What Can You Do With Your Land

Why would a land buyer write about other things you can do with your land?

We think you should be aware of and consider all of your options. Yes, we are in the land investment business and we hope you decide to sell your land to us. After years of experience, we have found that the more you know going into a sale, the happier you will be when it’s done. We’ve included a more detailed explanation of why we wrote this at the bottom of this page.

The importance of your own initiative

All of the options we talk about are ways that real people are getting great value from their land. Some of them require little or no effort; others are a lot more “hands on”. Some bring you cash quickly, or over time. Others require cash outlay on your part. Some you can do on your own; others involve other people.

Be honest with yourself about your interests, time, energy, needs, and resources. These are all good options, but far fewer of them are likely to be good options for you. The best option for you is the one you’ll actually do instead of just think about.

It’s important to act with urgency no matter what you decide to do. We come across land all the time where the owner(s) have died or become incapacitated, and it’s often a burden to the guardians, heirs or executors to figure out how to handle it. While we do our best to help people in that situation, it would have been far easier for the original owners to have done something while they were able.

The purpose of this article is to give you an overview of what the options are and what they entail. Feel free to contact us if you’d like more detailed information about a particular option.

The options we cover for land you already own are:

• Use it Yourself
• Give it to Family or Friends
• Rent it Out
• Retail Sale
• Wholesale Sale
• Charitable Donation
• Stop Paying Property Taxes

Use It Yourself

If you’re not currently using your land, why not? If you bought the land, you probably had plans to use it when you bought it, but maybe your circumstances changed and those plans didn’t work out. If you inherited it, maybe you never had plans for it. Either way, that’s no reason you can’t do something with it now.

You may think you need to build a house or commercial building on the land to effectively use it. That’s certainly an option, but as I’m sure you know it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to build. If that’s what’s been stopping you from using your land, a couple of other options to consider:

• You could use an RV like a motorhome or travel trailer to stay on your land only part of the year. You may only need to clear enough space to park to enjoy your land for a few days at a time during the nicest times of the year.
• You may make the experience of staying on your land a lot more pleasant for longer periods by adding some utilities like a water well, septic system, solar or wind power generator.
• You could store things on your land. Shipping containers are cheap, widely available, and may be a great option if you need to store items you rarely use. In many rural areas, you can simply plop down a shipping container and load it with all the stuff that’s cluttering your house or garage.

The RV, utility, and storage options are powerful when used together. For example, suppose you live in a state where it’s cold in the winter and you own land someplace warm. You install a septic system and drop a shipping container on your land. Inside the shipping container you store some solar panels, seasonal clothing items and decorations, a large propane tank and an extra water tank as well as recreational items like motorcycles or ATVs, kayaks, hiking or climbing gear, games and sports equipment, etc.

That kind of setup can give you most of the benefits of a home away from home, without the need to actually build one!

A note about zoning and other land use regulations: Different land is subject to different zoning and other government practices regarding what you can and cannot do on it. However, we can offer some general principles to keep in mind:

1. Be Informed: Research what the zoning code is for your land, and what the official rules are regarding properties zoned that way. Also, look at what other people in the area are doing. Sometimes zoning regulations are enforced to the letter; other times they are widely disregarded unless you’re doing something obnoxious or unsafe.
2. Be a good neighbor: Regardless of the official rules, most land use conflicts arise because someone complains. If you don’t give your neighbors cause to complain, the chances of anyone objecting to whatever you’re doing go way down.
3. Be flexible and creative: Often there is more than one way to achieve what you want. You may be able to slightly modify what you’re doing to address any objections. You may also be able to get a zoning variance or temporary permit.

Give it to Family or Friends

Maybe you’ve decided your traveling days are over. You may have a family member or friend who could use the land instead. Great! A few things to keep in mind:

Decide whether you just want to let them use it or if they should own it. Either option is better than the land sitting unused, but ownership allows them to improve the land with storage or utilities that will facilitate their own use.

Avoid giving a “white elephant”. Land does not generally make a good surprise gift or unexpected inheritance for the recipient. Have a clear and detailed conversation with the person you want to give the land to about if, and how, they will use it. Make sure they want the land before you give it. Unfortunately, people often transfer land that is simply a tax burden they don’t want or know how to deal with, to others who also don’t want or know how to deal with it.

However, if you’ve decided to give your land to someone and they clearly want it, then don’t delay. The future is uncertain. In almost all cases it’s far easier to transfer land while you are alive and aware than after death or mental disability.  A lawyer or title company should be able to help. You may even be able to do it yourself. Contact us if you need a reference to a lawyer or title company that can transfer your land.

Rent it Out

In some circumstances it is possible to rent vacant land. The main ways to rent vacant land are:

• Rent-to-own
• Agricultural Rental
• Recreational Rental
• Commercial Rental

Rent-to-own
This type of rental is really a means to a later sale. Perhaps you know someone who would like to buy your land, but doesn’t have any money for a down payment. You may be able to rent them the land under a rent-to-own agreement. The way this works is the interested buyer rents the land for a certain period of time (usually 1-5 years). During the rental period, you reserve a portion of their rent payments in a separate account to accumulate a down payment. At the end of the rent period, if they’ve made all the rent payments then a purchase is initiated using the accumulated down payment money.

Agricultural Rental

If your land is in an area that is suitable for growing crops or grazing livestock, you may be able to rent It to a farmer for those purposes. If your property is next to other farms, it’s likely to be a good candidate. You could write letters to the nearby farms offering to rent your land for farming purposes.

Recreational Rental

You may be able to rent your land out for recreational purposes. RVers are an especially good group to target for land rentals if your land is in an area that’s nice for at least part of the year. Check out hipcamp.com, which allows you to rent out your land to RVers kind of like you’d rent out a house or apartment. Use the link on this page or enter referral code JOHNA6F546E when you sign up.

Commercial Rental 

Businesses rent land for various purposes including signage, storage, and cell or other communication towers. If your land is in a suitable area, consider posting an ad on a site like Craigslist offering to rent the land for one of those purposes. However, be sure you understand what your commercial renter intends to do and put all permitted uses in writing. Be sure to thoroughly investigate any environmental impact if your renter is engaging in risky activities like vehicle storage/repair, production or manufacturing, or waste storage.

Retail Sale

You could sell your land with the help of a Real Estate Agent. It’s best to find one that’s from the area where the land is located. The Real Estate Agent will charge a commission and you will typically be expected to pay part or perhaps all of the closing costs. Budget a total of at least 10% of the sales price for commission + closing costs. It also helps greatly if you are willing to finance the sale yourself since banks rarely finance land purchases. Consider if you are willing to accept payments over time rather than all cash up front.

Real Estate Agents can list the property on MLS which propagates to lots of web sites like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, etc. which greatly increases exposure. They have a local phone number and can also show the property in person which greatly increases buyer credibility.

We are not Real Estate Agents, but we respect what they do and in the right circumstances, they can be very helpful. One problem landowners have with Real Estate Agents is that Real Estate Agents make so much more off of a house compared to land that sometimes they neglect their land listings. Consider whether your land is valuable enough that the potential commission to a Real Estate Agent would be large enough to hold their attention. One rule of thumb is, if the land is worth more than $100,000 you have a better chance of success using a Real Estate Agent than if it is worth less than $100,000.

If you choose to use a Real Estate Agent, find one who has experience selling land and contacts with buyers like developers. We do know Real Estate Agents in some areas that we can refer to. Please contact us if you’d like a referral to a Real Estate Agent.

Wholesale Sale

You probably found this page as a result of receiving a letter from us expressing our interest in buying your land in a wholesale or investor sale. We do buy at a discount, but in return for the discount we work to make it as easy as possible for land sellers:

• We buy when sellers are ready to sell. Sometimes this is months or years after our initial contact.
• We answer questions and address concerns sellers may have.
• We work to resolve ownership, zoning, access, topography, and tax issues.
• We commonly buy land sight unseen, without performing percolation tests or environmental studies.
• We engage all the needed third parties to complete the transaction and manage them as necessary to get the sale done.
• We pay cash.
• We pay all closing costs and fees, all pro-rated taxes and assessments, and back taxes if there are any. For many, the alternative is losing the property to a property tax lien or sale.
• We relieve sellers of the need to pay Real Estate Agent commissions or advertising fees, take calls from buyers, travel to where the property is located to show it or close the transaction, etc.

If you’d like an offer on your land, simply go to our offer request page and fill out the requested information.

A further consideration for both the wholesale option and the Charitable Donation option below: Depending on the price you originally paid for the land, the property taxes you’ve paid while you have owned it, and your other personal tax circumstances you may also be able to receive additional funds in the way of a capital loss or charitable deduction on your income tax return. Please ask your accountant or tax preparer for more information.

Charitable Donation

Many landowners overlook the possibility of using their land to benefit a charity. There are many reasons to donate your land or the proceeds of its sale or rental to a worthy cause. Among them:

• You believe in the cause and value the cause more than you value the land.
• You paid more for the land than you could easily sell it for, and would rather donate it than take a loss.
• Depending on your personal tax circumstances, you may be able to deduct the value of the land as a charitable deduction, and the difference between what you paid and its current value as a capital loss on your tax return. Please ask your accountant or tax preparer for more information.

Some ways to donate your land to a charity are:

Direct Transfer to Charity

To complete a direct transfer, you deed the land directly to the charity. A lawyer or title company can help you with how to do this correctly. Contact us if you need a referral to a lawyer or title company in your area.

Direct transfer of land is a great idea IF THE CHARITY CAN USE THE LAND THEMSELVES. For example, if your land is suitable for a camp and you donate it to a church for them to build a summer camp on for their youth group.

Direct transfer is a bad idea IF THE CHARITY HAS NO USE FOR THE LAND THEMSELVES. When the charity has no use for the land, if you transfer the land to them directly you’ve given them the unwanted task of having to sell it – something that’s not part of their mission and something they’re likely not any more prepared or skilled to do than you are.

Have a clear and detailed conversation with an official representative from the charity before you deed land to them. Make sure they are able to use it. If not, you and your cause will be better served by you selling the land and donating the proceeds as described below.

Sale Proceeds Donation

You can donate all or a portion of the proceeds of either a retail or wholesale land sale to the charity of your choice. If you’re doing a retail sale through a Real Estate Agent, be sure to tell them you are donating all or part of the proceeds to charity. Have them put it in the ad, as it may help to sell the land. Be sure to also instruct the title company how to distribute the proceeds – they usually have a form for this.

If you decide to sell your land to us, we make it easy to direct all or part of the proceeds to charity. To do that, use our offer request page  and when you get to the comment section tell us which charity you’d like to donate to and how much (or all) of the proceeds you’d like to donate. When we write the offer contract, we’ll specify your donation right in the contract and make sure the charity you specify receives the proceeds in your name.

Further, if you choose to donate to SENS, we will match your donation amount dollar for dollar up to the first $1000.00

Rental Proceeds Donation

You can rent your land out as described previously, but instead of pocketing the income from renting you can direct it to charity instead. This allows you to keep ownership of the land but still use it to benefit the charity of your choice. If you choose to do this, be sure to mention it in your rental ad as, like a sale, proceeds going to charity may encourage more people to rent your land.

Stop Paying Property Taxes

This is the last option we cover because it’s usually the least desirable. You usually lose the land and neither you nor any cause you care about get anything for it. But you should be aware of this option because, unlike some other personal bills or debts the county will not come after your other income or property if you just stop paying the taxes.

If you stop paying the property taxes, what happens and who gets the land depends on where the land is located.

In some places the land is forfeited in as little as 6 months, but you have the right to “redeem”, pay the back taxes and get the property back for some period of time like 2 years after that.

In other places it takes years before the land is out of your name if you stop paying the taxes.

In some places the county takes the land directly and then sells it. In other places the county sells the right to collect the taxes and if you don’t pay, an investor can foreclose on the land.

One thing that can happen with low value properties is, by the time someone has the right to take the land for non-payment of taxes, the back taxes owed are more than the land is worth. When this happens, you may not get the property out of your name for many years, if ever. But down the line, if the property ever goes up in value or someone builds something on it, the county or tax lien holder will be able to take it. So no one has any incentive to do anything with it and it just sits on the delinquent tax roll.

When is stopping payment of property taxes the best option? We sometimes run into properties where the original owner(s) died or became incapacitated and the heirs, executors, or guardians are attempting to sell the land. If they do not have access to some of the needed documents (death certificates, trust documents, etc.) and the land is low in value, it may be more trouble to complete a sale than the land is worth. For higher value properties there are ways around these problems, but they involve time, expense, and usually lawyers. Sadly, sometimes our recommendation has to be to simply stop paying the taxes on the property. This is why we urge landowners to do something with their property while they are alive and able rather than leave it as a burden for others to handle later.

More about why we created this document

We send out letters based on public land ownership records and run internet pages for people interested in selling land. One of those two methods is probably how you received the link to this page. Our business was built serving land owners who are ready for a cash sale that’s as easy and hassle-free as possible. But we know there are landowners in other situations with other priorities. We want to provide value to every landowner who contacts us.

We wrote this page because:

• We want to both help educate people considering selling us land and help broaden and diversify private land use. Nobody benefits from paying property taxes year after year on land they’re not using and have no plans for. We want to help all landowners get value from their land, whether they sell it to us or not.
• We want to be at the top of your mind whenever and wherever you have land to sell. You might not want to sell us the land we sent you a letter about right now, and that’s OK. But you might own land in another state, or you might have friends or family with land they might want to sell to us, or your priorities might change in the future. We hope this document is useful and helps you keep us in mind whenever you or someone you know decide to sell land.
• We never recommend another business just because they pay a referral fee, but when a business we believe in has a referral program, we participate. As a result, if you use a link or referral code to another business in this document, we may receive a referral fee. We neither ask for nor accept any referral fee or other compensation from charities.
• We have received tremendous benefit from free internet resources, and this is one way for us to “pay it forward”.
• We think options like recreational rental and charitable donation of land are not well known or well utilized by landowners and we’d like to spread the word about these options.
• We hope that if you consider donating either your land or part of the proceeds of its sale or rental to charity, you will investigate and consider donating to the SENS Research Foundation. SENS has no connection with our business and we receive nothing from them. We just think that the work they do is literally the most important charity in the world, and they deserve far more attention than they currently get.

We hope you’ve found this overview informative. Whatever you decide to do with your land, we are here to help. Feel free to contact us If you’d like more detailed information about any of the options. If you’re looking for a fast, easy sale please .