buildings there does have running water. There's 3 little buildings here. 

It's sits about 5 miles from a school. Here are some of my thoughts...

-Turn it into a mobile home/RV park for the local fishing around the area (Salmon River).

-Turn it into a mobile home park in general

-Put a modular on it and lease option it

-Put a modular on it and sell it

I know that the area would have to be checked for zoning and I don't think that would be a problem at all. Just wondering if there's some major road blocks with these thoughts. Let me know, thank you!

[Belinda Lopez]

You'll need to really do your due diligence on the restrictions and building costs for an RV or Mobile Home Park.  Most municipalities have restrictions on both and might require some hefty costs to build out.  Septic/sewer for multifamily is a whole other process that make the costs for building RV/MHP not so attractive for investors.  Make an appointment with the local zoning board/person to discuss your plans and see if it's even feasible.  There are also some great park consultants that can help with feasibility studies as well.

Here is Texas, we've run into some major road blocks b/c many of the local water districts are out of capacity for mutlifamily. So even though the zoning is okay to build a park, we can't get public water or sewer service and the costs and space for a commercial septic system make it less attractive. Even getting a well would take months to get through the permit process.  We estimate about $15 - $20k per pad site to build and we are allowed 7 mobile homes per acre but could get twice that if we did RV spaces.  Then there are the road building rules.

Are you planning on running the park yourself?  or hiring out?