Well my hope for rain tomorrow morning has been cancelled.  It's going to rain all day today, instead and just be cloudy tomorrow where the forecast previously stated it was going to rain in the morning. I just wanted whatever advantage I could get in seeing fewer people at the auction tomorrow morning and possibly scoring an RV property.  I have around 8 grand I can bid up to for any given property before I have to bow out of the bidding.  Mom opened up an account for savings that she said she was going to put some money into, but she never did it and I'm not going to ask. That was her idea and I'l just have to go it on my own with what I have. 

A few properties shouldn't - realistically anyway - go any higher than 8 grand, it would set the price per acre at 2 grand and that's about as much as I want to go for any given property unless it's in a prime location or has some redeeming feature that would be appealing to the RV crowd.  Then I can see going up as high as 3 grand per acre maybe more - if I had the money to do so.

If tomorrow produces no results, it is what it is.  Just keep saving and saving until I have enough either for a substantial down payment on a mortgaged land or buy it outright at the auction.  Or even buy private owner seller land outright for cash. No payments would be nice, obviously.  

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A rather frustrating morning.  First to the city planning and development building, where the gentleman that basically tells the city what will be done with what properties was helpful, even printing out a huge zoning map of the entire city - but also not very helpful in the idea that most of the city will not allow an RV park.  Ok, so I could take this before the city council and see about a change in zoning for any given property? 

Only if I ok it.  And, per Texas law as of sometime in 2019, spot zoning is no longer allowed anywhere in the state.  I'm learning stuff if nothing else. Spot zoning is where they would allow one portion of an otherwise zoned area to be changed without changing the rest of the zoning in that area. The only way around it is to change the entire zoning for that whole area.  And, he says, the city council hears what his opinion is of whatever it is a person is trying to do and if he disagrees, highly unlikely the city would allow it.  

It was the 11 acres I was looking at in the city limits.  It's zoned R3 - it's basically only allowing "residential" housing, whatever that means and trying to get him to define that was like pulling teeth.  "Well, I'd have to go and take a look at what's around that area to determine what would be allowable".

Subject moved on to the piece of property where I'd like to put a mobile home.  Nope, he says, But, I reply, there are 2 mobile home 100 feet away on the same street?  Well they were probably grandfathered in.  Well how do I find out what I can do with this property? You ask me. 

Lol, ok.  So I have him the county property ID number. Again, his statement was to see what's near it.  There are old trashed houses, newer - but far from new - regular housing, mobile homes, mansions, there's all kinds of different structures on that street, there is not confluent  at all. It's all different.  Well, I'll go take a look and get back to you.  That didn't sound promising, but my other idea was these portable buildings.  They look like a small house.  I could move one onto this property, permanently situate it on block, put skirting around the bottom, run electric, water and sewer into it.  Design the inside of it, install a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom and call it done.  Put it up as a rent to own. I don't even need credit to get one of those buildings, though I'm sure you need a good down payment.

Leaving there, I went to the county courthouse.  Looking up cases, that didn't help at all. Several properties with no addresses, no GIS, no satellite view, no description beyond a survey of where they are at. Over to the Appraisal district, they took me into a room with computers and said you can sit down at that one and look the properties up.

Nothing. On any of them.  I called them in, eventually a man shows up.  He looks up one of the properties I'm quite interested in for the acreage is ok and the starting bid is quite low.  After he "found" it and left, I realized he's found a property with a different ending number.  I tried looking this property up on several different applications and found nothing.  I called him in again, who then told me he'd have to call someone else in.

This lady comes in, looks at what I am looking at, goes to an old survey map from the 60's, starts looking.  I asked her how they could be selling a property where they have no idea where it is?  Blank look on her face, she couldn't find it on the old map and gave up on it.  The same was true with all the unidentified locations for properties, so I just gave up on it.  You can't just buy a property blindly and hope somehow you can magically find where it is and then, if it's even suitable for what you want to do with it? Ridiculous.

After eliminating all the properties that had too high a starting bid or were too far away, I only ended up with one single property that I could bid on tomorrow. It's smaller than I want at 4 acres, but it's absolutely beautiful and outside city limits.  There is city water across the street, power lines running at the front of the property and underground cable across the street as well.  That would give access to high speed wifi, a thing many RV'ers demand have accessible.  Unfortunately it's starting at almost 6 grand, so I will only be able to bid up to maybe 8 grand and after that?  I'm SOL.  I mean, I could buy that 4 acre unidentified property, apparently you have to pay a company that does surveying to find it for you.  I dunno how much that costs, but it's probably not cheap. Yet, if the property turned out to be something going cheap - it's starting bid is 1.5 grand - I could easily see paying that extra price.

That's  a pretty risky gamble. The other thing in high supply are properties that are landlocked.  You cannot access them, there are no roads of any sort going to them. A couple of them  you'd have to walk down railroad tracks a mile or more to gain access.  I don't need that, thanks.  Just a waste of money and time, you can't use it unless you could convince a property owner next to it to allow it - and probably pay a steep fee to put in an access road and you couldn't sell it, who wants to buy unaccessible property? 

So I'll play that one out when they get to it.  The 4 acres that I am interested in has nice roads getting to the street that leads up to it. That street is a bit narrow but nothing an RV couldn't easily navigate and the entrance would be flat and level, make an extra wide entrance and they'll love the area.  A ranch across the street, my hunting property on undivided interest the other direction across the tracks, a small property north of it that is unused and about a 4 acre tract south of it that - who knows?  Maybe a person could convince the owner to sell it, they aren't doing anything with it.  

But that's neither here nor there.  I have to actually win it.  I have 8 grand, that's what I can spend, that would be 2 grand per acre.  

There are other properties I'd bid on tho.  Houses on them, they are starting low, but as I have seen, those will get bid up to 50, 60 or more grand.  A person with money could easily make a living - a good living - off of buying and selling these properties.  Especially the ones with acreage.  

Now just let me say, that 11 acres tract? Would be a wonderful place to build a house and have all that property to yourself.  I'm not going to try to do that, the thought entered and slipped back out of my mind quickly. That doesn't help me do what I want to do here.  

So there it is. Spent all morning on this.  Oh wait, there's another property that would fit the bill only a mile away from our house - but I forgot to see what the zoning is there.  It's in city limits as well.  

Whatever the case, I kind of feel like I should have just gone to work instead of taking tomorrow off for this, but now that it's a done deal, I'll be there first thing and see what happens.  The worst that can happen is the property bids too high and sends me back to the drawing board.  The drawing board, however, is complete.  Save more money - a lot more - or cash out the 401k to acquire the property.

Of course, if I do that, I won't have enough left over to develop the property.  That 401k is the money needed to develop the property into an RV park, if I spend it on buying property, I am left with nothing to develop it with.  But, maybe that wouldn't be so terribly bad?  I'm sick of trying to get property, it's really starting to gnaw at my wit's end.  I've spent a large amount of time looking for property, trying to find one that will fit the bill and then - find out it's under contract, three times now that's happened!

I've been doing this all day, I'm taking a break from it.  I've scrutinized that list several times over. There are a large amount of single house tracts that I'll have to sit and wait through before they even get to the single property I'm interested in.  So I'll be there an hour or more before they get to it. Gag.  

If that falls through, then I am definitely going to seriously considering cashing out the 401k sometime around a month before the next tax lien auction.  Get the money in hand, just about guarantee that, as long as there is suitable property, I will score.  Or, have it available for a substantial down payment on land for a mortgage/financing.  Like, 1/3rd down or something.  Give them 25 grand on a 80 grand property I don't think they're going to care if I already have a mortgage on a house in Arizona, I stand to lose a lot of money if I default on the loan. 

So that's it.  I'm going to go look at a mobile home on land that is a few miles away from here, then go meet Taylor for lunch at her work.  That will be a nice distraction.  The house I wouldn't bother to go see for I am almost sure that it will get bid up high - that would be a turn key rental property, but since it's so close, I'll take a look.

G'day.