A comparable sale, or comp, is a recorded sale of land that the likely buyers of a given parcel would also have looked at. Comping means finding those sales, calling someone who took part in each to learn what the buyer was paying for, and adjusting each price for the ways its land differs. Federal appraisal standards ask for some sales better than the parcel and some worse, so the set brackets it from above and below.
What the county record holds, and what it leaves out
The deed index gives the date, the price and the parties, and the county's parcel records give acreage, zoning and road frontage. The record does not say why a price was paid. A sale from a father to his son and a sale to a neighbor who wanted a buffer look like any other sale in the index. The federal standards for appraising land the government buys require every comparable sale to be confirmed with the buyer, the seller, the broker or another person who knows its terms (Uniform Appraisal Standards for Federal Land Acquisitions, section 1.5.2.2), and a private buyer can make the same calls.
What the comping guide covers
How to comp vacant land starts with the use the land can support and follows it through a 1934 Supreme Court case over shoreland on Lake of the Woods, where the jury valued the land without the reservoir use its owners claimed. It then sets out the ten elements of comparison in the federal standards and the evidence each dollar adjustment needs.
Made up for the guide's worked example: a 10-acre lot zoned for one house, with no power at the road and a $9,000 quote to bring it there. Five nearby sales go into the comparison. One drops out for size, and a confirmation call turns up a sale from a father to his son, which drops out too. The three that remain put the lot between $45,000 and $55,000, with $47,500 as the likeliest figure.
From the range to the offer
The maximum allowable offer guide starts from that $47,500 and subtracts the costs and the buyer's margin. The maximum offer worksheet prints the comp table with a column for the person who confirmed each sale and one for the source of each adjustment.
Reading path
- How to comp vacant land
A method for pricing a vacant parcel from recent sales, with every adjustment written down so another person can check it.