Has anyone ever traded their land for something other than cash like for a car, boat, gold, other land, or a house?
@lw2020, fun question, looking forward to hearing some stories. My first land sale, the guy I ended up selling to initially offered to trade it for a 1930-something Ford hot rod. The land had access issues (accessible only by boat), which I disclosed in my listing, but as we know most buyers don't actually read the listings. :-) Anyway, once he fully realized the issues with the property, we ended up settling on a cash price that was significantly lower than the value of the hot rod, but one I was still very happy with. I don't really have a need for a hot rod, so I probably would have sold it for cash anyway...after a joy ride or two.
@dl7573 thanks for responding. That is kind of like the situation I'm in now. The land has lots of issues and is kind of a tough sell. I had an offer for a 2005 Corvette which is valued pretty much the same as my asking price, but like you I don't really have a need for a sports car. I would probably have an easier time selling the car, but being that it is 8 hours away kind of makes it unappealing to me. Fun to think about though!
@lw2020 That's a very similar set of circumstances, except my buyer (and his car) was only about an hour to 90 min from me. Do you have any other serious buyers that understand the issues with this property and are looking to pay in cash, even if for a lower price (as long as it's one that would still work for you)? If so, I could see the logic in taking the easier route (one in the hand vs. two in the bush). If you don't have another prospective buyer, maybe you could find an unbiased neutral party that's relatively local to the Corvette guy, who's qualified to check out the car for you? It might be really neat if you could find someone that's somewhat specialized in Corvettes, or sports cars at least, that could not only verify the condition and mechanical status, but could possibly give you a reliable sense of what price that particular car might fetch in that area, as well, or possibly even help broker a sale, whether for you or the current owner.
@lw2020 I also just thought about another data point that factored into my own thinking under these circumstances. That is, how much money do you have into this property right now? In my case, I had about $1k invested into the property (before I covered anther $500 to $600 for closing costs on the resale side), so I was very willing to consider taking a flyer on trading for a car that I figured would be worth many times that amount, in the worst case. If I had $10k into that property, and had some confidence that another buyer would come along, I might have been less interested.
@dl7573 That's a good idea on getting the car checked out. I'm $8K into the property right now and the car is probably worth $15K-$17K. The property is listed for $18K and is in a flood zone and is landlocked. I bought it kind of as test to see how hard it would be to sell a property like this (I'm very new to this and still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't). I'm just now starting to look into some creative ways to market this property since it is going to require a very specific type of buyer. I'm still pretty early in marketing it, so I'm not in desperate mode yet. I didn't get into this business to sell cars, but it would be pretty cool to own something that nice that I would have never gone out and bought on purpose. I did get into this business to have fun and help lots of people, so maybe owning a sports car is part of the fun I was hoping for.