How to Approach a Neighbor to Buy Land

Video Transcript

"So your neighbor has a piece of property that you're interested in buying. My name is Alicia Lowther, licensed real estate professional with Realty Executives, discussing how to approach your neighbor to buy land. The first step should be to confirm ownership. You want to know who the owner of record is. This information is public and many counties and locations have this information online. It's often housed with the tax accessors office or the county courthouse. If you're not sure you can always call the city and they'll point you in the direction of where you need to go to confirm ownership. Once you confirm who the owner is then you know who you need to talk to, and who eventually you're going to be presenting your offer to. Get to know them, develop a relationship if you don't already have one, build rapport, ask them how long they've owned the property, ask them why they bought the property. Could be they bought it for an investment and are now ready to sell. So that makes your job much easier. Begin dropping hints, hint that you're interested in purchasing. Put out feelers and gage their response. If they look at you with a sheer look of horror, you know you've got your work cut out for you. On the other hand they might be very interested. Then what you'll want to do is gather market research. Identify what today's market value is for that piece of property and have in mind a price that you want to pay. You could always let them, let them know you're interested in purchasing and let them set the price. Or it might be too high so what you could do is just go to them, let them know you want to purchase it, give them a price, might need a little bit of negotiating, but you might be pleasantly surprised and they'll accept it. Then you'll need to speak to a real estate attorney to have the contract drawn up. My name is Alicia Lowther, licensed real estate professional with Realty Executives discussing how to approach your neighbor to buy land."