The county downzoned me in year three of holding 14 acres

The part I can't get past is six years of nothing. I want income without a second job, and this is the opposite, it's a bill without a job. Did you ever look at the $84k and think about what a small rental would have thrown off over those same six years, or was the flip business covering you well enough that it never stung?

Run it properly and it's still good. $84,000 in, $7,900 of carry spread over six years, $252,000 out. That's roughly a 3x on basis and something in the low twenties annualized if I put the carry in the right years. My question is what you compared it to in 2019. If your flip capital was turning at 20 percent a couple of times a year, then this parcel had to beat that, and for the two dead years after the builder walked it clearly wasn't. Did you have a number in your head where you'd have dumped it, or were you just going to hold forever?

The downzone is the part beginners should read twice. Minimum lot size is the single lever that decides what a builder will pay you per acre, and a county can move it at a regular Tuesday meeting with a notice in the paper. You survived because sewer arrived and made 3 acre minimums irrelevant on that ground, since served lots usually get treated differently in the ordinance. If sewer had stayed a mile off, you'd have owned 14 acres worth four lots instead of a dozen and your $268,000 becomes maybe $130,000. Did you ever go sit in the planning meetings, or did you find out about the change from the buyer?

How did you find it? That's my whole blocker right now. I've got a shortlist of counties and no idea how anyone gets from a map to a specific parcel with a willing seller.

Nobody asks about the six years in the middle so I will. Who was watching it? I manage property for a living and raw ground gets dumped on, gets ridden on, gets people parking a camper at the back of it. Did the hay tenant effectively act as your eyes, and what did you do about the liability side of having a stranger's tractor on your dirt every summer?

Move one variable. The sewer extension slips out of the capital plan and lands in 2029 instead of 2023. You're now at eleven years, carry is maybe $16,000 total, and the builder market may or may not look like it does now. Same purchase, same foresight, and the result is mediocre. That tells me the underwriting question on land banking isn't the exit price, it's how many extra years of carry you can absorb before the answer changes. What number of years were you actually funded for in 2019, honestly? Because I suspect it was open-ended because your flip income was open-ended, and most people reading this don't have that.

@sextant's point is the one I'm chewing on from the capital side. If harrow had brought in a partner for half the $84k, that partner spends six years with no distribution and a hold that got extended twice. I've seen how people behave in year four of nothing. Harrow, did you ever consider taking outside money on this, and if you had, what would you have promised them about timing?

The $500 hay lease is doing more work in this story than the $268,000 sale price. Ag valuation is what kept your taxes from being a real number, and in most states that treatment comes with a rollback that claws back several years of the difference the moment the use changes or the classification lapses. People lose it by letting the lease go for one season. So the questions I'd ask: was the lease renewed in writing every year, who filed the annual application with the assessor if your state requires one, and did the rollback get settled at closing or did you eat it? Also worth knowing whether your buyer's contract shifted it to them, because that's negotiable and a lot of sellers don't ask. Rules differ state to state, so anyone copying this needs their own attorney on it.

Six years of paying taxes on dirt while running a renovation crew is the part I'd have failed at, so respect for just leaving it alone.