# How do you determine the market value of vacant land?

**URL:** <https://forum.retipster.com/t/how-do-you-determine-the-market-value-of-vacant-land/705>\
**Category:** Land Investing\
**Created:** [September 27, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://forum.retipster.com/t/how-do-you-determine-the-market-value-of-vacant-land/705 "2021-09-27T20:22:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mizugori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc348/32.png) [@mizugori](https://forum.retipster.com/u/mizugori)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://forum.retipster.com/t/how-do-you-determine-the-market-value-of-vacant-land/705/1 "2021-09-27T20:22:53Z")

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How are you all determining the ‘market value’ of land in the areas where you invest?

I’m fairly new to this, and have been doing a bit of research. All of the articles, videos, podcasts etc. keep talking about buying at X% of market value and selling at Y% of market value. However, I’ve found scant little information (so far) on how one determines what the market value is in the first place. I also don’t know of a reliable method to obtain recent sales comps for small vacant land deals.

So, if anyone would be willing to share - how exactly do you come up with your market values? (This seems critical since you’re buying and selling price ranges are derived from your market value estimate.)

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**Author:** ![retipsterseth](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/forum.retipster.com/retipsterseth/32/2538_2.png) [@retipsterseth](https://forum.retipster.com/u/retipsterseth)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2021, 12:40pm UTC](https://forum.retipster.com/t/how-do-you-determine-the-market-value-of-vacant-land/705/2 "2021-09-28T12:40:14Z")

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@mizugori it’s a very good and important question you’re asking. The bad news is, there oftentimes isn’t a way to get pinpoint accuracy on what a vacant lot is worth (it’s a bit more ambiguous than trying to appraise a house because a lot of the data used in appraising houses simply doesn’t exist for land). However, there are a lot of things you can look at to get a reasonably confident assessment of what it’s most likely worth.

Start by reading this blog post, if you haven’t already: [https://retipster.com/valueofland/](https://retipster.com/valueofland/)

There are also tools like [PriceBoss](https://retipster.com/pricebossreview/) and [PRYCD](https://retipster.com/prycd) that have done a good job of trying to make this job easier, and if the comp data is available in the market where you’re looking, these tools can help a lot - but the fact remains, a lot of vacant lots are truly one-of-a-kind in their market and there are no directly [comparable](https://retipster.com/terms/comparables/) properties that make sense to use as a comparison.

Another noteworthy blog post that might help (again, if the data is available in your area through [Redfin](https://retipster.com/redfin)) is this blog post: [https://retipster.com/vacant-land-valuation/](https://retipster.com/vacant-land-valuation/)

At the end of the day, given the inherent difficulty with narrowing down a precise market value for some lots, it also underscores the importance of making _really low offers_, because if you end up being wrong about the market value (say, if you overestimate what it’s worth), the fact that you got it for such a low price will act as a hedge of protection to make sure you can still make money on it after all is said and done.