No. The Managers of Hemingway Land are professional investors, not realtors or brokers. All the properties listed for sale on our site are ones we buy specifically for the purpose of resale. They are “For Sale By Owner.” We do not represent sellers or their properties.

While The Hemingway Land Company would never discourage anyone from seeking proper legal counsel, we have gone through great effort to simplify the buying process with straightforward, easy-to-read contracts. Furthermore, land acquisition and resale is not typically a heady or paperwork intensive process and rarely does it involve more than a notary. In fact, in our experience, the participation of an agent or attorney is the exception and not the rule when it comes to legally conveying rural, vacant land from one party to another.

All this being said, if a buyer feels more comfortable having a professional review our contracts or advise them during the purchasing process, we would never object.

• Properties can be purchased in full through the website using a credit or debit card.
• Properties can be reserved with a non-refundable deposit and funded through Title/Escrow.
• Some properties can even be purchased with a down payment and monthly recurring payment.
• The buying process will be different for each property and individual listing pages will enumerate the options available for that specific piece of land.
• For more information about the various ways you can purchase land with us, please visit our How It Works – Buying From Us page.

A couple reasons…

First, because we do not assume the average person can or would want to charge multiple thousands of dollars on one of their credit cards at one time, we use the earnest money deposit as a way for a buyer to initiate the transaction and claim the property without having to deal with the headache of declined payments or personally calling their credit card company to authorize the charge. After we have your deposit we will contact you about your preferred way of funding the remaining balance – whether that be additional credit card charges, a wire transfer or a cashier’s check.

Second, in situations where a property is of a particularly high dollar value (say, over $10,000) we encourage our buyers to close through a Title/Escrow company. This company is a third-party intermediary who will handle both the conveyance of the property as well as the disbursement of funds. In addition, they investigate and insure the title history of the property. That said, this is typically a protracted process which can take a month or longer before you are asked to fund the remaining balance. During that time, we are not getting paid for the land and we’re also not able to sell it to anyone else. Before beginning that process we ask for an Earnest Money Deposit to demonstrate that the buyer is, in fact, serious and committed to purchasing the property.

In short, the five hundred dollar deposit is used both as an easy way for a buyer to initiate transactions as well as to demonstrate their commitment to purchasing the land.

If you’re electing to close outside of escrow and plan to simply pay us with a credit card, wire transfer or cashiers’ check, we’ll want the balance paid within a reasonable amount of time. Say five days.

If you’re electing to close through a title company, the remaining balance will not be due until close of escrow, roughly thirty days later or whenever the title company completes their work. Whichever comes first.

Likely nothing. For anyone trying to purchase a property whose card keeps getting declined, you’ll need to call your bank or card issuer and discuss the problem with them. In our experience, this happens either because the payment amount is outside the buyer’s typical spending habits or because the purchase price exceeds some daily limit the card holder is unaware of. Whatever the issue, it’s unlikely we will be able to remedy it.

Certainly. Simply contact our office and we will accommodate your daily limit by accepting a smaller amount to begin the payment process.

Please note, however, that the remaining balance will need to be paid within a reasonable period of time per the charging limit on your card. Example: If a buyer has a charging limit of $1,000/day and wants to purchase a $5,000 property, we’ll expect the remaining balance to be paid within five days.

Contact our office and we’ll accommodate whatever purchasing method works best for you. While credit or debit card is the easiest for us, we can accept payment via wire transfer, cashier’s check or PayPal.

Please be aware, however, that while we are willing to work with buyers on alternative payment methods, we will not hold a property indefinitely waiting for someone to mail us a check or wire us money.

Yes, but it must be a cashier’s check or money order. Additionally, you must contact us in advance of sending the check so we can provide check writing and mailing instructions. It is also encouraged that you contact us in advance, so we know what property you’re attempting to purchase and so we can monitor the mail for when the check arrives.

Hemingway Land is the name of our company and our website. For tax and accounting purposes, however, we buy and sell land using a number of different LLCs. If the County has updated their files and is displaying one of our companies as the owner, they will likely also list the address. If it’s a PO Box out of Las Vegas, Nevada, that would be us.

In any given county government there will be a Clerk, an Assessor and a Treasurer and often times it takes a while for all three to update their files accordingly when a property has changed hands and a new person has been recorded as the owner.

Additionally, because most counties, especially the rural ones, do not expect real property – whether that be a house or a farm or a piece of vacant land – to sell more than once in a calendar year, they do not have a system in place to track conveyances in real time.

Similarly, many counties only update their records when it’s time to send out the tax statement, which in some cases may be a year after we’ve acquired the land.

While life would be a lot easier for us if ownership records could be updated faster, they rarely are. And because we tend to own these properties for narrow windows of time, it’s more common that anyone looking at County records will find the name of the previous owner rather than our Company. This is why we provide all of our buyers with proof of ownership in the form of the recorded deed which conveyed the property to us. It’s our way of demonstrating that we do, in fact, own the thing that we’re selling you.

For any potential buyers skeptical of the legitimacy of this operation, we’d encourage you to close through a title/escrow company. This will allow a third-party intermediary to handle both the conveyance of the property as well as the disbursement of your money. We should mention, however, that this will incur additional costs and those costs will be the responsibility of you, the buyer. Similarly, in order to enter escrow, there must be a signed Sale/Purchase agreement between Buyer (you) and Seller (us). In the interest of not wasting our time we request a non-refundable deposit of five hundred dollars before we begin drafting this contract or hiring the title company.

If you’re a cash buyer with no lender involved it should not take more than two weeks, particularly if we have already closed on the property through the same title company in the last three months. That said, title companies are notoriously "deliberate" and it's always safe to budget four, or as many as six weeks to accommodate their “methodical” nature.

For those wanting to learn more about the buying process and the various ways we can close a transaction and transfer title into your name, please visit our How It Works – Buying From Us.

For those unfamiliar with what a title company does, please visit our Title/Escrow Information page which goes into greater detail about the process of closing a transaction through title and escrow, answering all the common questions we typically get from our buyers.

No, this is not a service we provide. Title companies sell title insurance. We sell land.

No. We pay for title insurance when we are the Buyer and we expect the same of the people we sell to.

No. We do not pay for your title insurance, your survey, your perc test, your septic inspection, your well installation, your fence construction or any other costs which would reasonably be viewed as the buyer’s responsibility.

Certainly. Generic versions of all of our standard contracts can be found linked on our How It Works – Buying From Us page. Additionally, each property’s listing page will have either the Sale/Purchase Agreement or Land Contract associated with that property’s proposed purchasing method.

To review a generic version of one of our standard Sale & Purchase Agreement contracts Click Here.