North Carolina Land Sales Expert Eric Andrews discusses why it is difficult to purchase a portion of land that is listed for sale, and why a seller probably isn’t going to sell you a few acres.
Speaker 1: Can I split up land when buying… If there’s some land for sale and it’s like 50 acres and I just want 25 of it?
Speaker 2: It’s possible, but it’s very, very annoying. I’ve had a large track for sale before, 100 acres and it’s 3,000 an acre. And then somebody calls me and says, “yeah, you guys have 100 acres. It’s three and a half thousand per acre. I want to buy one of them.” You can’t buy one of them. You got to buy all 100 to get the price at three and a half.
The other reason it’s so annoying is because you have 100 acre track and somebody wants five or 10 acres there’s what’s known as a remainder track. And so let’s just say for the sake of argument, I have 100 acres and it’s 5,000 an acre. And let’s say we actually convinced the seller to sell you 10 acres at 5,000 an acre. So that’s 50 grand. Not only does that 10 acres need to be surveyed, but that 90 acres needs to be surveyed as well.
And people would think if you have 100 acres and you sell out 10 acres and survey out 10 acres therefore you have 90 acres left over. But that’s known as a remainder tract. And that is actually, it’s probably 90 acres, but it’s not known that it’s 90 acres and it’s not considered clear title. So that 90 acres needs to be surveyed as well. And you’re looking at $15,000 to $20,000 survey for that remaining 90 acres. So people are like, “Oh, I want to buy that 10 acres for 50,000.”
But then you have a $20,000 burden on the seller because they have to survey that remaining thing. It’d be really great if you had 10 friends, you all want it at the same time. And then you’re getting a 10 acre track at 100 acre price. That’s the smart thing to do. But it’s more common that if someone were to cut out 10 acres out of 100 the seller’s going to be at a higher price per acre. They might even be double.
