Co-listed 38 acres with a luxury agent and finally saw what her half bought
I've done land for years and I've always thought the luxury agents were selling wallpaper. This one changed my mind, so I'll write it up plainly for anyone new.
The parcel: 38 acres at the edge of a submarket where the finished houses run $3M to $6M. Rolling, one buildable knoll with a view, an old barn, water on the property, and a septic feasibility that had been done in 2019 and never renewed. Seller was an estate. Two heirs, both out of state, both wanting it done.
I knew the zoning cold. Minimum lot size, the setbacks off the creek, the fact that a lot line adjustment to carve a second homesite was possible on paper and would take the county twelve to eighteen months in practice. I priced it at $2.35M on a per-acre basis against three raw land trades.
What I did not have was a buyer. Raw land at that price sells to a person who wants to build a $4M house, and I don't know those people. She does.
We co-listed. Total fee 3%, split 50/50 between us. She brought seven showings in five weeks, all from her own contacts, none from the MLS. Sold at $2.20M to a buyer who'd been looking for view acreage for two years and did not care about the second homesite at all, which was the thing I'd spent a month analyzing.
My half: $33,000. On a deal where I did the zoning work and she did the buyer work.
The part that nearly broke it: the septic feasibility. The buyer's builder wanted a current one before removing the inspection contingency, the county queue was six weeks, and we were in escrow for 71 days because of it. Rules on that vary by county and state, and we had to ask the health department directly rather than trust what the 2019 file said.
What I'd keep: I stopped selling the entitlement story. It was my best work and the buyer didn't want it. What sold the parcel was the knoll and the view, and she knew that from the first walk.