Chatham County Land Expert Eric Andrews goes over the top 5 qualities a good buyer’s agent should have when it comes to purchasing land, especially if you plan on building a house on it. Sometimes we speak to real estate agents in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill who are a bit… confused…
Speaker 1: Well, first and foremost, you should utilize an agent that has sold a piece of land before. But one of the most annoying things is a lot of agents have difficulty. They can’t find corners. You need to use an agent that has some kind of GPS software, or an app on their phone, or knows how to read a survey, or knows how to read a metes and bounds description, and can actually find the corners of a property there.
If you have an agent that’s asking the listing agent where the corners are, that’s probably not the right agent for you. They should know the local rules, the ordinances, the zoning and everything, so it’s kind of embarrassing if your agent is asking the listing agent, “Well, what can you do with this property? Well, what does this zoning mean? Well, what’s the minimum lot size here?” That agent should know what’s going on locally, right off the back of their hand, on the top of their head.
The covenants, you should have an agent that’s already read the covenants. Again, so they don’t have to go to the listing agent and say, “What can or can’t you do?” If hunting was important to a particular buyer, you should know whether or not they’re able to hunt, or if you can have chickens or if you can have goats or whatever, or you’re allowed to have an extra garage, that’s just something you should know top of the mind.
And they should know their comps. Comps aren’t going back to the computer and looking at MLS or getting a Zestimate from Zillow. Your agent should know, “Oh, in this area we’re averaging 17,500, an acre. In this area, we’re averaging 30,000 an acre. They should just know that right off the top of their head. So, that’s what a qualified land buyers agent does.
Speaker 2: Do you have some recent experience with this?
Speaker 1: I always have recent experience with it. I mean, yeah. You know, we have so many land listings and we love to cooperate with the Raleigh-Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Apex agents, but they’re out other elements sometimes and land is certainly a different sphere of real estate and you’re not necessarily doing your clients, serving their best interest, if you’ve never been involved with a piece of land before.
