I think I stumbled into the real estate buy of my life this spring, I closed the deal about a month ago.
I have had my eye on this piece of property (a section, 640 acres) for many years, it's surrounded by public land, has a beautiful lake entirely on the property, road access and about 3.5 million board feet of timber on it. Also has a variety of wildlife; marten, elk, deer, black bear, cats, etc..
I cold emailed the previous landowner back in April just to see if by chance they would be interested in selling it. I got a email back in just minutes saying they had just decided that morning to sell it, they said they wouldn't put it on the market if I could close the deal by the end of June or else they would put it into a large land package offering they were about to list.
I called the guy to see what the price was, I about dropped the phone when he said 343K, that is half of the bare land assessed value, the timber was thrown in for free.
No, I am not going to sell this property, every other piece of property I have ever purchased was with the intent of making a profit; not this one.
The third picture is up on the ridge, the high point on the property, you can see part of the lake down in the little basin on the far left side of the picture. The property extends down into the valley more or less in the middle of the picture, and up to near the peak in the middle of the picture on the far side of the valley.
This property sits about 40 miles from downtown Seattle.
Still can't believe it; must be Providential, that's the only explanation I can think of.