Pretty basic poll: if you were in the market for a 5 acre lot (wooded, if it matters), would it bother you if it was triangular (all sides roughly equal) rather than square or rectangular? How much? Would a 10% price reduction make up for it? 20%? Would the fact that it has a pretty little creek running through it offset the shape? Thanks!
My lot is not square. I’m not sure what your hesitation is. Would you say more?
Depends on the local area, terrain, view and road access. But basically, no.
We’re dividing 40 acres into 5 acre lots, and it may be best to make one of the lots triangular due to road and terrain issues. I was just trying to get a sense of how difficult it would be to sell the triangular lot.
No, you wouldn’t, or no, it wouldn’t be a problem?
My inclination is to say that it wouldn’t be a problem for me.
(Then again, I can’t imagine ever being in the market for a 5 acre lot).
No, it wouldn’t be a problem, all other things being acceptable. I kinda like odd-shaped lots.
Everyone thought a gentleman in NYC was nuts when he bought a triangular plot of land, they chaned their minds when they saw what he did with it.
Triangles would work out better than parallelograms or rectangles? 
A triangle wouldn’t bother me as long as I had a road along one side.
If it was buildable and had road access I wouldn’t care if it was a triangle of the size and rough dimensions you describe. Personally I probably wouldn’t expect a 10% discount based on its shape, and wouldn’t give a hang one way or another about the creek (unless maybe you could fish in it).
FWIW our current lot is much smaller and has a very irregular shape and that didn’t stop us from buying it.
Shape is immaterial as long as it doesn’t impair usability for the purpose the buyer intends.
If I was buying it to plow & grow crops, triangular would not be as good as rectangular. An equilateral triangle might still be almost as good as a rectangle of equivalent acreage, but a tall narrow triangle would not.
If I was buying it to put distance between me & my neighbors, it’d depend on the shape of the triangle & where the houses would end up. Two houses back to back near the property lines wouldn’t work so hot.
etc.
As you subdivide, you know how you intend to market the land, and the terrain itself will dictate reasonable & unreasonable uses (e.g. no wheat on a steep hillside). Triangualrity, in and of itself, is not an issue.
One thing to avoid is any non-convex shape and any long thin projections. Folks want their land compact. At the ridiculous extreme, a 5 acre lot that was 30 feet wide & 1-1/4 miles long would not be useful & hence not saleable.
Triangles don’t bother me, but it would depend on the ultimate terrain and shape. For a five acre lot, you would just need to be sure there is a suitible building site for a home and out buildings with probably a horse pasture nearby. Most people around here buy five acre lots to build annoyingly huge houses and keep horses.
The creek would make a difference to me. I’m sure that section of the property is just lovely. Of course, I live in a desert, so water running through the property goes for a premium.
Five acres is big enough not to worry about finding a spot for the intended building, so I don’t see it being a big issue. However, it would look good if you took extra care marking the property lines for the intended buyer. Squares/retangles, you can get a pretty good sense of where your property begins and the neighbors’ ends, but my gut tells me a triangle is going to be much harder to eye, particularly if the ajoining lots are not triangular too.
There are jillions* of properties with triangular or nearly-so lots. Think about all the subdivisions with all those cul de sacs. There are usually 2-4 homes around each with some kind of pie-wedge property lines.
- a lot but I don’t know how many.
yep, i’d buy it. i’ve always liked triangular buildings like the flatiron bldg.
I remember the first thing my folks taught me about buying land, which was echoed by legions more was: “location, location, location!”
I think there was one little guy that squeaked up “Easements!”, but he was quickly drowned out in the crowd.
I don’t recall anywhere the shape mattering at all, unless that shape presented other problems, like, you’re flanked on two sides by angry torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mobs, and your back is to the sea. Then, I’d say that triangle’s not desirable. Otherwise, go for it!
Tripler
Myself, I prefer paralellograms.
This made me laugh out loud. Perhaps it’s all the studying for my upcoming property law exam that is making my head spin.
I’d buy a triangular 5-acre piece of land, as long as there was appropriate access to it. Heck, my mom owns one, though one of the points of the triangle fronts onto a pond and affords us access, so it’s not perfectly triangular if that makes any sense. Ours is only about 1 acre and it doesn’t SEEM triangular at all, unless you are familiar with the layout of the land.