All Forum Posts by: Michael Hooper

I'm about to close on 28 acres in Tullahoma Tennessee (Middle Tennessee area) a little over a mile from down town. 7 Acres at the back of the property is in a floodplain, so that leaves around 20-21 usable acres. There's apartments on one side and a single family neighborhood on the other. The acreage is zoned for 10000sqft single family and duplex properties. I believe I can divide off the road front into about 8 or 9 lots and sell those to recoup my investment and leave me with about 15-18 acres of usable property. The issue is, I believe in Tullahoma, the cost to develop land (road, electrical, plumping, etc) will be more expensive than the total revenue from the lots. Also, the property has been tried to rezone for decades apparently for apartment/townhomes, but they neighbors raise a fuss and it has always gotten shot down. So the question is what is the highest and best use of the land. I won't have to pay much to got the lots ready by the road frontage, so I'll break even in that, but what do I do with the left over land? Or is selling off the frontage, not the best idea?

@Caroline Gerardo I have looked into an ADU. There is a maximum sqft here of 700 sqft for that. Which is better than nothing.

@Justin Robert To be fair, the thought didn't even occur to me until after I got the property under contract. Then I looked into the zoning laws and found there was a possibility of subdividing. I first looked it up on the GIS and it said 160.66 feet, then I pulled the plat which confirmed it. It wasn't til the closing that they said they had a survey done a week prior. So it wasn't the reason I bought the property, just I thought I could get a bonus from it.

@Wayne Brooks the previous owner had 3 lots all together. I bought one of them. But he had all 3 surveyed before he sold them.

@Wayne Brooks I mean I want to believe you because what you say helps me. The plat I have I pulled from the register of deeds recorded in 1924. It says 160.66 on it. It says that for the adjoining priorities as well. The survey has a different width for each adjoining property. All less the 160 though. Again, I want to agree with you, but the planning commission says the survey is authoritative, not the original plat. Is there something, a law or court case, I can point them to

@Guy Gimenez Yeah, its a good lesson to learn. I guess the thing I don't really understand is, if the original deed says its 160.66x50, why isn't that what is owned and conveyed to the new owner. Why does a survey change that? Either way, I'm still exploring some other options, like potentially purchasing a foot of the neighbors property. We'll see what happens.

@JD Martin I did ask the surveyor to double check. They said they found all the original pins in the ground marking the perimeter, and that's what they came up with. I also asked on of the city planners if they'd consider granting a variance, and they said, while I can also request one, they probably wouldn't approve it. They said I could get an engineer and do a planned development requesting to keep the current house in place, but she didn't indicate how likely it would be to get approved.

So I recently purchased a property, in the due diligence I pulled the plat from the register of deeds. The plat confirmed that the property was 160.66" by 50", for a little over 8000 sq ft for the lot. It is zone RS-8 in Murfreesboro TN, which has a minimum sq ft of 8000 sq ft, so it fall right it. I started the process of subdividing the lot into two RS-4s, which are minimum 4000 sq ft. The planning commission said I needed to do a survey. Well.... the survey came back that the lot was actually 159.1" by 50", which will not divide into two 4000 sq ft lots. The planning commission basically said "sorry". Any ideas of what I can do? The current property has a 1200sq ft house on it, but it is on half of the property, so I already checked to make sure I could divide it and meet all the setbacks, and it does. It just now won't meet the minimum size if I divide.

@Darius Ogloza I actually contacted them because they sold one down the street from me for a pretty high per unit price and mine seem to be in similar quality. Other than that one, there weren't any comps in my immediate area, but expanding a little further out were apartments that sold for a similar per unit price and were a quality similar to mine. The appreciation is a little from my raising rents, but also just general appreciation in the area.

@Charlie Anne how much is the mortgage? How much are you making in principal? Is that included in your roi?