Worst case scenario is being sued for specific performance, or being sued for the delta between your contract price and the eventual sales price.

Yes, you can sue for specific performance or for damages if your sales price ends up lower than the current contract price. 

Perform your due diligence, calculate potential cash flow and ROI, and if it doesn't meet your buying criteria, walk away from the deal.

Or just perform option 2 and see what happens during the rainy season and winter?

So, I am performing one or more cashout refis after the initial purchase event.

We will wait and see how four multifamily deals that we evaluated (two (2) separate 16 unit properties, a 20 unit and a 32 unit) will perform as things turn and develop.

We get to what the average is by having half of properties perform better than the average, and half performing worse than the average.   

My long winded question is how does land traditionally perform in down markets and who are the people looking to purchase land in down times?

My one older brother even took a tour last week as he can't resist the cheap airline tickets....So yes, dont trust US media....Looking at what they went thru gives me confidence that we will come out of the other end soon too, provided we apply the same self discipline that they exercised....

While the deal is important, and your investors should be able to perform their own underwriting to validate your assumptions, the operator is by far the number one risk.