A land agent wants a 30-month option on acreage I've held since 2016

Run the number on being off market for 42 months. You take $155k over that period against a $1.736M sale. If you think about that $155k as payment for the wait rather than as a deposit, it's roughly $3,700 a month for tying up an asset you're asking $1.7M for. Then subtract taxes and mowing. It isn't nothing, and it's also not a lot for handing someone total control of your timing.

The fix I've seen is making the extensions cost more, not the same, and making at least part of the extension money not credit against price. Right now every extension is free to them in real terms because it all comes back at closing.

Rural land here, and $28k an acre against mid teens comps is the number that would make me sign too fast. Slow down on the comps, though. If a developer is pricing your 62 acres off a transmission corridor and a power study, then the relevant comparison is what other sites near capacity have sold for, not what the farm next door went for. Ask the agent directly what else they've optioned in the county and at what price. They may not tell you, but the way they don't tell you is informative.

You wrote that you have nothing else planned for the land. That's the sentence I'd sit with. If the alternative is another decade of taxes and mowing, an option payment for waiting is not an insult. What I'd want is for the waiting to be finite and for the cooperation clause to have a dollar cap on your side, because rezoning consultants, traffic studies, and a hearing schedule can run real money and "cooperate at your own cost" is an open tab.

Six things I'd mark up on that draft, and get a real estate attorney in your state to do the marking.

One, cap your cooperation obligation in dollars and define what cooperation is. Signing applications as owner is normal. Paying for their entitlement work is not.

Two, the access license needs an insurance requirement, an indemnity running to you, and a restoration obligation for the geotech borings. Environmental drilling on your land with no restoration language is how you inherit a problem.

Three, no liens. Add an express prohibition on their contractors filing against your title and a duty to remove any within a short window. Mechanic's lien rules and how you clear them differ by state.

Four, get a memorandum of option recorded or not recorded on purpose, not by accident. Recording practice for option memoranda varies by state and it affects your title and any financing on the parcel. Decide with counsel which way you want it.

Five, the rezoning condition should have a deadline and a duty to pursue it diligently, otherwise the 30 months is a hold with no requirement that they do anything.

Six, the option payment structure has tax consequences that depend on whether the option is exercised and in what year, and that's a CPA question, not a forum question. Ask before you sign, not after you bank the check.

Reading this to learn, so ignore me if it's off, but does the interconnection condition mean they can walk after 30 months just because a utility study came back with a long queue? If so you're carrying the entire risk of the thing you have no ability to influence.

@plumb yes, that's how a condition like that works, and it's the normal shape of these deals. The developer buys time to find out whether power is available, and the landowner sells that time.

@orchard the version of this I'd try to negotiate is a shorter first period, say 18 months, with extensions that cost more each time and stop crediting to price after the first one. And I'd hold the 40 acres out entirely rather than trade a ROFR for nothing. If they want the assembly they can pay for an option on that too, on the same terms. What I wouldn't do is sign the draft as written because the price per acre is exciting. The price is the part they're happy about.