If you had this land what would you do with it?

[Amber Rose Kandarian]

I recently used my friends software deepblocks.com to do some quick developments on parcels of land that had expired on our mls in California. The first parcel was in Huntington Beach, CA I called the city and figured out exactly what you could build.  I put signs on the property and got lots of calls.  I also got the owner to do seller financing if the buyers needed it.  

I got a 1031 exchange for the Huntington Beach property but they would only pay $600,000 and the owners wanted $700,000. Any ideas on how to get these 3 pieces of land sold?  I feel like I tried everything like adding the attractions in the area.  Any ideas would be great.  Also I thought about trying to create a land buyer list to reach out to but it seemed like allot of the land buyers were people who only bought 1 piece of land so I would hardly call them investors?  Thank you for any advice as I think land is interesting but I haven't found many resources here to solve this problem.  Thank you.

[Scott Mac]

Originally posted by @Amber Rose Kandarian:

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Hi Amber,

If I had anything to do with this I'd (Never shoot from the Hip in So. Calf.), I'd:

1. Get a Brownfeild history on it (it's a empty "Corner" in a long developed part of town in So. Calf.).

2. Get an oilfield map and see if any old oil well heads are on the land. (you should know being a beach area real estate person about the old oil field head issues along the coast).

3. Get an idea if the county/city is allowing building now (there) and if so how long the process to get permits is, and what the likelihood of interference from any "Committee" will be with design, development or business type.

4. Talk to a few other (recent) Huntington Beach Developers and see what their pain points were.

5. Make sure it's not some protected area for a "Bug", Bird", Snail, Amoeba, etc...

6. Analyze the anticipated property tax increase for the development (how likely is it to actually be that amount and how likely is it to be more). 

7. Find out if any Developer paid for Goodies must be thrown the city's way (for this project)--new traffic lights, road widening, water/sewer size increases, etc...

8. Try to sense if there will be close in neighbor (and other effected neighbor) lawsuits about "Noise" "Increased Traffic" "Views" "Butterfly Habitats" or other "Vindictive Things" that are not stated but will be filed under the listed items in order to slow your development down to a freeze and cost you a ton of legal fees for years" (Because some local people do not want the area developed for their own personal reasons).

9. Etc,.....

Good Luck!