There are four lots on paper and I still can't price the two in the back

Beginner question since I've only ever bought a house with a hookup at the curb. When you sell a 9.5 acre lot to a retail buyer, are they expecting a well and septic already in, or do they drill it themselves? I ask because that seems like the difference between a $76,000 lot and a much more expensive lot.

@wren I had the same thought reading it. Orchard, is there any way this thing pays anything while you wait? Hay lease, timber, a hunting lease? I don't love the idea of writing checks for taxes for three years on the hope that the back two lots sell.

Your cost list is missing holding. The moment those lots are recorded as separate parcels the assessor is looking at four assessments instead of one, and in a lot of states the agricultural or forestry classification comes off when the use changes or the parcel gets too small, which can be a rollback bill on top of the higher bill. That varies state by state, so check yours with the assessor directly.

Then add time. If the four lots take 30 months to clear, you're carrying taxes, mowing the drive, and your money is sitting there. Nobody puts that line in the spreadsheet and it's usually the line that turns a good spread into a fine one.

Your gross spread is $304,000 against $159,600, so $144,400 before any work. Subtract survey $11,400, soils $3,600, recording and legal $2,500, and selling costs of 7 percent on $304,000, which is $21,280. That leaves about $105,600 before the access question and before holding.

The access question is where the range lives. A shared gravel drive to serve two interior lots is priced by length, base depth, and whether the county wants a culvert and a paved apron at the county road. On 38 acres of wooded ground you could be looking at anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a rough drive to a number several times that if the county treats it as a road serving lots rather than a private driveway. Get the county's written standard for access to a newly created lot before you price anything, because that single document decides whether your four lot plan is a survey exercise or a small construction project.

The whole case rests on the $7,500 to $8,500 per acre retail comp holding for lots that sit behind other lots on a shared drive. Interior lots on an easement usually trade under road frontage lots in the same township. If the back two are worth $6,500 an acre instead of $8,000, your gross drops about $28,000 and your remaining margin has to absorb the drive on top of that.

On the minor plat point, treat a phone conversation as a lead and not as an approval. Ask for the ordinance section and the application checklist in writing. Subdivision thresholds and what triggers full review differ by county and by state.

@thicket I'd push back a little on the holding cost being the deal killer. Four vacant lot tax bills in a rural township is not four apartment buildings. What I'd worry about instead is that orchard is carrying four separate things to sell with one of him. In small multifamily every unit I add teaches me something about my own capacity, and four lot sales stretched over three years is four sets of buyers, four sets of tire kickers, four closings.

Orchard, do you actually want to be in the business of selling lots for three years, or do you want to own land?

Minimum lot width at the building line is the number I'd chase before anything else. 640 feet of frontage sounds like plenty until you find the county wants 200 feet of frontage per lot, and then your two frontage lots are two lots and there's no room for a third access point for the drive. I've read three county ordinances this month and all three handled the drive-serving-two-lots case differently. One of them called it a road and wanted a bond.

Also worth asking whether the ordinance counts the easement strip against the acreage of the lot it crosses.

What does the two lot version actually net? You've given us the four lot math in detail and one sentence on the alternative. If two frontage lots of 9.5 acres sell at $76,000 each that's $152,000 against a purchase you'd be negotiating down, plus you still own 19 acres. That doesn't look obviously worse to me, it looks slower and much less risky, and you'd have learned the process on two lots instead of four.

My other question is whether anyone has offered on the whole 38 as-is. If it's been listed a while, has the seller had a single offer, and at what number? That tells you something about the bulk market you're buying into.