My Land Isn’t Selling. Now What?
When a property has been on the market for a while without selling, the obvious question is:
What needs to change?
Sometimes the first reaction is to blame the real estate agent or assume that switching Realtors will solve the problem.
And sometimes marketing is the problem.
But when land isn’t selling, there are really only three levers we can pull:
Marketing & Exposure
Condition of the Property
Price
That’s it.
Understanding which lever needs attention is much more useful than simply starting over with another agent and hoping for a different result.
1. Marketing & Exposure
This is my responsibility.
My job is to get your property in front of as many qualified buyers as reasonably possible and present it in a way that gives those buyers a reason to investigate further.
Rural land is a niche.
Selling acreage, recreational property, RV-friendly land, wooded property and rural Tennessee real estate is different from selling a house in a subdivision.
That’s a market I know well, and I have a successful track record marketing these types of properties.
Marketing can include MLS exposure, the major real estate websites, specialized land websites, photography, property descriptions, mapping, social media, buyer inquiries and other targeted marketing. See how I market properties.
If buyers aren’t seeing the property, that’s a marketing problem.
But there is an important distinction:
Marketing can bring a buyer to your property. It cannot make the buyer purchase it.
That brings us to the other two levers.
2. Property Condition
With vacant land, sellers sometimes assume condition doesn’t matter very much.
It does.
Think about how much effort it takes to get a prospective buyer to actually visit a property.
They have to find the listing, become interested, contact someone, coordinate a showing, get into their vehicle and sometimes drive a considerable distance into rural Tennessee.
Now imagine they finally arrive and find an entrance that’s difficult to see, waist-high weeds along the road frontage, an overgrown trail, fallen trees or no obvious way to explore the property.
What do you think happens?
Sometimes they don’t even get out of the vehicle.
They simply drive on to the next property.
You don’t need to manicure acreage like a suburban lawn, but relatively inexpensive things such as bushhogging road frontage, clearing the entrance, maintaining trails and removing obvious storm debris can make a tremendous difference in a buyer’s first impression.
Marketing gets buyers there. Condition helps keep them interested once they arrive.
3. Price
Price is ultimately the seller’s decision.
You determine the asking price, and you decide which offers you’re willing to accept.
But price is also the most powerful lever we have.
Here is an intentionally ridiculous example that illustrates the point:
Every property is sellable on the day it is listed.
If you own a piece of land and offer to sell it to me for $1, I’m probably going to take you up on it.
Obviously, I’m not suggesting you sell your property for a dollar.
The point is simply this:
Somewhere between $1 and your current asking price is a number where the property will sell.
The challenge is determining where the market believes that number is.
What You Have Into the Property Doesn’t Determine Its Market Value
This is probably the most common pricing mistake sellers make.
It’s natural to think something like this:
**Purchase price
improvements
closing costs
real estate commission
desired profit
= selling price**
Unfortunately, the buyer isn’t doing that calculation.
The buyer is asking:
“What else can I buy for this amount of money?”
What you paid for the property doesn’t necessarily determine what another buyer will pay today.
Neither does the amount of money you’ve invested in it.
And neither does the amount of profit you’d like to make.
Those things are important to you, but they don’t establish market value.
The market establishes market value through what buyers are willing to pay compared with all of their other choices.
Listen to What the Market Is Telling Us
Real estate markets provide feedback.
If a property is receiving very few views or inquiries, we should examine the marketing.
If buyers are showing up but reacting poorly to the property, condition may be part of the problem.
But if we’re getting good exposure and buyers are simply choosing other properties, price becomes a much more likely issue.
The same is true when multiple buyers independently arrive at roughly the same value through their offers.
We don’t have to like what the market is telling us.
But ignoring it doesn’t change it.
“I’m Tired of Waiting. I Just Want It Sold.”
This is often when those postcards, letters, texts and emails from land investors start looking attractive:
“We Buy Land.”
“Cash Offer.”
“Quick Closing.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with selling to an investor.
Sometimes a seller values speed and simplicity more than maximizing their sales price.
But it’s important to understand what you’re giving up in exchange.
Many of the people sending those offers aren’t necessarily planning to own your property long-term.
They may be wholesalers or investors whose business depends on buying or controlling property at a substantial discount and then reselling it, assigning the contract or marketing it to another buyer at a higher price.
That spread is where their profit comes from.
And eventually, someone may call a land broker like me to help market it.
Learn more about investor letters
Before Accepting a Low Investor Offer, Consider Another Option
Here’s the question I would ask:
If you’re willing to sell your property to an investor for dramatically less than we’re currently asking, why don’t we first use some of that same pricing flexibility to make your property much more attractive to the entire market?
For example, imagine a property is listed for:
$60,000
An investor offers:
$35,000
If you’re seriously considering accepting $35,000 just to be finished with the property, we have a lot of room between those two numbers.
Instead of immediately accepting $35,000, perhaps we reposition the property publicly at $44,900 or $49,900.
Now we’re offering buyers a significant value compared with the previous price.
Maybe a buyer pays the new asking price.
Maybe someone offers $42,000.
Maybe the market still doesn’t respond and we reduce it again.
But we’ve given the open market an opportunity to pay you more before handing a large portion of your property’s value to a middleman.
Investors Aren’t Magicians
If someone can purchase your property cheaply and then turn around and sell it, they haven’t necessarily discovered some secret way to market land.
They may simply have something we didn’t have before:
A much lower price.
Price creates demand.
If you’re willing to give an investor enough of a discount to make your property extremely attractive, we should at least consider whether giving that same opportunity directly to retail buyers could put more money in your pocket.
“Cash” and “Quick Closing” Don’t Always Mean a Guaranteed Sale
Those investor offers often emphasize things like:
“Cash Buyer.”
“Quick Closing.”
“No Financing Needed.”
That sounds attractive, especially when you’ve already spent months waiting for your property to sell.
But a cash offer isn’t necessarily the same thing as cash sitting in a bank account waiting to purchase your property.
Some wholesalers have no intention of personally purchasing your property at all. Their goal may be to get your property under contract at a low enough price that they can find another buyer willing to pay more.
That means their ability — or willingness — to close may depend upon finding that next buyer while still leaving enough room for the wholesaler to make a profit.
If they can’t find one, the transaction may fall apart, be delayed, or they may attempt to renegotiate the price.
There’s another potential problem: the eventual buyer still has to be able to perform.
A wholesaler may locate someone interested in the property, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the buyer has the cash, financing or financial ability to actually complete the transaction.
So before accepting an investor or wholesaler offer simply because it promises “cash” and a “quick closing,” look beyond the headline.
Who is actually buying the property?
Do they intend to take title themselves?
Is the contract assignable to another buyer?
What contingencies allow them to cancel?
How much earnest money are they putting at risk?
And what happens if they can’t find someone else to purchase the property?
A lower offer isn’t necessarily a faster or more certain offer.
If you’re willing to accept a substantially lower price in exchange for speed and certainty, let’s first discuss whether we can use that same pricing flexibility to attract a strong buyer directly — potentially putting more money in your pocket without adding another middleman to the transaction.
So What Do We Do Next?
If your property isn’t selling, let’s objectively look at the three things we can change:
Marketing & Exposure — Are enough of the right buyers seeing it?
Condition — What does a buyer experience when they actually arrive?
Price — How does your property compare with everything else the buyer can purchase for the same money?
Sometimes the answer is improving the marketing.
Sometimes some relatively inexpensive property maintenance can help.
And sometimes we simply need to acknowledge that the market isn’t supporting the seller’s current price expectations.
My job isn’t to pressure you into selling your property cheaply.
My job is to market it effectively, give you honest feedback from the market and help you understand your options so you can decide what makes the most sense for you.