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.
You are not buying acres. You are buying the number of people who will drive past them at 5pm.
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.