Failed Attempts to Sell Land for 3 Years

[Bob S.]

hello! haven't posted in a long time so please be gentle...

my wife and i purchased a piece of land 3 years ago to build on (for ourselves). instead of building, and due to the madness of "covid" times, we ended up buying a house instead.

we've been attempting to sell our land for 3 years now and have had 5 contractual offers. 2 of the buyers ducked out during attorney review for valid reasons (the land is near a landfill that's defunct), 2 because "they didn't know building was so expensive" (come on, do your research), and 1 recent offer backed out three days before closing!

i'm wondering if we're "doing something wrong" here. we have a strong RE agent and attorney team. they do everything they can; maximum exposure, covering our a**ses, etc... and deals keep falling through.

it's a very nice (subjective, i know) piece of land (1 acre) in residential chicagoland.

does anybody have any tips to get it sold? we have until spring of 2025 until our balloon loan either has to be refinanced or paid off (we got this loan because we intended to build, of course) and now i feel like it's a ticking time bomb.

we conducted "clean and satisfactory" (no issues whatsoever to build) soil and foundation tests and provided those to every buyer. it seemed (not quite sure here) like they backed out once they reviewed the tests - yet there is nothing negative in them. we will not be providing these tests moving forward (as we had to do them ourselves and feel that each buyer should do their due diligence moving forward!) and modified our listing to remove these offerings.

thoughts anybody? help! TIA :)