Unusable Remnant

[DW Shelton]

I have a doing some estate appraisal and a few of the properties are unusable remnants (small flood land along Interstate). What should I say in a letter explaining this?

 

[DW Shelton]

Wow, bad grammer! I am doing some estate appraisals and some of the parcels are unusable remnants. There that sounds better

 

[Walter Kirk]

You must make sure that there are no uses for these parcels. Can billboards be built there? Is it an area where fiber optic lines might be run? Would an adjoining property owner be interested in the land? This type of assignment can get quite complicated.

 

[Restrain]

Sometimes the highest and best use of a site is to hold the world together.

My father actually bought and sold some landlocked land as a result of a new interstate highway, so I've seen this.

It's in a flood plain, it has no access, I'm assuming. So, just describe the situation. The property is in a flood plain. If raising the property will interefere with the flowage across the flood zone, it cannot be developed, period (FEMA). It has no access, so it would require significant legal costs to obtain access. The cost to develop (raising the site with fill, obtaining access, survey and legal costs, etc) would far exceed any market value of the site. Therefore, the tract has value only to the adjoining property owner. Given the nature of the site, this would be excess flood land which would have very minimal value to the adjoining property owner. To the general market, this site has no value.

As Market Value is based on the property being available to sale to the general public, there is no marketability to the general public, and as such the property has no value.

 

[Richard Carlsen]

"unusable swamp"

The UW will understand what that means.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Can billboards be built there? Is it an area where fiber optic lines might be run? Would an adjoining property owner be interested in the land?

I had to deal with such a parcel. An old highway was bypassed with a 4 lane. An existing stretch of road remained and parallels the highway. At some point the road intersects. A new sharp right curve in the road connects the two. A sliver of land remained between the old SH road (which had no deed so the landowner's section land description still gave him title)and the angle of the new road. The new road took about 5 acres leaving 58 on one side of the highway and a narrow sliver of about 10' for about 400' and then a pie shaped piece maybe 80' x 40' at the new intersection, and a small very steep hill about an acre in a half-moon. At its location a billboard is not really feasible and would block visibility at the intersection, and there is no other use that I could think you could use. The state survey and survey of the north side is not clear, and the assessor bucked up when the owner tried to give it away to a Church. So he took it back and still owns a piece of worthless ground awaiting the next time the Hwy dept. needs to widen the road.