My 1st post and question on purchasing neighbor's vacant land

[Patricia Persico]

I'm new to Bigger Pockets, and hope to learn a lot here. I scanned through all the forum topics, to see if I could find something that will help me figure out how to approach the owners of the vacant land next to a home I'm purchasing, for my own use.

I'm on a fixed income, so money is tight, but I want to get into investing, and get to the point where I have something worthwhile to leave as an inheritance for my children and their families. I didn't set out with a plan to buy this home, but it just happened. I started out looking for land, since many advertisers claim they'll do a seller carry, no credit check, and I could easily afford to do that. But, when I found out how much it costs to have electricity, and other utilities brought in to the land, I ventured into looking for cheap homes around that cost, and found one. Obviously a fixer. So, it will be a fun hobby.  Then, in a couple years or so, sell it, and do another.

The home I bought, sits way back on the neighbors property line, leaving a very small backyard patio area, and a large front yard.  The lot in back of my home is vacant land, as well as the one next door. I'd like to pick up either one of these lots to be able to expand what we want to do with the house.

Both owners live in other states, and through many online searching found they're age 63 & older, with kids that now have families of their own too.  These owners have owned the land since records began with the county, in the 80's, showing unknown dates prior. But they've always been in the family.  The neighbor next door, is an attorney, in California, and the one behind us, looks to be a Real Estate investor in Seattle.  Both sound like it would be hard for me to convince I'd like to buy there land, which has all utilities running to it, that they most likely want to leave as an inheritance to their kids, who may like the idea of having land, or a home, within an hour of Las Vegas, NV.  So, I don't want to talk myself out of asking either of them, if they'd consider selling, but it sure seems I'm finding this difficult on how to ask and have them work with me.

I found lots of topics on buying homes here, through BP, but this is bare land.  The home I'm buying has $25K equity already built in, per the lender's appraisal, but any money I do have, is going to fix up this home so it will be worth even more, and look a lot better too.  I just don't have the money to buy land, unless it's a seller carry.

Any suggestions on how I can approach the neighboring land owners to see if I can somehow buy their land they've never built on?  I found phone #'s for each, through googling, but it's their business lines.