Looking at the delinquent tax deed inventory held by various states, one of the things that leap out at me is the number of properties that are 0.18 acre or less. Finding lots that are 0.13 to 0.10 acre is common. When you look at a map that shows the parcel lines, the number of very small lots like this is huge. Clearly at the time the land was divided and sold, it was considered acceptable to building houses on this size lots, even with septic. People bought the lots in good faith.
Well, times change. You read the current minimum size for a buildable lot in the code requirements outside urban areas, specially when septic is involved, and these lots simply don’t pass. Talking to zoning officers, I find that in some municipalities they are grandfathered in, but in others this exemption ends when the lot changes hands.
What I am seeing is a picture of a huge amount of semi-rural land that is frozen in time—impossible to use and therefore impossible to sell. No wonder so many owners stop paying taxes on them and just let the government take the lands.
That is my initial impression, but I am not an expert. I would like to hear the thoughts of other, more knowledgeable people.
That’s interesting to think about. I know there are a lot of junk lots on most delinquent tax lists if you don’t filter them out, but I hadn’t thought about it in these terms.
Maybe it’s up to us land investors to buy a couple of adjoining lots to combine them into one larger parcel, making them big enough to be more useful? But of course, our ability to do that is never guaranteed, and it’s frankly not even that likely.
It reminds me of the landlocked issue. Why do these municipalities even allow these lots to exist, with no mechanism to ‘break the curse’ and make them usable again?
These are the problems small town governments are great at creating.
@syasturi I would agree with your observation. There is always a buyer for every type of property though. If you make it your business to specialize in these, where there is a will there is a way.
I’ve bought a lot of delinquent tax properties in my time. Some of them I should have avoided, for similar reasons to what you mentioned. Even so, to @landmavericks’s point, I never had a property I couldn’t sell eventually.
You’d be surprised at the kind of demand there is for these oddball lots. I’m not saying you’ll make a ton of money off them, but you can make some if you buy them cheap enough.
