Do I Need a Special Real Estate Agent to Buy Vacant Land?

Whether you're renting or owning your current home, building a new home yourselves is a big step. Perhaps you know where we want to live, such as in a small town with lots of open space and wonderful schools, and are ready to start looking at land to build on.

But where should you begin? It's worth getting professional help, but we recommend:

• avoiding calling the sellers or their broker directly, and
• instead, hiring a real estate agent to represent your interests.

Reasons Not to Call the Seller of Vacant Land Directly

What you probably don't want to do is to call the number on the seller's "LAND FOR SALE" sign. Doing so might lead you into a situation where you don't have your own, buyer's broker by your side to help negotiate and conclude the transaction.

By way of background, real estate brokers represent clients in one of two basic ways: they either represent the seller (in this case, the owner of the vacant land) or the buyer (you). A brokerage firms or agent can also, however, represent both the buyer and the seller at the same time. If two different agents in the same firm represent the buyer and the seller, it's called designated agency; if the same agent represents both the buyer and the seller, it's called dual agency.

While such an arrangement can appear convenient even to the buyer, realize that it involves an inherent conflict of interest in which of the seller's agent can't convey important information to you because of confidentiality based on their simultaneous duty to protect the seller's interests. It's best to avoid such arrangements.

The presence of a second, buyer's broker won't cost you anything; the seller's agent and your agent will simply split the commission that the seller has already agreed to pay.

Ideally, Look for a Real Estate Broker With Experience Buying Empty Lots

Typically, residential real estate brokerage agencies don't specialize in different kinds of real estate (for example, rental apartments or single-family homes). However, individual brokers who are affiliated with that agency might be specialists, or at least experienced, in specific kinds of real estate.

So you could theoretically contact any brokerage. Nevertheless, you might want to first scout around for individual brokers who focus on vacant-land transactions.

A good buyer's agent can help you learn more about the town you want to live in, find suitable listings on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and other listing agencies, deal with the seller's agent, arrange for you to walk the land, obtain helpful information not provided by the seller's agent, and walk you through the entire process of purchasing the land on which you'll build your house.

You won't regret the time and effort spent on choosing your own agent. Buying raw land adds a level of complexity to your planning: You'll need to think about a whole checklist of issues that would have been already resolved had you been buying an existing home, like sewer and water hookups or septic systems, zoning restrictions, environmental regulations, and building codes. Your real estate agent should have the experience and training to deal with such issues.

Word of mouth is still the best way to find a good real estate agent. Talk to friends who have just bought or built a home. Also check reviews of real agents in your area online. If you're coming up short, you could visit the clerk's office in the town where you want to build and ask for referrals. Also, if you see any homes under construction in your chosen town or area, talk to the contractors who are working on the house and ask for the names of the brokers who represented the buyer and the seller on the sale of the land.

Selecting a buyer's real estate agent isn't a science, but you can increase the odds of ending up with a good one by asking lots of questions.