Buying Vacant Property in Residential Area in Hawaii

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Hi everyone,

Does anyone buy vacant land? I've recently found a vacant lot just under 5,000 sq ft in wahiawa whitmore village area. The property Owner is interested in selling it but he wants the amount listed on the Tax Assesors website which is $321k. I know that he bought the property for $200k back in 2007 through a quitclaim deed and currently lives in the property next to it. I've actually come across several vacant lots with similar situations but don't quite know how to negotiate it because my understanding is that banks don't lend that much for vacant land and I have zero experience working with hard money or private lenders. 

Ive researched it on oahure and the comps in that area were $350k on the low end and $700k on the high end. Houses don't usually stay on the market that long in that area as it shows most property's sold or went into escrow within 30 days of being listed. The differences is that those property's already had houses on them that were in fair/average condition and some of those property's were bigger by up to 2,000 sq ft. 

If anyone can offer any advice or guidance on how to go about negotiating this deal or can point me in the direction of a podcast or book on how I can learn more about this types of deal I would greatly appreciate it. In the meantime I'll continue to read through the forums and links here on BP.

Mahalo in advance.