God might have just made a way...

We fell in love with a piece of land. The problem(s!!!)?

1) It's not for sale
2) It's 45 acres. We were shooting for 10-20 (can we manage that much?)
3) 45 acres x the $ per-acre rate in the area = 2x our budget for land

We have done multiple drive-bys and looked at the satellite views 100 times, but we haven't walked the property yet. We're thinking of writing a letter to the owner asking if he'd be willing to sell. And yes, we could ask him to parcel off a 10-20 acre piece for us. But it's so pretty we don't want to. How can you carve-up perfection?

Except for the budget part.

I have been tracking land sales and talked to a lot of people around here and everything I'm hearing is that it's creeping higher and higher. The 22-acre lot across the street is for sale for 50-100% more than we can pay per acre ($6K per acre more).

So we've been praying. Asking God to PLEASE let us have this property.... but if it's not Your will for us, then please help us to accept it. AND PLEASE make the land You have for us be just as pretty. Strangely, I haven't obsessed much over this property. I think b/c it's so out of OUR realm of possibility that it has to be a God thing. Kind of like when we hadn't found a rental house oh... a MONTH before we moved here, and I really wasn't that stressed about it because there was literally nothing I could do. It was beyond my ability to plan/control things b/c the date was so close. It HAD to be God. And He provided a house better than we could have ever imagined. Seriously, we should show you some of the ones we were considering. ;))

God may be doing it again. This beyond-our-wildest dreams thing. Because this land might actually be exactly the amount we had budgeted for land. Really. Exactly.

I talked to Brian from the tax assessor's office about this piece of land. I've called him about a thousand times about different properties and the county's development plans for the future, etc. He grew up here and knows everyone ("I went to high school with his son and they have moved to Florida so they might be selling soon,", etc.) He didn't know about the owner of this property, but he did talk about land values. While I already knew this, I didn't know the actual dollar amounts were this different for large vs small acreage. These aren't the real prices but this will give you a picture:

10-20 acre parcels of land = $1600/acre
40-50 acre parcels of land = $650/acre

THESE ARE NOT THE REAL VALUES BUT it does show you the big difference in the higher # and the lower. So I was thinking it would be $1600 x 45 ($72,000) when it's more like $650 x 45 ($29,250). So the real value is less than half of what I thought it was! God might be making a way!

And remind me to tell  you about the Stone Story.