Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Buying land from a School District

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Apr 23, 2017, at 3:21 PM, Thomas Lofft <tlofft [at] hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Critical: for the Buyer to be sure it knows absolutely everything about the 
> zoning, subdivision, development, utility and environmental regulations. The 
> more hurdles there are to be cleared, the less value the property has to most 
> prospects. Most real estate brokers do not know this information and are 
> unwilling to do the work to find out. Many owners do not know all the 
> constraints that may exist that create unknown development expenses for the 
> prospects.

To add to Tom’s excellent and informed advice, in trying to buy a historic 
theater, we found that an older commercial real estate broker will probably 
know this off the top of their head, especially if the property has been 
available for awhile. They will probably know the details of past negotiations 
and the personalities of the decision-makers. Ours could tell us that on every 
piece of commercial property that had been or was still available in DC for the 
last 10 years. It all had to be confirmed but he knew where the bodies were 
buried.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org