Messages

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General / Re: Trying to figure out how to price a bid on land

« on: June 07, 2018, 01:06:07 AM »

Yeah I think you're confirming my suspicions that the deals have gotten hard to come by as the winning bids are now more often approaching closer to what the market value would be. As an aside, it looks like land prices have shot up in the past 12 months at least according to what I'm seeing on MLS and Kijiji.

I think I'll still take a shot at one that I have my eye on later this month but I'm going to have low expectations as I don't plan to aggressively overbid.

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General / Trying to figure out how to price a bid on land

« on: June 05, 2018, 01:41:14 AM »

Have been out of this game for awhile but there's a couple of properties coming up this month that I'm interested in purely on the proximity to other property that I own and use. These aren't adjacent or anything, but they are close enough to be useful to me for other purposes.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to best price my bid. I'm just looking to get a deal and not be paying market value like I seem to be seeing in some of these areas. If I miss out on these properties because someone else overpaid I won't lose a wink of sleep.

It seems to me the best approach would be looking at MLS comparables and then bidding someone sort of a discount to that. Does anyone have any rule of thumb that I should be using? This is for land only, there's no structures on these properties.

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General Discussion / Re:Sherriffs sales this weekend

« on: July 21, 2017, 05:27:24 PM »

Interesting, the owner was the president of the lake association.

www.morrisonlake.ca/MorrisonLakeSpringNewsletter2016.pdf

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General / Re: Back from a 5 year hiatus on here. What's new guys?

« on: July 17, 2017, 02:40:35 PM »

some of us old timers still kicking around.  What type of land do you want?

I remember you Dave2 as one of the main players here.

I'm looking for something that can used for long term tree farm type activities. Not too fussy on location.

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General / Re: Back from a 5 year hiatus on here. What's new guys?

« on: July 17, 2017, 02:38:38 PM »

  Welcome back, and I always find issues interesting. It's nice to know I'm not the only one with woes; care to enlighten us? There might be some help, or even opinions!

I have some land I bought in a 2007 tax sale. The township put an environmental hold on the property in 2008 claiming that the lots were improperly allocated previously.  The total size is around 2.5 acres. A fraction of the property has wetlands. As it stands now I can't build anything on it. I've had many ups and downs with this property between feeling anger at the township, wanting to sue them etc but at this point I'm feeling pretty ambivalent and would like to sell or trade it.

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General / Back from a 5 year hiatus on here. What's new guys?

« on: July 12, 2017, 07:53:56 PM »

Not sure how many old-timers are still on here, or any that remember me. Just thought I'd say "hi again". I still have one tax sale property with some issues. Decided to peek in here and I think I'll stay for awhile. I'm semi-looking for some more land.

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Questions and Answers / Re: Opening a road allowance to make an entranceway to your property.

« on: June 18, 2012, 09:47:31 PM »

I've been told by one municipality that if you even cut one twig off of a tree from an unopened road allowance, or drive on it that you'll be charged with trespassing (they don't want liability issues). Although there was an option to buy part of the road allowance but that was mucho $$$ for sure. Made me walk away from bidding on a pretty nice property otherwise.

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General Discussion / Re: Muskoka

« on: November 01, 2010, 06:24:59 AM »

it redeemed

Extract Partial Quote from an experienced Pro who is a lurker on this board with whom I have exchanged some Private Messages:

"I will no longer bid on a property unless I have owned and sold something in that area - no exceptions. I now prefer to see a property, search the title, visit engineering and planning, submit the tender, and attend the opening all on the same day. You cannot do that in an unfamiliar area at my age. Each year I get more focused."

Sounds like not bad advice.  As I have said before knowing your territory isn't all bad Only way a youngster like me can compete against the more experienced and smart pro's who hang out here.

Personally I believe the people on this board buy the majority of smart tax sale buys in at least southern Ontario.  Not sure of the north.  More of the Pro's hang out here then people realize.  One of the benefits of posting is you get access to some interesting people and if you share advice you get rewarded in return.  I am also starting to learn the home territories of various bidders.  (not all of what I do is in the public domain).  

Based on the tax sales I've been a part of I think that the ones in cottage country are the "hot properties" of the past few years.

The Hamilton-Niagara homes that go tax sale are usually dumps or ex-meth labs with problems. Same goes for anything just east of Toronto.

In cottage country it's usually land. It makes things more affordable and just about everyone has this dream to own land in the north. The downside is that it usually won't ever sell fast and most get overbid (but not all of them). I own 2 tax sale properties in cottage country and if I had to sell them within a month or so I'd be concerned no matter what time of the year it was. The upside is I risked much less considering I put out less money and that I don't have to worry about a home that becomes a money pit.

I do agree that knowing the territory is a huge advantage. There was 2 in the past year that I had ia pretty good knowledge about the previous owner and that gave me a big advantage. Unfortunately, the information that I knew was not positive, so I didn't go after either property.

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Questions and Answers / Re: Benefits of using a corporation to buy properties

« on: November 01, 2010, 06:11:45 AM »

Good advice PFM.

I do mine through a corporation but I already had one setup for my regular business activities. The best thing about owning a corporation is that the more diverse you go with different business ventures (some profitable and some less so) the more you can easily writeoff.

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General Discussion / Re: Purchase rights for an unopened road allowance

« on: October 05, 2010, 03:40:19 AM »

I looked into this recently for a potential property that I was considering purchasing. This can be a good way of making a "tainted" property viable.

Unfortunately, the cost that most townships charge can be huge if you're talking about more than a simple 100-200 foot length of road. What I really need was 1000's of feet. The total cost that I was calculating was can to around $1500 for every 50 feet or so (if I recall correctly). This would be fine for a short distance, but once you hit more than a few hundred feet this can be VERY costly.

At that point you are probably better off trying to find a neighbour to sell you a right of way if at all possible.

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General / Re: property value

« on: September 28, 2010, 01:41:25 AM »

Pick a price that you would be not unhappy to get for it. Appraising property can be very difficult. I'm assuming there's no comparable listings in your area. In my experience professional appraisals (including of my own properties) are often on the higher end of the scale assuming that you had the right buyer just waiting in the wings and competitive market conditions even though often neither is the case at the time.

What you'll quite often see with rural properties is several on the MLS for a year or longer. With those ones you can usually assume that the price is above the "value", or at least what anyone is willing to pay for it at that particular time.

With ones that have sold you can assume that they were either priced to move or priced realistically.

Personally, if I had a willing buyer waiting I would price it attractive enough to just move the property at an amount you can live with and save on the long term headache (and property tax). You never know if there'll be another potential buyer coming around anytime soon.. and that is often times the case when you're selling just land. It's not like 30-40 years ago when many people (non-developers) looked for land and then built a house on it.. that's by far become a rare exception these days.

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General Discussion / Re: Your most important tax sale decision - Choosing your hunting territory

« on: September 17, 2010, 05:04:06 AM »

My advertising works as I have over 10,000 hits. The problem is converting this to sales.  Personally I think unless you have a very valuable purchase that you cannot rely on the real estate community but you have to do it yourself.  

Dave I just have to point this out. Hits doesn't equal advertising success. Advertising most effectively with the least about of hassle/money is what the goal should be. Advertising success is when you meet your goal in a reasonable fashion.

I have 4 tax sales properties right now in Ontario and Florida and I would be happy to sell all of them right now for the right price, the issue is whether I wait or sell (assuming they'll go up). A big part is that I'm delaying the hassle of actually selling them. I initially thought before maybe I could get lucky and just sell them on craigslist (with no commission to be paid out). But everytime it turned out to be more hassle that it was worth. I'm a busy enough person and I'm not going to have to deal with annoying sellers for weeks and then maybe even have to drive up to my property and show it to save a few hundred bucks on commission.. and that's IF it actually converts to a sale.

My opinion now about tax sales is that the winning a bid is much easier than the sell side of things.

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Properties for sale / Re: Helping fellow Board Members - Should we be more active on the Sell Side

« on: July 14, 2010, 08:40:20 PM »

I'm not in a big rush to sell any of my propeties, although I have at times thought about just bundling all my Ontario and Florida properties into a package and sell them all for one price.

My main frustatration is people that want me to spend a lot of my time to sell them a 20k property. I wouldn't drive 2 hours to show/sell a 20k car so why I do it for land?

I think I'll just wait abit longer and then get an agent.

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Properties for sale / Re: Helping fellow Board Members - Should we be more active on the Sell Side

« on: July 13, 2010, 08:48:17 PM »

Has anyone really had much success selling directly on this site? My impression was that those situations were rare.

As for a members forum, that could be ok but I think I'd rather just live with the spammers if more people can read about what I'm selling.

As a side note, selling is such a pain. I've been trying to sell a couple of my properties off and on but the hassle of selling to people on craigslist or kijiji is almost not worth it.

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Property Information / Re: Gravenhurst..Jousters mount your stallions..let the tournament begin..

« on: May 09, 2010, 07:42:40 PM »

This might help enlighten anyone interested in the Crawford Island property from the Town of Gravenhurst.
My choice on this one is to pass. Sounds to good to be true.

How did "island property" and "too good to be true" end up in the same paragraph? This is an island property, AND there's some serious potential issues as mentioned above that could prove disastrous for a potential buyer.

Island properties are so risky to get involved with. The average listing time before selling for a standard cottage property is about 6 months. For an island property its about 20 months.

I wouldn't get too excited about an island property. Almost nobody really wants to be on an island other than the fact that it's cheaper. If I had the choice between an island property and year round access waterfront one with environmentally toxic soil I think I would go with the one where I can access it 12 months a year by car and don't have to load and unload everything twice (car and boat).