How to turn dirt-cheap land into a dream getaway

Land can be cheap. It can also be wildly valuable. Wayne Congar at HUTS, a home design and development company, specializes in mining the gap between the two: finding overlooked plots and uncovering their hidden potential. Here’s how he pulled it off with the Break House in Narrowsburg, NY.

Q: What do most people have wrong about land? “The mistake is assuming that because land is cheaper than a finished property, it is less valuable. I actually think the opposite can be true. Raw land can be incredibly valuable because there are more levers to pull. In urban real estate, a lot of the value has already been compressed into the price. In rural land, the value is often hiding in plain sight. But you have to know how to see it.”

Q: What did you add to the property? “A path that pulls you into the woods, a sauna in the trees, a fire pit in the right clearing. Those aren’t expensive interventions. They’re just intentional ones. Suddenly we had something that feels completely different than anything else on the market. The 1,300-square-foot modern cabin we built here for around $625,000 would be appraised well over $1 million. Once you consider it as a high-performing, revenue-generating property, the value is higher. Currently, Break House runs at roughly three times the average day rate of comparable short-term rentals nearby. It pays for itself.”

Q: What advice do you have for land investors? “Most people think about raw land in one of two ways: They either think it’s speculative and passive or they think about it as a blank canvas, which sounds romantic but can be dangerous. Blank canvases are expensive. The biggest mistake novice land buyers make is thinking the acquisition cost is the price of the land. It’s not. The real price of land is the purchase price plus the cost of making it buildable. That’s where a lot of people get hurt. You need to understand access, utilities, septic, zoning, financing, construction resources, design, revenue potential, and the actual experience the place can support.”