How to Buy Land From People Who Do Not Want to Sell

Video Transcript

"How to buy land from people who do not want to sell. This is something that we run into quite often. People who are interested in a property possibly because they live next door to a piece of land that is not for sale, possibly because it's something they drive by everyday and see a piece of land they really like. Whatever the reason is, there's certainly ways to get in touch with a seller of any particular piece of property. The seller's name and the information regarding this property is public knowledge so it is fairly easy to get in touch with a seller whether or not they're selling their property or not. The most, the easiest way to do this is through the registry of deeds in your hometown. Here in Massachusetts there are websites that have all this information, mass.gov is the big state website that will take you to the registry of deeds in your county. From there you can research the property, there's maps, there's lots of different ways to find the actual property online. Most likely you know the address or you know the address of something close by that you can key in and find and find an overview or find the actual map of the property. From there you need to research the deed. You need to find out who owns the place. Now from there you can do a couple of different things. I always suggest to my clients that the, and this is a service that I perform as a Realtor for my clients, to get in touch with these particular sellers by mail. And this is usually the best way to do it. You can draft a letter, let them know what your intentions are, let them know that you are interested in. You can even go as far as to if you really like the property and you've done a lot of research on them, you can even go ahead and make some sort of an offer in that letter and just let them know this is what you'd be willing to pay. A lot of times somebody might not be interested in selling but if they see a dollar amount, they might be interested really quickly. The other thing you can do is look them up in the phone book and give them a call. Just see if this is something that they'd be interested in. Have a conversation with them, ask them if they'd be willing to sell. Let them know what your intentions are, this is probably a very important thing to do. You want to be really straightforward with them if you're looking to build a house, they'll probably be able to tell you or not, whether or not you are able to on that lot. It might be something that you might not be able to do. So look it up in the registry of deeds, you're going to find a lot about the property right there and get in touch with the seller and just ask them a lot of times people are willing to sell but they just haven't really come around to it yet."