The deal that should not work

A seller was asking too much for a piece of land that almost worked.

Walking away would have been the easy part. Anyone can find the flaw in a deal and leave.

So I started from the other end: what a builder would pay for a finished lot, minus everything it would take to get there. That was the ceiling, and the room to move.

Then the structure. Seller financing. A staged takedown. A price tied to entitlement milestones.

Some deals that look dead come back to life in the capital stack. Not all of them should. If the market does not want the product, no structure saves it.