A parking lot's first year of real maintenance costs, worth studying before assuming no building means no upkeep

The fresh striping before listing is the part to flag hardest. It is the parking version of a coat of paint over a crack, and it works because striping genuinely reads as care. Sealcoating gets sold on a three to five year cycle and full resurfacing is the big one that lands eventually. On a 22 space lot that is real money against $19k of gross, so the right move is to put something like $1,500 a year into a reserve from day one rather than treating each patch as a surprise. Your 8% app arrangement, does that include the card processing or is that on top?

I've held bare land for a long time and the lesson I'd draw is a little different from @brandonlee36's.

Asphalt is an improvement. You bought a building, it's just flat. Everything that's true about a roof is true about a paved surface, it has a life, it fails from the edges in, and water is what kills it. If your lot doesn't drain properly you'll be resurfacing on a shorter cycle than the contractor tells you.

The lots I hold that cost me nothing are gravel and dirt. Lower revenue, lower rate you can charge, no resurfacing bill ever. Whether that trade works depends entirely on whether your market will pay for pavement. In a college town it probably will.

I had the same assumption about lots, that the whole point was you skip the building costs, so this made me stop and think.

Question that might be dumb. When you say towing had to be made enforceable with signage, is that something you have to file with anybody, or is it just putting up the right sign with the right wording? I've seen very different looking signs in different states and I couldn't tell if that's law or just habit.

It is law, @kevin_lombard, and it varies by state and often by city, so you'd need to read your own local ordinance rather than copy a sign you saw somewhere. Some places specify sign dimensions, placement at every entrance, and the tow company's phone number on the face. Some require the operator to be licensed. Getting it wrong can void the tow, and in some jurisdictions it exposes you to a claim from the car owner, so it's worth a conversation with a local attorney before you tow the first vehicle. The number that stops me, @brandonlee36, is $19k gross on 22 spaces. That's about $72 per space per month. In a college town with a corner location you'd expect more, unless a lot of the demand is seasonal and the lot is dark for three months. Are you closed over summer?