Vacant Land or Improved Property?

Happy New Year!

I am wondering if Vacant LAND would be safer over Improved Property for a beginner to start flipping.

My concerns about Land is the length of time its on the market and how to combat that and also, which is best for a beginner Commercial or Residential Land?

Lets all have a great year!

I don’t know that trying to “flip” vacant land would be a good idea, I imagine the holding time on vacant land is long.

I love land, and I’ve made a lot more money on land than with houses.

With that being said, flipping land would be very difficult, unless there is some serious way you can improve it instantly.

Land tends to be very long term hold. It also tends to be very difficult to finance, so land is more of a cash game. Also, good land investments tend to be larger plots, not single lots.

The most common way to invest in land is to buy in the path of progress and then wait.

The only quick flip I did on land was accidental. I bought a river frontage recreational lot with a few dollars that I had left over on a 1031-- rather have an RV vacation site for myself than to give it to Uncle.

After I owned it, I discovered I could get a CUP (conditional use permit) and a septic permit, which I did. The property went from a recreational lot to a building site. Very bad on the listing agent. They cost their client a ton of money because they didn’t go down to the county to see if a CUP was available.

That sort of thing does not happen very often.

The most reliable way to “flip” land, and it is not called flipping, is to sub-divide. A sub-division is very expensive to do and there is no quarantee you can sell all the lots. Most sub-dividers go ahead and build the houses. We are talking a lot of money in before you get any back out.

I would like to get the definitions straight first. Flipping is buying sitting on it for a time period until the prices goes up and sell it at the higher price. The other is buy fix up and sell. That way you buy a property that is being sold at a discount because it is distressed, relieve that distress and then sell for market price. If you are talking about the former the barrier is time. It takes a long time for raw land to go up enough to justify tying up your money in it. If you are talking about the latter it is hard to fix the distress in raw land.

I’m a newbie from California we get a bad rap for over paying on out of state property a lot.

I would like to keep my investments in CA I cant afford to buy investment property here. I was hoping vacant land could keep me here.

I wounder where the best beginning$ level investments are in CA is today? if not land Mobil homes?