Chatham County Land Sales Expert Eric Andrews discusses a recent land sale. In this transaction, he represented both the buyer and the seller. This was a multiple-heir situation, and the buyer was a developer interested in creating a new subdivision. The buyer had to do a survey, erosion control evaluation, setbacks, gas line easements, DOT access, engineering, subdivision approval, and more. In total, the property was under contract for 15 months. The sellers were very happy they obtained top dollar for their 114 acres.
Speaker 1: Did you recently close on a large tract of land?
Speaker 2: Huge tract of land, yes. We closed on 114 acres on Manns Chapel Road, and we were on both sides of the transaction. So we procured the buyer and the listing, which was nice. It was the tied for the sixth. Those two sides of the transaction are now the sixth largest sales we’ve ever had in the history of the company. About a million and a half dollars of raw land, 114 acres on Manns Chapel Road. It was just to give you an indication of how long something like that takes. I originally met with one of the family members in May 2015.
They were considering selling 40 acres of their land, and somebody else had 40 acres and 20 and 10, and they were going to do it individually. And I told them that this was a classic example of an assemblage, because this is just a few miles from UNC, that normally larger tracks sell for less per acre. But with this assemblage, they were actually worth more per acre because someone could come in and do a multi-lot subdivision. So we got all the family members together and marketed the properties simultaneously, and after a few months it went under contract.
I told the family that if a developer were to make an offer on their property, they would want all of the entitlements, meaning they would want the performances to be completed before they pulled the trigger on it. So the developer had to go through the entire subdivision property before they would close on the property. So that meant the developer had to do a survey. They had to do a soils evaluation. They had to do erosion control evaluation. They had to figure out stream mitigation, the setbacks. We had a gas line easement that went through it. So we had all these DOT access.
So we had all these complications. Then when they got all that engineering done, they had to go before the county and get the subdivision approved. And then we were able to close on the property. So the property was under contract for 15 months before the buyer could get all those entitlements completed. And then we just closed a couple weeks ago. And the heirs and the sellers were very happy. They got top, top dollar for their acreage. They were better off coming together and selling it. And this was a property that had been in their family since the 1960s. And it’s making a huge difference in their lives. And that was a nice thing to be a part of.
