No building means no maintenance, I thought. Year one said otherwise.

The fresh striping before listing is the part I'd flag hardest. It's 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 you're talking real money against $19k of gross, so I'd be sinking 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 @thicket'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.

@juniper it's law 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 doesn't just void the tow, 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.

@thicket, the number that stops me is $19k gross on 22 spaces. That's about $72 per space per month. In a college town with a corner location I'd have expected more, unless a lot of your demand is seasonal and you're dark for three months. Are you closed over summer?