Well $hit!

[Turkey Creek]

Ok ever since I bought my current farm and where we are building our forever home I have thought how great it would be to add the 50 acre block of timber to the west of me. I had thought maybe in 5-10 years that I would approach the owners when I might have a chance to make them a reasonable offer. They actually own 197 acres, the rest is pasture. I have no interest in the 147 acres that isnt timber. Well today I see a land auction sign on the intersection by our house and I thought hmmmm I wonder what is for sale? Yea you guessed it. I am in no position to financially buy 197 acres. I have been kicking around ideas in my head all evening as to how I could try to get ahold of that 50 acres out of the 197. I would love to hear some thoughts. I guess ideally I would find a rancher who would love to own the 147 acres and sign a pre-auction contract with him that if "we" were successful at buying the parcel he would sell me the 50 acres at the bid price. Surely there has got to be a rancher who is thinking how they would like to own 147 acres of good pasture ground, but don't want to buy 50 acres of "wasteland". LOL It is too rough to be cleared for pasture. Anybody ever have a similar situation? Like it has been said before if a piece comes available you best be ready to purchase, because it will likely never come up again in your life time. The auction isnt for a month, so I have time to beat myself up over the fact that I haven't won the lottery yet. I guess if I start playing it now I would have a few chances to win before then! LOL

 

[Catscratch]

I'd talk with the owner first to see if he's open to splitting it before the sale. But might not be worth the trouble to him since flyers are already made.

You probably know some ranchers by first name basis. Wouldn't hurt to throw out some feelers. You're likely right that someone wants the opposite parts of the place that you do. The unfortunate trend I've noticed is people with money sometime just by the whole thing for deer hunting without thinking much about price. That could throw a wrench into things for you and the rancher types.

 

[T-Max]

Ok ever since I bought my current farm and where we are building our forever home I have thought how great it would be to add the 50 acre block of timber to the west of me. I had thought maybe in 5-10 years that I would approach the owners when I might have a chance to make them a reasonable offer. They actually own 197 acres, the rest is pasture. I have no interest in the 147 acres that isnt timber. Well today I see a land auction sign on the intersection by our house and I thought hmmmm I wonder what is for sale? Yea you guessed it. I am in no position to financially buy 197 acres. I have been kicking around ideas in my head all evening as to how I could try to get ahold of that 50 acres out of the 197. I would love to hear some thoughts. I guess ideally I would find a rancher who would love to own the 147 acres and sign a pre-auction contract with him that if "we" were successful at buying the parcel he would sell me the 50 acres at the bid price. Surely there has got to be a rancher who is thinking how they would like to own 147 acres of good pasture ground, but don't want to buy 50 acres of "wasteland". LOL It is too rough to be cleared for pasture. Anybody ever have a similar situation? Like it has been said before if a piece comes available you best be ready to purchase, because it will likely never come up again in your life time. The auction isnt for a month, so I have time to beat myself up over the fact that I haven't won the lottery yet. I guess if I start playing it now I would have a few chances to win before then! LOL

There is a neighbor around me who has agreements like that with several farmers. When they buy a piece of tillable, he will purchase any of the untillable from them. I’m not sure if it is at the bid price, or some other predetermined price. I think it is a fantastic idea. In your case they have the confidence knowing they only really need to finance 147 acres. One thing to be considered, they may make a higher than normal bid knowing they can offload the excess to you. Make sure you can swing maybe $4,000/acre if $3,500 is the norm since they will have the flexibility knowing they aren’t financing the whole thing. Does that make sense?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[tooln]

Well good luck I hope you come up with a solution.

 

[Telemark]

I'm going to come at this from a slightly different perspective, but ultimately I believe it gives you the best chance of success as well as peace of mind. I have been in exactly 11 property deals, including purchases and sales. The best advice I can give you is this:

Do everything you can think of to get that property.

It sounds simple, but you really do need to follow it to the letter. You have to do anything and everything you can do in order to get that property... within reason. Set yourself a maximum price, and never go over that price, no matter what. The reason this is important is that it gives you the most potential to acquire the property, but it also gives you long-term peace of mind. If you don't manage to lock it down, you can at least say to yourself "I just couldn't afford it" or "I did everything I could." Having any sort of "coulda, woulda, shoulda" hanging over your head will drive you nuts for the rest of your life, so just do everything you can. However, temper your expectations. Your chances are slim, so if you pull it off, you are lucky.

Start by contacting the seller or the seller's agent. It's possible they would prefer to split the woodland chunk off and market it as pure pasture. But probably not. Maybe they haven't thought of it, so follow up a week later. If you're not a people person, try to recruit someone who is, to make the calls for you.

If the property sells as a whole, contact the new owner. If you're lucky, the new owner wants rid of the timber. But probably not. If the owner isn't interested, keep contacting him once a year or so to see if he has changed his mind.

I think the psychology of knowing you have done everything you could is more valuable than actually owning the land. It's so much easier on the psyche to be able to say "it is what it is" rather than "if only I had _________ ".

Best of luck to you.

 

[Foggy47]

If I were you I think I would talk to the Auctioneer. Tell him your wants.....and see if he knows a few of the likely buyers. Maybe get some names from him......contact those buyers or have him contact those buyers.

At my Mother In Law's farm auction the auctioneer knew of 3 potential buyers he was aware of.....that he felt would all pay a decent price for the land. As said....if you could take some of that buyers burden away...they may go for it.

Or.....The auctioneer may work on a split of the property if he thinks it could bring a better price that way?

The other thing you could do is buy the whole piece.........and sell the parts you dont want after the auction. Risky.....but??

 

[Bill]

A couple thoughts.
One is offer to buy the 50 well over value. I over paid for a neighbors property 15 years ago and now it's worth twice what I paid.

The second is like foggy says buy it all and sell what you don't want. Work on the auctioneer, tell him you want to buy it all pre auction and then use him to auction off what you don't want. Good deal for him, he's looking at two commissions.

If you can find a rancher to go in with make sure he knows you're willing to pay $X over market value for the 50.

Good luck I hope somehow you can make it work.

 

[Turkey Creek]

I'm going to come at this from a slightly different perspective, but ultimately I believe it gives you the best chance of success as well as peace of mind. I have been in exactly 11 property deals, including purchases and sales. The best advice I can give you is this:

Do everything you can think of to get that property.

It sounds simple, but you really do need to follow it to the letter. You have to do anything and everything you can do in order to get that property... within reason. Set yourself a maximum price, and never go over that price, no matter what. The reason this is important is that it gives you the most potential to acquire the property, but it also gives you long-term peace of mind. If you don't manage to lock it down, you can at least say to yourself "I just couldn't afford it" or "I did everything I could." Having any sort of "coulda, woulda, shoulda" hanging over your head will drive you nuts for the rest of your life, so just do everything you can. However, temper your expectations. Your chances are slim, so if you pull it off, you are lucky.

Start by contacting the seller or the seller's agent. It's possible they would prefer to split the woodland chunk off and market it as pure pasture. But probably not. Maybe they haven't thought of it, so follow up a week later. If you're not a people person, try to recruit someone who is, to make the calls for you.

If the property sells as a whole, contact the new owner. If you're lucky, the new owner wants rid of the timber. But probably not. If the owner isn't interested, keep contacting him once a year or so to see if he has changed his mind.

I think the psychology of knowing you have done everything you could is more valuable than actually owning the land. It's so much easier on the psyche to be able to say "it is what it is" rather than "if only I had _________ ".

Best of luck to you.

Yea that's what is already nagging at me bad. If I don't put in a solid effort to see if I can make it happen I will be thinking about it until the end of my days likely. I just never imagined that the property would come up for sale like that at this time. I guess that just goes to show you should be ready at any time.

I appreciate everyone else's comments as well. If I had the funds I would buy it all (within a reasonable price) and then turn around and sell off the portion that I don't want. I know that is a not a option for me though currently. I will make some calls on Monday and see if I can see if there is any interest from the seller through the auctioneer to sell off the piece I am interested in prior to the main auction. If not I might see which buyers might be looking to purchase it all and hope that maybe they are really not interested in the entire thing. Problem is there really aren't any big ranchers in my area, anyone I know for sure that would be looking to add a big piece to their property.

 

[Mortenson]

Problem is there really aren't any big ranchers in my area, anyone I know for sure that would be looking to add a big piece to their property.

Sounds like this detail might be helpful in keeping the price down.

 

[hillrunner]

Ok ever since I bought my current farm and where we are building our forever home I have thought how great it would be to add the 50 acre block of timber to the west of me. I had thought maybe in 5-10 years that I would approach the owners when I might have a chance to make them a reasonable offer. They actually own 197 acres, the rest is pasture. I have no interest in the 147 acres that isnt timber. Well today I see a land auction sign on the intersection by our house and I thought hmmmm I wonder what is for sale? Yea you guessed it. I am in no position to financially buy 197 acres. I have been kicking around ideas in my head all evening as to how I could try to get ahold of that 50 acres out of the 197. I would love to hear some thoughts. I guess ideally I would find a rancher who would love to own the 147 acres and sign a pre-auction contract with him that if "we" were successful at buying the parcel he would sell me the 50 acres at the bid price. Surely there has got to be a rancher who is thinking how they would like to own 147 acres of good pasture ground, but don't want to buy 50 acres of "wasteland". LOL It is too rough to be cleared for pasture. Anybody ever have a similar situation? Like it has been said before if a piece comes available you best be ready to purchase, because it will likely never come up again in your life time. The auction isnt for a month, so I have time to beat myself up over the fact that I haven't won the lottery yet. I guess if I start playing it now I would have a few chances to win before then! LOL

Can you buy it all and then turn around and sell the unwanted portion? I once let an extremely similar situation slip through my fingers because I didn't want to, or didn't think I could afford to buy all the open pasture ground. I now wish I'd have done absolutely everything possible to own that timber. It's a thorn in my side to this day.
Remember, if you let it go, your new neighbor could potentially make your current situation much worse.

 

[Foggy47]

Tell the auctioneer.....that you will pay (1. the same price as the crop land sells for ) (2. a 10% premium over the other land) (3. Some other lucrative price) for the land you want. This gives the seller a decent price for the marginal land that many others will not want. Win / Win for the landowner and auctioneer. ......and you get what you want. Plausible?