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I own a piece of rural raw land that's difficult to access by vehicle and there are no recent comparable sales in the area. Would it be money well spent to hire an appraiser to help determine the value of the land? What tools and resources will he/she have that I don't?
Raw land appraisals are best performed by someone that has done one recently. Some appraisers will do this kind of appraisal once in three years. But quite simply, you want someone that has MLS access and someone that knows their way around your county's zoning offices. Call a local bank that offers land financing and ask for an appraiser recommendation. Be prepared, rural, hard to access, raw land is not going to be worth much more than its assessment.
How is the land zoned, and has it been surveyed recently?
^^^
Also, need to know how much land (acreage), street/road and water frontage, are mineral rights included, availability of utilities, flood zone encroachment, if any real property improvement exist on the land, etc.
In some areas, the tax data on this property may be publicly available through the County Appraisial District (CAD). Do a Google search for the CAD for this property. That's a good place to start.
The appraiser will need to do a Highest and Best Use determination on the property.
How large is the parcel? How remote? What type of land? How and when did you acquire it?
You must have some idea as to what it is worth--even if it's only a rough guestimate. If it's not worth much to begin with, an appraisal could be a waste of money. You should only get an appraisal as a very last resort. In my area, land appraisals are expensive and they're still just someone's opinion of value. Hopefully, they'll be able to base their opinion on an analysis of comparable sales--but you should be able to find that information, too. If you can't find any sales in the immediate area, you'll just need to expand the boundaries of your search, just as an appraiser would.
The property is zoned rural residential and the assessor's valuations are meaningless in my opinion when it comes to determining the actual true value of the property. They are often 30% to 50% below the actual selling prices on houses, so who knows on raw land. Comparable sales are only one factor to determine value because one has no idea how desperate a seller was to sell a piece of property or conversely an unsavvy buyer could have overpaid. When I see a sales price for a house, these factors aren't included in the footnote, nor are the upgrades or lack thereof. For raw land, I would want an appraiser to determine how my location is superior or inferior to others that have sold (albeit years ago) and to justify it in a few paragraphs, so I would have supporting arguments to give to a potential buyer.
I would also think it would be best to hire an appraiser that's academically qualified, but unfamiliar with the area and any real estate agent in the area, so as to not to hire someone who is biased that might put a low valuation so a "friend" can pick it up on the cheap.
FSBO. Large chunk of raw land. Comps don't matter.
Yup. This'll end well.
There are no recent comps for comparable parcels and there is nothing an agent can offer at 6% that I can't do myself by listing the property on Craigslist.
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