The institutional investors have switched to buying land and building new for their portfolios which tells me that they see a drop coming and are not placing capital until it does but they need to keep staff and deploy some money so their investors do not get mad that they are holding too much cash.  

I have my eyes on a house on enough land for 2 houses.  

Personally I would not buy a house with a poor credit history especially on land contract.

Run in to it all the time on waterfront property, dunno I’ve seen it on dry land. 

As for self managing, see if you can find a local land lord group.

@Leland James I met a cash partner at a local land lord association in the Berwyn neighborhood where I invest.

I want to set up an LLC for my current rentals and possibly land trusts? 

I invest in C properties and some units are left just as nice as the tenant(s) entered them and some are a wreck (my one-bedroom apartments tend to stay in the best shape - larger properties with kids typically get wrecked to some degree). 

To all you land developers out there, are you able to finance soft costs (civil engineering and architecture)? 

Here are basic stats on single-family home sales for March 2019 for the City of Austin and the greater Austin area:The latest rewrite of the Austin land use code, known as CodeNEXT, has been scrapped.