My property consists of two city lots, this hasn't always been the case, many many years ago there were about 7 city lots with the house, then over years of selling piece after piece to somebody who wanted to build, etc there were three city lots.
That brings us to 1999. Tornado hits house, Insurance company pays guy, guys sells damaged house to Flipper (a friend/coworker) who fixes it up to sell. When the guy sold the house he only put two lots into the deal and to this day still owns the third lot. It would be sort of an L shaped property with it. I bought the house from my coworker and always thought it would be cool to get ahold of this third lot because it's totally overgrown, but with some nice trees on it. Picture a path through heavy growth to a nice little paved garden in the middle with benches and the like.
Anyway, this property may have a ton of weeds, brush, and who knows what else growing on it, but there is a HUGE amount of garbage just about 20 feet from my property. I don't know where this garbage came from, but I suspect a lot of it is remnants of the "flipping". In other words, from my coworker. I always wanted to ask him about it, but sadly he passed away last sunday (he retired a couple of years ago).
What should I do next? I have several possible solutions, but I'm interested in hearing how well you think any of them would play out:
1. Make an offer to the guy and mention the garbage and hope he gives me a good deal because of it.
2. Tell the owner that his lot is full of garbage and that he needs to clean it up, then make him an offer on it when he does.
3. Tell the owner that his lot is full of garbage and that he needs to clean it up, then when he doesn't inform city who will likely "do something about it" then when the guy sees it's gonna be a huge inconvenience for him, I swoop in with a decent offer to buy as is and clean it up myself.
I'm not really sure what it's worth. Not a huge amount, I'm sure. A nice lot will sometimes go for 5K in similar areas of town, but sometimes when they aren't worth anything except making someones yard bigger they will go for as little as 2-3K. I suppose the other neighbor who borders it might be interested, so that could jack the price if they express interest.
One interesting factor to the whole thing is that the owner of the property moved to the southern portion of the state, so is 5+ hours away, limiting his ability to do anything by himself. Paying to have someone clean this up could be pricey. We are talking BIG dumpster load type stuff here. Carpeting, cans, decking scraps, cement chunks, a rotting walnut root ball sitting kinda on it all, lots of garbage bags with empty mulch bags, etc inside.
So, any advice?
That brings us to 1999. Tornado hits house, Insurance company pays guy, guys sells damaged house to Flipper (a friend/coworker) who fixes it up to sell. When the guy sold the house he only put two lots into the deal and to this day still owns the third lot. It would be sort of an L shaped property with it. I bought the house from my coworker and always thought it would be cool to get ahold of this third lot because it's totally overgrown, but with some nice trees on it. Picture a path through heavy growth to a nice little paved garden in the middle with benches and the like.
Anyway, this property may have a ton of weeds, brush, and who knows what else growing on it, but there is a HUGE amount of garbage just about 20 feet from my property. I don't know where this garbage came from, but I suspect a lot of it is remnants of the "flipping". In other words, from my coworker. I always wanted to ask him about it, but sadly he passed away last sunday (he retired a couple of years ago).
What should I do next? I have several possible solutions, but I'm interested in hearing how well you think any of them would play out:
1. Make an offer to the guy and mention the garbage and hope he gives me a good deal because of it.
2. Tell the owner that his lot is full of garbage and that he needs to clean it up, then make him an offer on it when he does.
3. Tell the owner that his lot is full of garbage and that he needs to clean it up, then when he doesn't inform city who will likely "do something about it" then when the guy sees it's gonna be a huge inconvenience for him, I swoop in with a decent offer to buy as is and clean it up myself.
I'm not really sure what it's worth. Not a huge amount, I'm sure. A nice lot will sometimes go for 5K in similar areas of town, but sometimes when they aren't worth anything except making someones yard bigger they will go for as little as 2-3K. I suppose the other neighbor who borders it might be interested, so that could jack the price if they express interest.
One interesting factor to the whole thing is that the owner of the property moved to the southern portion of the state, so is 5+ hours away, limiting his ability to do anything by himself. Paying to have someone clean this up could be pricey. We are talking BIG dumpster load type stuff here. Carpeting, cans, decking scraps, cement chunks, a rotting walnut root ball sitting kinda on it all, lots of garbage bags with empty mulch bags, etc inside.
So, any advice?