How to Vet a "We Buy Land" Letter in 20 Minutes

Before responding to an unsolicited land offer letter, spend 20 minutes checking four things: whether the sender is a real registered business, whether the price holds up against actual comparable sales, whether a licensed title company will handle closing, and whether the letter is using pressure or a lowball anchor. A letter that fails any of these deserves a direct question before you reply.

Who Is Actually Sending This Letter?

Start with the company name printed on the letterhead, not just the return address, and search it in your state’s Secretary of State business database. Every state runs one of these, and in most states it costs nothing to search. The Indiana Secretary of State, for example, maintains a public business search database alongside its filing services. A legitimate result shows the entity’s exact legal name, a current status like “active” or “in existence,” a registered agent, and a formation date.

Three things are worth checking specifically. First, does the name on the letter match the name in the state’s filing exactly, or is it close but not identical, which can mean the letter is coming from an individual or a fictitious business name with nothing registered behind it. Second, how recent is the formation date; a brand-new filing isn’t automatically a problem, but it’s a different kind of company than one that’s been registered for years, and it changes how much weight you give claims about experience or volume. Third, look at the status field itself. Most state databases distinguish “active” or “in existence” from statuses like “administratively dissolved,” “revoked,” or “not in good standing,” which usually mean the company missed a required filing or fee. A dissolved status doesn’t necessarily mean fraud, but it does mean the entity currently has no legal standing to contract in that state, which is a fair thing to raise before you sign anything with it.

If the letter comes from an out-of-state company, note where it’s actually registered. A land buyer contracting to purchase property in a state where it isn’t registered to do business isn’t automatically doing something wrong, since simply making an offer or holding a contract for its own account doesn’t always trigger a state’s foreign-registration rules the way operating a storefront would. But if the company claims to be a local, in-state operation and the registration says otherwise, that mismatch is worth a direct question.

From there, check the Better Business Bureau for the company by name. The BBB’s own guidance for anyone considering a quick cash offer on property is direct: “always look up businesses on BBB.org before you share personal information or agree to services with them.” A rating, a complaint history, or the total absence of any record at all are all useful data points at this stage, even though none of them alone proves or disproves that a specific offer is legitimate.

Does the Price Match What the Land Is Actually Worth?

Pull two or three recent, similar sales before you decide the number in the letter means anything. Most county assessor and recorder offices publish sale records for free, and looking up the last few transactions of comparable acreage, same rough location, same land type, similar access, gives you a real benchmark instead of a guess. A more detailed method for building that comparison when there’s no MLS data to work from is covered in how to find land comps with no MLS data.

If your parcel is agricultural, ranch, or pasture ground, you also have a national reference point: the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that U.S. cropland averaged $5,570 per acre in 2024, up 4.7 percent from the year before, and pasture averaged $1,830 per acre, up 5.2 percent, according to the agency’s 2024 Land Values Summary. That’s a national number, not your county’s number, but the report also breaks values out by state and region, which narrows the gap considerably. An offer that sits far below the regional range for your land type isn’t automatically unfair, since cash buyers price in the cost and risk of a resale, but it’s a gap worth asking the buyer to explain rather than assuming away.

This is also where a stated price starts to mean something or nothing at all, depending on whether the letter explains how it got there. A number with no method behind it, no comparable sales referenced, no acknowledgment of what similar land nearby has sold for, is a marketing number, not an appraisal. You’re allowed to ask what it’s based on.

Don’t confuse your county’s assessed value with what the land would actually sell for, either. An assessed value is set by the county for tax purposes on a schedule that can lag years behind the current market, and it’s frequently lower, sometimes far lower, than a property’s real sale value. A letter that anchors its offer to your tax assessment rather than to comparable sales is picking the number that happens to favor the buyer, not necessarily the number that reflects the land’s price per acre in an actual transaction.

Will a Licensed Title Company Actually Handle the Closing?

Ask this question before you sign anything, not after. The American Land Title Association, the national trade group for the title industry, describes title companies as the party that conducts “title searches, examinations, closings” and issues title insurance protecting owners against defects in the chain of title. That work happens through an escrow process: the closing agent holds funds and documents, confirms you’re the recorded owner, resolves any liens or back taxes from the proceeds, and only then releases the deed and the payment.

A title commitment, the document a title company issues describing what it will and won’t insure, is the paper record that this process actually happened. If a buyer proposes handling the transfer directly with you, without a title company or closing attorney in the middle, ask why. There’s rarely a good reason: a real closing runs through a third party specifically because neither the buyer nor the seller is positioned to certify clean title, verify identity, or hold funds neutrally on their own. Once you’re past a first phone call and into an actual purchase and sale agreement, that document should name who’s closing the transaction, not leave it open.

Does the Letter Use Pressure Tactics or an Anchored Lowball?

Read the letter again for language built to shorten your decision window rather than inform it. An offer that expires in 48 or 72 hours, that describes itself as a “limited-time” number, or that discourages you from getting a second opinion is applying pressure that has nothing to do with the actual value of your land. According to the Better Business Bureau, sellers evaluating a quick-cash offer should “ask plenty of questions and don’t settle for vague answers,” and its broader guidance on cash-for-property deals warns against ever sending money or signing documents “off the books” before a closing date. A related pattern to watch for is a company that opens with a strong number, gets you engaged, and then finds a reason to lower it after an inspection or “review,” a bait-and-switch structure covered in more detail in how to choose who to sell your land to.

None of this means every fast-moving offer is dishonest. A cash buyer can genuinely close in two or three weeks because there’s no lender, no appraisal contingency, and no financing to wait on; speed by itself isn’t the red flag. The distinction is whether the speed is about the due diligence period you’re allowed, or about cutting off yours.

It also helps to check whether the letter’s contact details hold together. A working phone number that a real person answers, a physical address that isn’t just a mailbox service, and a name that’s consistent across the letter, the envelope, and whatever you find in your Secretary of State and BBB searches are all small, checkable facts. None of them proves a company is trustworthy on its own, but a letter where several of these details don’t line up, or can’t be confirmed at all, is telling you something before you’ve even discussed price. A broader nine-question checklist for what to ask before you actually sign a purchase agreement, once a letter has passed this initial screen, is covered in 9 questions to ask a land buying company before you sign; a longer list of red flags to watch for across the whole selling process is in how to spot a shady land buyer.

Your 20-Minute Timeline

Run these four checks roughly in order. None of them require paying for a service.

This same checklist applies no matter who sent the letter, including a letter from AMM Land Sales. Any claims that letter makes about how it closes, who pays costs, or what it charges are worth verifying in writing in the purchase agreement, the same way you’d verify any other buyer’s claims.

What Happens After the 20 Minutes

If a letter passes all four checks, that doesn’t obligate you to accept the offer, only that it’s worth a phone call to ask more specific questions. If it fails one or two, that’s a reason to ask the sender directly rather than an automatic disqualification; a small or newly formed company can still be legitimate, and a slightly below-market number can still be honest once you understand the reasoning. If it fails most of them, particularly the title company and pressure-tactic checks together, that’s a letter to set aside.

Selling vacant land doesn’t require accepting the first number offered, and it doesn’t require moving on anyone else’s clock. Whether you’re weighing a letter against a comparable sale you found yourself or deciding whether to request an offer directly, the general process for selling land for cash works the same way regardless of who’s on the other side of the table: registration, price, title company, and timeline are the four things worth confirming before anything else.