Valuing a rural probate property with no comparable sale within four miles

On the acreage question, in most rural markets the first acre or two carries most of the value because it's what the house sits on, and additional acres are worth progressively less unless they're tillable, fenced, or have road frontage that could split off. 4.2 acres nine miles out is probably yard and trees. I wouldn't assign it a separate 15.

What I'd do instead is stop trying to split house from land and find sales of the whole thing. Widen your search to the three or four adjacent counties with similar population density rather than staying inside township lines. Township lines are an administrative accident and buyers out there don't care about them.

The curling three-tab versus newer metal roof on your one comp is worth more than you're crediting. Metal roof on a rural farmhouse is a selling feature to the exact buyer you'd be reselling to, someone who doesn't want to think about the roof for thirty years.

The line worth sitting with is "she never has to think about it again." That's not a price, it's a condition, and it can sometimes be satisfied for less money than the asking figure by taking things off the seller's plate. If part of an offer is taking over utilities on day one and handling winterizing, that has real value to someone six hours away who is worried about pipes and costs relatively little to provide. It's also worth asking what the seller thinks the property is worth versus what they need from the sale. Those are often different numbers, and a round figure stated plainly is frequently the second one.

On renovation estimates from photos, a rough per-square-foot rule can work for a first pass on a cosmetic refresh, but it tends to be less reliable than a line by line walk once the details show up, especially on anything mechanical, roof, or foundation related that photos hide well.

@tashaford30 from what I've watched people do, per square foot rules are how you get in trouble on rural houses, because the variable isn't finishes, it's mechanical systems. A 1,900 foot house where the well pump is fine and the septic passes is a different budget from the identical house where both need replacing, and no square foot number captures that.

@laurenkim53 the thing I'd want before anything else is somebody local who can walk it. Not an inspector necessarily, a contractor or a handyman who works in that county and knows what wells cost out there. You're six hours from being able to do that yourself and eleven phone photos is not a substitute.

On the no-comps problem, ask a local agent. Seriously. In a county of 9,000 there are probably three agents who do most of the volume and one of them has personally sold half the houses within twenty miles over the last decade. They'll know what the 94 sale actually was, whether it sat, whether there was seller financing, whether the buyer was a relative. That's information you cannot get from the record, especially since some states don't put sale prices in public records at all, so depending where you are the MLS or the agent may be your only route to a number.

They'll also tell you honestly whether a fixed up farmhouse nine miles out sells or lingers, because they've watched it happen.

Worth considering whether this is a rental rather than a flip. Nine miles out, three bedroom, 4.2 acres, in a county where inventory is nothing. Somebody out there wants to rent a house with land for a horse or a shop. Rents are low but so is the basis at 60. At that end of the market the tenant profile is different: longer tenancies, more DIY, more tolerance for a dated kitchen if the well works and the heat works. That changes what has to get fixed. A 1970s kitchen doesn't need replacing to rent a house, it needs to be clean and functional. It also changes the exit problem entirely, because instead of selling into a six month DOM market, the owner collects rent while waiting for whenever a sale actually makes sense.

Put @rena-expert's numbers next to @tonyv88's idea, because they point in different directions and @laurenkim53 should see the split. Flip: 60 in, 35 renovation, 6 closing and commission, call it 4 carry over six months. 105 all in against a mid-80s resale. That's negative and it's negative before anything goes wrong. Rental: 60 in, maybe 15 to make it habitable and safe, 75 all in. If it rents for 900 in that market, gross yield is 14.4 percent, and after taxes, insurance, and a real repair reserve on a house with an end of life roof, net likely lands around 500 to 550 a month. That's 8 to 8.8 percent on 75 unleveraged with no appreciation assumption. Not spectacular, but defensible. The flip math is the one that kills the deal, and it dies on the resale number, which nobody in this thread can verify. So the real question for @laurenkim53 is whether he wants a rural rental at all, because that's the only version of this that clears.

@hannah_west29's split is right and I want to name the thing that decides it, because it isn't the numbers.

@laurenkim53, you said this is your first live one and you'd rather move slow and lose it. Fine. But the roof is the hinge on both versions and you haven't priced it. End of life three-tab on a 1,900 foot farmhouse is not a small line item, and on the rental version it's the difference between 15 of work and 30, because you cannot rent a house under a roof that's going to leak into the ceiling you just painted. There's already water staining under a bathroom, so either that bath has a supply or drain problem or the roof is already in.

Here's the sequence I'd actually run, in order:

1. Get the letters and ask her attorney in writing what's outstanding. If the estate can't convey for four months, everything else is academic and you have four months to do it properly. If it can convey in three weeks, you know she's serious and so is the timeline.
2. Pay somebody local, 300 to 500, to walk the house with you on the phone. Roof, well, septic, panel, the stain. That's the whole list.
3. Get the county health department's septic requirements before you're under contract, because in some counties a transfer or a permit triggers an inspection, and that varies by state and county so you have to ask them directly rather than assume.
4. Only then put a number on the table.

On price, if she says 60 and won't move, you don't have to counter. You can say yes contingent on inspection and keep the right to walk, and use the three weeks to find out whether 60 is 60 or whether it's 60 plus a septic. She wants to stop thinking about it, and a signed contract with a real closing date accomplishes that for her even if you're still doing homework.

What I would not do is send her a number based on eleven photos. You'd be pricing your own ignorance and she'd be accepting it, and then you're the guy who retrades a grieving niece two weeks later, which is worse for you in a county of 9,000 than losing the deal. Everybody there will know.

The reputation point @paulgrant17 makes at the end is the whole thing in a small county. In markets that size, the first question anyone asks about a stranger is who else has dealt with him. Retrade once out there and the calls stop coming. Which argues for the inspection contingency being real and explained to her up front, in plain words, so a price change later isn't a surprise. The approach that tends to hold up is: I'll sign at 60, I'm having someone look at the well and the septic, if those are bad I'll come back to you with a number and you can say no. People take that fine. What they hate is the ambush.

Where is the 60 coming from? The source of funds matters. If it is cash on hand, the rental version at 75 all in is a straightforward move. If it is borrowed at rural property rates on a house with an unknown septic, many lenders will not touch it, and the ones who will price it in a way that changes @hannah_west29's 8 percent into something less interesting. Worth knowing before going under contract, and worth confirming the terms in writing rather than on a call.

@tonyv88, honest question about the rental idea. Who manages it? Is there a management company operating nine miles outside a town of a few thousand, or does that mean finding one person who will collect rent and fix a water heater for a cut? That is the part that makes rural rentals hard to run from a distance, and it does not show up in the yield math @hannah_west29 ran.

Adding to @chriswalton8, the appraisal is its own problem on the debt side. On any future refinance into a longer term loan, an appraiser faces the same comp desert @laurenkim53 does, and appraisals in thin rural markets tend to come in low and slow, sometimes with the acreage handled inconsistently. That's a real constraint on a rental plan when the plan involves refinancing to pull cash back out. Any lender being considered should be asked how they handle appraisals in counties with few sales, before commitment.

The 4.2 acres deserves one more look before it gets written off as yard. Check whether the parcel can be split under county zoning and whether it has enough road frontage for a second driveway and a separate septic field. In some rural counties minimum lot size is one or two acres, and a 4.2 acre parcel with frontage can become a house lot plus a buildable lot. That's a different deal. It might be nothing. Zoning and subdivision rules vary by county and state, and the only way to know is the county planning office and the specific parcel. But a call to the health department about septic is already on the list, so ask the planning desk while at it. Twenty minutes. If it does split, an 84 valuation on the house stops being the ceiling on the whole thing.

Worth being careful with @nicole_adeyemi's point, since it's often used to justify a price it can't support. A split possibility is worth something only if there's demand for the resulting lot. In a county of 9,000 with nothing on the market within eleven miles, the reason nothing's on the market might be that nobody's buying, in which case a buildable lot is an asset with no bid. Checking how many new residential permits that county issued in the last three years is the fastest way to test it. Under ten a year, and the split is closer to a lottery ticket than value. On the main question, @hannah_west29's framing is close but can be tightened. The flip likely fails. The rental likely works at a basis around 75 and fails around 95. Everything between now and a signed contract exists to find out which side of that line the septic and the roof land on. That's two phone calls and one site visit, which fits comfortably inside three weeks.

Get the letters testamentary or letters of administration and read them directly, don't take the attorney's summary. What to look for. Whether the personal representative has independent authority to sell real property or whether the letters are restricted, and whether there's anything in the file about bond. Also ask whether the creditor claim period has run, because a sale that closes while claims can still come in is a different closing than one that happens after. All of this is governed by state statute and the specific court's practice, so an attorney in that state has to say what applies. The point is just that "it's almost done" is a sentence with a lot of room in it, and the paperwork is short enough to read in fifteen minutes.

Income without a second job is the goal, and the rental version of a deal like this is a second job. Rural, distant, one local handyman, a well and a septic, a roof at end of life, a tenant who does their own repairs until they don't. @mikeoconnell7 already asked who manages it and that hasn't been answered. Not an argument against doing it. Just that if the goal is passive income, this specific kind of house is the hard way to get there.

@priya_n21's right that it's work, but I'd separate the deal from the strategy. @laurenkim53 said this is the first live one out of a letter campaign, and the value in it might be learning to run the process cleanly even if the answer at the end is no. Getting the letters, calling the health department, walking it with a local contractor, telling the seller honestly what you found. That's the whole skill and it costs a few hundred dollars to practice. The boring outcome here is you do all that and pass, and the next call goes faster.

One thing worth adding: 4.2 acres and a farmhouse nine miles out has an exit that is not retail or rental. There are buyers in every rural county who want exactly that and pay cash, and they are not searching listing sites, they are hearing about it from a neighbor. A large share of rural inventory in markets like that never hits the MLS. Which means a six month days-on-market figure someone like @laurenkim53 might cite could be measuring the wrong thing. It measures houses that were listed. It does not measure the ones that sold in a week to the guy whose brother-in-law wanted a shop and some land. That does not rescue flip math like the one @hannah_west29 might run, 105 all in against mid-80s is still bad. But if the real question is whether an exit at 75 is realistic in a reasonable time, the answer in markets like this tends to be better than the DOM figure suggests, which makes the rental version less risky because the downside exit exists. Worth asking the local agent @ryanmck27 mentioned who buys the acreage houses and how they find them.