$565k for 34 spaces by a hospital only pencils as income if the rate claims can actually be tested

Income without a second job is the promise, and this is the shape it keeps taking: 3.4 percent with a shovel attached. Even at the optimistic $130 figure it's low fives, and someone still has to empty the honor box in February. If the real return only shows up when someone buys the dirt in year nine, that isn't income, and it helps to be clear about which thing is actually being bought before wiring anything.

For comparison, every unit in a typical small building costs roughly a full month of rent a year in surprises. This lot's version of that is the surface. When the reserve is quoted at $1,500 and the pavement needs work in five years, get an actual quote on a mill and overlay for 0.31 acres, not a sealcoat quote. Those numbers routinely come back at multiples of what the owner assumed, and on a lot with 34 spaces there's no other income line to absorb it.

Two things before price. First, confirm with the city whether commercial parking is a permitted use on that parcel as of right or whether it's a legal nonconforming use carried over from decades ago. Those work differently, and in some places a nonconforming use can lapse if operation stops for a set period, which matters if it's ever fenced up for a season. Zoning language varies by municipality, so the actual ordinance text is worth reading rather than a summary. Second, for land value, pull the assessor's land-only value for the parcel and for the nearest sold comparables, then note that a dozen or so states don't make sale prices public at all, so depending on location the assessor page may be all that's available. Where that's the case, a broker or appraiser who works that submarket is needed to produce a land number. That number decides a deal like this, and paying for one appraisal is cheap against $565k.

The way I'd frame it: what does it cost you to hold the dirt for ten years, and does the parking cover that? At $19,500 NOI against taxes, insurance and snow already deducted, you're carried, with a bit left. That's a land bank that pays for its own taxes, which is more than most raw land does. Whether the dirt is worth $565k today is still the whole question, and the seller's patient tower story is his to prove, not yours to assume. If he's right, the buyer of the tower's overflow parking is also a possibility, and that's a different conversation than $130 permits.

In markets like this, a lot that on paper looks similar trades near nothing, because free curb parking is everywhere and nobody pays $95 to walk half a block. The whole thesis here is scarcity created by the hospital, so it is worth spending a Tuesday morning at 7am counting cars on the street within three blocks. If there is open free curb within a two minute walk, the $130 permit rate never happens.