Acres are the wrong unit. How land is really priced on 114th Street, and why two tracts a mile apart can differ by $9 a foot.
Ask most people what land costs in Lubbock and they’ll give you a number per acre. Ask anyone who trades it and they’ll give you a number per square foot. The difference matters more than it sounds.
An acre is 43,560 square feet. At $10 a foot, that’s $435,600 an acre. At $18 a foot, the asking price on the Stonegate corner at 114th and Indiana, it’s $784,080. Same acre of dirt, nearly double the money. What’s being priced isn’t the dirt.
Three things set the number
The corner. A hard corner at a signalized intersection carries traffic from two directions and gives a tenant two frontages. Mid-block ground behind it, even on the same street, can trade at half the price.
The frontage. How many feet of the tract touch the road? A long, shallow tract along 114th is worth more per foot than a deep, square one with the same acreage.
The neighbors. A c-store on the corner, a medical pad already sold, a replat under way next door: each is a vote of confidence someone else has already paid for.
What this means if you’re buying
- Compare tracts by the foot, then adjust for corner, frontage and depth.
- Ask what has sold out of the tract already, and to whom. Partial sales reset the comps.
- If a tract looks cheap per foot, find out why. Sometimes it’s an opportunity. Sometimes it’s a drainage easement.
