Getting Your First Deal: Which Direction Should You Take? Part IV: Which Stage Will You Use For Your Sale?

Since I’ve taken you this far, I’ve decided to take you all the way! I can’t leave you hanging at this point can I? Okay, let’s re-cap. You have gotten your first deal, you have priced your unit(s) and now we are going to discuss what stage of selling you are in and how this will affect you and more importantly, how it will affect the sale.

The first stage I am going to talk about is something I like to call the purse stage. The purse stage is where you sell it without any engineering or any plans whatsoever. You just have this piece of land, you want to sell it, and someone else can do whatever he or she wants to with it. That is going to bring you the lowest return. Again, not a bad stage, but this is the stage which will get the least amount of money.

Then the next one I want to talk about it is where you've got an idea, and maybe you go to an architect or an engineer and he sketches out something very preliminarily based on the property lines. And let’s take it a step further because you run it by the planning department or the zoning department and they say yes that is probably going to be possible (just from an informal standpoint) but we are certainly not going to give you any kind of approvals on it. We just think that if you came in with something like that, it would probably fly. Come on folks-that is worth a little bit more but not a whole lot more than just the raw land itself.

Let’s take it to the next level people. When you spend the actual money to get the engineering done, and have a more formalized site plan, and you make the application for the permits, that is when it gets to be a whole lot more...a whole lot more valuable. Then when you finally get the approvals it is ready for building permits (not just zoning permits but it is ready for building permits) and you can start putting a shovel in the ground that is when the dirt is its most valuable. So think about your options and make the best decision-the one that works best for you not only personally but one which will yield the best return.