Please do not quit your job, buy 20 of our parcels and become a land dealer, at least not in that order.

If you decide to sell your parcel before your note to us is fully paid, please do so with our blessings, so long as the payments of said note are up to date.  Feel free to sell for whatever price you can get and to get whatever amount of money you can as a down payment. If you'd like, Woods & Waters will make a new contract for the remaining balance with your buyer.  (We reserve the right to refuse to finance anyone we please, but it's a highly unusual situation.)   We have no pre-payment penalties, so you may also feel free to pay us off in cash.

Whether your note is paid or not, we'd like to encourage you to use our web-site to help you sell your parcel.  If you'll go to our Home Page, you'll see that, even though a property may be completely sold out, you can still click on it's link and access lots of information, directions, maps etc. often including the price of the last parcel that sold there.

You are free to copy and use our maps and information as tools for your sale.  You can also suggest that your buyer see them here on our site, but then you'll expose him or her to OUR deal, which might cost you yours. 

Woods & Waters does not broker properties for our clients.  We find that once you've owned your property for a while, you tend to want to get your cash out of it when you sell, and the resulting down payment requirement would make it hard for your parcel to compete against the ones we offer for nothing down.  

In the past, we've suggested listing your property with a local real estate agent.  There seems to be one major draw-back to this method, however.  Your typical home in this area sells for around $110,000 and pays the Realtor a commission of about $11,000 (10%).  Your property, on the other hand, will probably pay a commission more in the neighborhood of $300-1500. Furthermore, being out in the sticks as it is, your property will take up just as much of her advertising space, and probably more of her time and energy than would The Average House.  Maybe you can guess how she feels about ticks.

So how do you find an agent who really wants your listing?  Look at the agency's advertising.  If you don't see a smattering of parcels such as yours, that is, in the same size and price category, then it's a pretty good bet that this agency, for whatever reason, probably doesn't promote your sort of business.  I think you'll find that such properties are somewhat scarce in most rural localities.  Commerce absolutely adores scarcity, so keep looking; you should be able to find someone who appreciates your property for what it is.

We are familiar with a few brokers who have a proven record and we'll tell you if we know any in the neighborhood of your property if you email Neil@OzarkLand.com and ask.  Another good source is the Ozarks Mountain Living Real Estate Buyer's Guide, a collection of advertisements from real estate brokers all over the Ozarks.  We watch this closely in setting our own prices.  So should you.

In the last few years we've seen many  people selling their parcels themselves via the internet.

If you think you'd like to try this, go to my favorite search engine, Google.com and type in something that you might think a buyer interested in your land might type.  I typed in " Missouri Land for Sale " and I got 10591 matches and probably about a thousand of them were Woods & Waters.  Of the remaining 9,000 you can find lots of FREE places to list your property and several that are reasonably priced as well.  More recently, Amazon.com and eBay have become great places to sell your property and now there's a site dedicated to Ozark FSBO properties, Ozarklistings.com

 Once you've found a buyer, probably the cheapest and safest way to close a real estate deal yourself is to hire a title company to do it for you.  For a cash deal, it would be customary for you to provide your buyer with an Owner's Title Policy which may cost from $100-300.  This proves that you have clear title and will list what instruments have to be signed and recorded to accomplish the sale.  Most title companies will produce these for you for a reasonable fee.  They'll also perform the closing for you.

Go through all this once and you'll see it isn't so difficult.  Maybe you'll want to buy another parcel and sell IT!  

Good luck.

 

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