Opportunity or not?
So, an opportunity came my way and I have been wrestling with the numbers to confirm that the deal makes sense. The situation is this:
A Piece of land zoned as a multi-family property but undersized is up for sale due to the owner not able keep the property (house is rundown and needs to be demolished). The Public Trustee for the Province is now acting on behalf of the owner and is tabling offers (to be closed mid January 2015).
So that's the background, now for the situation... I am convinced that there are not many if any, who can put a multi-family unit on this piece of land which will meet all the City guidelines successfully; I managed to achieve this on a very similar site, which was completed in July 2014, only because of my training and coming from Europe where we have a lot of instances like this there.
Right now the numbers do not stack up, because the trustee's are asking a lot for the land, due to appraisers valuation. Should I just make an offer which will be way under the asking price, or do I just let it go? I have not worked with a government body who is acting on behalf of the owner, would they be interested to negotiate, the realtor feels they won't; I don not trust realtors?
As mentioned, I can put four townhouse on the land, I developed the first of it's kind in Calgary on a previous and similar undersized site, Multi-family plus meeting all the guidelines.
Anyone, out there able to give me any advice on how to deal with the trustees?
I know, its a hard one to respond to.