A 1961 mineral severance nearly ate a 24k assignment on 31 acres

The part worth asking about is the buyer's side. At 82k for 31 acres, that's 2,645 an acre, and the buyer still has road, culverts, and a perc test on each lot before anything sells. On a wooded tract with any real grade, that road is rarely cheap. Was there ever a budget behind his number, or did a four day yes get taken at face value?

Your 24,000 sits inside the buyer's residual, and that's the assumption the whole result rests on. He pays 82,000, then carries survey, road, perc testing and marketing time before a single lot closes. If retail lot prices in that corridor move down 10 percent, his budget compresses by more than your fee, and the next 31 acre tract you bring him gets bid at 71 instead of 82. You already found that number, which is useful information about where his floor actually is.

On the mineral severance: a severed mineral estate doesn't get cured, it gets managed. What you obtained is a contractual surface accommodation from the current fractional owners. Whether that document binds their successors, whether it's recordable, and what the mineral owner's implied surface rights are without it all turn on state law and on the exact wording, so an attorney licensed in that state has to be the one reading it. Do not assume the waiver you got travels with the land.

The extension mechanics matter as much as the mineral work. 500 as nonrefundable consideration for 21 days only holds if the amendment is executed by everyone with an interest on title and references the original contract by date.

The part that was luck is finding five of six fractional holders in five weeks. A dissolved corporate mineral owner, or a family spread over four generations, runs months. Price that risk into your inspection period rather than into your fee, since the inspection period is the thing you control.

How does an offer number like 58 get built? A duplex spreadsheet is straightforward, but raw acreage is harder to underwrite because two comparable sales that actually mean anything are difficult to find. Are closed sales the base, listings, or is it more a matter of working backwards from what a splitter would likely pay?

Day 40, minerals still open, buyer says he's out. What actually happens to you? You said you had someone at 71. Does the seller take 58 minus your problem, or does the deal just die and you eat the 500?

I ask because the ceiling I keep hitting is exactly this. One buyer isn't a buyer list, it's a coincidence that worked.

So all in you were 2,100 of real money against a 24,000 fee. That's the cleanest cost stack I've seen posted here. What I want to know is the stuff that didn't hit your card. Deed room copies, mileage out to the tract, phone time on six mineral holders. Did you ever count hours?

Five weeks chasing a fractional mineral estate is scope creep with a different hat on. Same shape too. The task you scoped was "confirm title," and the task you performed was "assemble six signatures from strangers who owe you nothing." Nobody prices the second one when they write the offer.

Which list did this come off? You said absentee out of state owner. Was it a straight assessor pull filtered for owner mailing address in another state, or did you layer tax delinquency on top? And how many pieces did the batch that produced this one deal actually contain?

The question worth asking is whether this is repeatable or a single hit. One campaign, one deal. Three campaigns would be the minimum before crediting the mail rather than an unusually good parcel.

The five week signature chase is the one piece of this that is usually worth paying someone else to do. Did you run it yourself the whole way, and at that hour count would you do it again, or would you hand it to a title abstractor next time and take the bill?

Testing the buyer's side since @gregpowell66 raised it. Six 5 acre lots off 31 acres, call it five sellable after road and setbacks. At 82,000 of land plus say 60,000 of road and survey and testing, he is at 142,000 into five lots, 28,400 a lot before any carry or commission. If those lots retail at 45 to 55 in that corridor he is fine. At 38 he is not. So the 82 was underwritten off his retail lot price, whether either of you said so. Did you know his lot pricing before you named 82, or did he name it?

Sitting for my license exam and this thread is doing more for me than the course. One thing I don't understand: you marketed a contract on a parcel you didn't own to a buyer. Where's the line between that and needing a license? I've read that it depends on the state and on how the marketing is worded, which is not an answer I can act on.

@ryanmck27, that line is real and it is state specific, and several states have moved on it in the last few years, so an attorney in the state where the dirt sits is the only reliable read. @priya_n21, the document worth examining is the extension amendment. Did it reopen the inspection period or only push the closing date? Those are very different pieces of paper. If it only moved closing, that was 21 days with earnest money hard and a mineral holder who had not signed. Also, was the surface waiver recorded before the buyer funded, or delivered at closing as a side document that now lives in a folder somewhere?

The interesting detail is that the mineral issue only surfaced because the end buyer's lender asked. A cash buyer very likely closes on that tract without ever pulling the 1961 deed forward, and then finds out in year three when someone knocks on the door. Lender conditions do free diligence for everyone in the chain, and here the price of it was five weeks.

I'd have kept it. 58,000 for 31 acres on pavement in a county absorbing spillover is a hold, and you sold the appreciation to a man who's going to make 60k on it over 18 months.

I understand why you didn't. You wanted cash and you wanted out. Just naming the trade, because the fee looks big next to the 500 and small next to the tract.

Hours, please. Anyone who prices work in labor wants that figure first. Five weeks of phone calls sounds like 40 hours from here, and you will probably tell me it was 12.

Back taxes. You mentioned two bills a year and a detached owner. Was he current, and did you confirm it at the treasurer rather than taking his word? I've watched a clean looking rural parcel come back with four years of delinquency plus a pending certificate holder, and that changes who you're actually negotiating with.

Nothing in this one needed a tenant or a plumber at 11pm, which is the whole appeal of land over anything with a roof on it.

@angela_burke's question is the one worth answering, so here is the arithmetic on it. Say 90 hours across 68 days, sourcing through funding. 24,000 net of 2,100 is 21,900, which is 243 an hour. Excellent. Now say the mineral holders had taken 14 weeks instead of five and the buyer had walked at 71. That becomes 13,000 on 140 hours, or 93 an hour, and most people would still write it up as a win. What was the number at which walking away beat extending?

Did any outside money touch this? It reads as though none did, which is the interesting part. 500 of earnest money and a mail budget produced a 24k fee, and that is a useful counterpoint to the standard claim that the capital side is where the returns are.

Was there a survey of record, or is the 31 acres a deed call from a description written when the pine was standing? Every rural tract I've looked at is "31 acres more or less" and the more or less has been up to two acres in either direction. Who paid for the new survey, and did the acreage hold?

@wendy_park48 already asked the recording question and it is the one that matters most here. A surface use waiver signed by five of six fractional owners, unrecorded, is a promise from five people. Whether it binds their heirs, and whether the sixth holder's untouched fraction lets that party come across the surface anyway, depends on the state's law on surface and mineral estates and on the waiver's own language. That document needed a real estate attorney's drafting rather than a template. Did the buyer's lender accept five of six, or did the estate sign before funding?

The 500 going hard for 21 days is the part most people would lose sleep over. Was there a point where losing it looked likely?

How long passed between reading the seller's reply and deciding to send a contract? It matters for anyone who takes weeks on decisions, because it is not obvious whether this strategy tolerates that pace or punishes it.

Two things. First, a severed mineral estate from the mid century is ordinary in a lot of regions, and anyone who keeps working rural acreage will meet it constantly, so build the chain read into every deal rather than treating it as the story of this one. Second, and nobody has asked: was the 5 acre minimum lot size actually permitted there, or did the buyer assume it? Some counties in spillover corridors have raised minimum acreage or added road frontage requirements in the last few years specifically to slow splits, and it varies county to county even inside one state. If his split plan needed a variance, the 82 was resting on a hearing. @karen_whitfield is right about the hold, by the way. That was a cheap sale to someone with a plan.

I have capital but no operation, so that's the lens here. One 24k fee out of one campaign doesn't tell me whether land assignment is a business or a lottery ticket you happened to buy. @tylerbrooks9 asked it plainly and I'd want the same answer before I funded anyone doing this.

The piece of this I'd actually want to do is the five weeks of chain reading and cold calls to mineral holders, which everyone in this thread describes as the awful part. Is that a service somebody sells to land wholesalers, or does it just fall to whoever has the contract?