Tips for Buying City-Owned Real Estate

[David Friedman]

Hello BP! I hope everyone is celebrating the holidays with their family and friends!

I am currently interested in purchasing a city-owned property, but before I send the city a letter of interest I would like to see if anyone on BP has experience purchasing property from a city (Or government body) and what tips they may have. This should be a general discussion, but I do have some specific questions I'd like answered as well:

- Is there anything that I must include in my letter of interest? Anything extra that will make them more interested in selling the property to me?

- If there are other interested parties, what will the purchase process look like?

- Should I let them know that I own land bordering their land?

- The land has a building on it that the city was planning to tear down. Should I purchase the property at a discount and offer to demolish the building? How much is the cost to demolish a building? Do I need contractor bids or is there a general rule of thumb price?

I appreciate all of your answers. Keep in mind this is California. The only builders that I know on here are @Jay Hinrichs and @Karen Margrave (I am having a hard time quoting Karen's name)

[Karen Margrave]

@David Friedman  We've never purchased any land from a City. However; when we were in Shasta County, CA, the City of Redding would list their surplus property online, and allow potential buyers to submit offers. Of course it wasn't a simple process, the offers all had to be in by a certain time, and then the City Council would accept one. 

However; before a property could be sold, it had to be advertised to the public, allowing everyone an opportunity to bid. In order to be declared surplus, the City would submit the properties they had no need of, and have the City Council vote to make them surplus, allowing them to be sold. 

Though we never bought any of the land, at one time we were looking at some, and actually drew a map showing highest and best use for the land and layout of the parcels (the property was also being rezoned) The City ended up using our map (we allowed them to) and they sold a few years later to another developer.