The real estate market is scorching hot as we enter the busy spring/summer listing season. Buyers are anxious to lock in low interest rates before they increase, and they’re competing over exceptionally low inventory. Some buyers are offering tens of thousands over asking, in all cash, with waived contingencies — and they’re still losing the bidding war.
After getting multiple offers rejected, many buyers have turned their interest to buying vacant land. And, even then, investors are struggling to find vacant land for sale before it goes under contract. But PropStream has an industry insider secret. We’ll show you how to find vacant land for sale in a hot real estate market.
Strategy #1: Find Vacant Land For Sale Before It Hits the Market
By the time a parcel hits the MLS (multiple listing service), hundreds of people know about it. You can bet the listing agent gave their clients a heads-up about the upcoming vacant land listing. The agent most likely notified every agent in their brokerage about the listing before it went on the market as well, giving them a chance to share the insider information with their clients in an effort to keep both sides of the transaction in-house.
Within minutes of hitting the MLS, the listing is syndicated to real estate websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin, alerting the whole world to the listing. At that point, you’re competing with every other buyer in the market for vacant land. Once a property is on the MLS, it’s too late.
Instead, you need to find vacant land before it hits the MLS. With PropStream's simple search tool for off-market vacant land leads, you can find vacant land before it's listed on the market.
Strategy #2: Find a Deal on 'Distressed' Vacant Land
PropStream can help you take your vacant land investment strategy one step further by allowing you to filter by distressed land. Distressed land is a property with a complication that could make it less desirable to the average buyer. Land with a lien against it, in pre-foreclosure, or owned by someone going through a financial stressor, such as divorce or bankruptcy, qualifies as distressed. You can even use our Pre-Probate filter to find land that's yet to go through the probate process after the death of an owner.
Owners of distressed land — or those facing a possible probate process — may be more motivated to sell, and they may even be willing to let the property go for less than the market price. Put these owners on your priority contact list (using PropStream’s List Automator®), and you’ll have your next vacant land investment in no time, even in a hot market.
Get Vacant Land Data From PropStream to Implement Both Strategies
Several companies claim to have information on vacant land, which is usually collected from the local tax assessor. However, this information is often outdated since most tax assessors only update their information once a year. In some states, such as Colorado, this information only gets updated every two years. A lot can happen in that time, and you could be left chasing a vacant property that is anything but that.
PropStream’s vacant land tools, on the other hand, blend the tax assessor records with other public records and MLS history data to weed out any land parcels that are no longer vacant. This allows you to compare data sets easily, saving you the time and hassle of conducting separate research to confirm the status of each parcel. You can quickly and easily find vacant land deals before they hit the market and more accurately identify distressed properties.
And once you find parcels that suit your investment objectives, you can use PropStream’s built-in skip tracing tool to find contact information for the property owner. This way, you can reach out directly to the owner to make an offer — before the property goes on the market.
Try PropStream to find vacant land off-market with our 7-day free trial!
