Quote:
Originally Posted by John Mercier
The State officials were counting on the credibility of the funding source. That funding source is no longer interested in the project.
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There was no funding source, there was no project, and there was no way that deal was ever going to materialize.
She was searching for investors. She was soliciting over the internet for people to join an “Opportunity Zone Fund”. The solicitation in and of itself was a borderline scam. An Opportunity Zone doesn’t creating funding …. it is simply a way of decreasing taxes for investors that hold an investment over a long period of time. It doesn’t begin to work for real estate developers that intend to develop property/lots for sale.
That land doesn’t begin to be worth $21M. Can anybody show a comparable land sale anywhere north of Concord, where an investor/developer paid over $21M for raw land? That’s nearly $100,000 per acre for RAW LAND, that doesn’t even have sufficient infrastructure for the proposed pie in the sky development program. There are a 100 other lots, with no worse development potential, that can be bought for a heck of a lot less than $100,000 per acre.
And how were they going to build “workforce housing” in Laconia NH, where the maximum sales price of a home (under workforce regulations) for family of four is $325,000. That couldn’t be done, with any semblance of a profit, if the State GAVE them the raw land!
It’s a shame that our state officials don’t have enough expertise to see the emptiness behind the curtain. The viability of the buyer could have been vetted within weeks, if they weren’t hoping for a buyer who needed to win lotto to be dumb enough to pay $21M for that piece of dirt.
Think about this comp …. land just up the street, where the South Down Shores barn is located, sits on 7.7 acres. It is all useable land, has a decent barn, comes with South Down amenities, and has infrastructure to support development. The cost of developing that parcel of land will be relatively small, in terms of typical development costs. That prominent land and barn/office sold for $500,000. That’s $65,000 per acre, for far more valuable land on a cost per acre basis. What makes the LSS property worth $21M? It’s not. It’s that simple. It can’t be financed, it can’t be developed on an economically viable basis at anywhere near that purchase price. Her issues had nothing to do with politics, snowmobile trails, or any other lame excuse.
Hopefully the State will stop trying to chase miracles, and let the property go for a reasonable price, to a developer with a proven track record, with a financial commitment to build something that will benefit the community.