<p>Sometime in the next year or thereabouts, we're interested in selling our house and moving away. For various practical and aesthetic reasons, we think our house should be marketed as a tear down - this has been a very very big practice in our town (even used to make national news stories). So I drove around the neighborhood and took down the names of builders on new home construction and emailed a few of them to see how the market was starting to look. </p>
<p>Well, one of them replied that he had an interested client and could I please send a copy of the plat of survey. Yikes! :eek: We're not quite that ready! So two questions - is it safe to copy and email a copy of the plat (once I track down where it's filed), and how do I maintain interest yet put this guy off? If it was up to me, I would sell today and move to California but DH is not yet that onboard (of course, he is out of town for a few days...;) ). And I suppose we should get DS back for his senior year of college, although at this point I am tempted to sell the house as soon as he goes back and not leave a forwarding address!</p>
<p>Also, the builder also said current market pricing is between $50-$60 per square foot for teardowns. Does that sound reasonable for an excellent location in a pretty nice suburb on the commuter line? It would actually work out higher than I expected for our lot at this time (although lower than a year ago).</p>
<p>Don't get too excited. All builders and real estate agents "have a client." This is usually an effort to get you to eventually work with them. Most builders are pretty hungry right now.</p>
<p>Though who knows, it's possible. In most places where people were tearing down old homes and building Mcmansions, it's come to a complete stop. It's hard to get financing and folks are not looking to pump lots of money into new houses, they are looking to steal existing ones from the many, many desperate sellers out there. So your DH may be on the right track, you'll do much better as we come out of this recession. Then again the price of homes in CA will be up too...</p>
<p>Nobody can say whether that price is fair or not without lots more info. On a typical 7500 SF city lot around here that would mean around $400K for the lot which is right around what teardowns sold for around here at the peak. So it could be a good number but nobody can tell without more data. I doubt the builder is looking to pay top $$$ right now. Land tends to be the dependent variable in development and swings the most from good times to bad as construction and other costs are more fixed (although now down too). We have seen commercial lots down 50% in value here from the peak--if you can even sell it.</p>
<p>Next year will be much better time to sell.</p>
<p>Real estate ownership, as missypie says, is a matter of public record. I think you should write the builder back and say you're definitely interested. It takes a year or more to design a house and get a building permit. The builder could be working on that while you're getting ready to move. You don't have to sell today; you can write a contract to close at some point in the future.</p>
<p>When we bought our lot, the due diligence--determining if we could build the house we wanted to--took six months from the contract until the day we closed.</p>
