Would you gamble $5k on 7,000 sqm of land with the potential of asymmetric upside?

I found a plot whose owner is willing to sell it for around $5k because of liquidity needs and the amount of time/money involved in resolving the property's current legal/land-status issues.

The interesting and potentially problematic part is the forest map classification.

The valuation report describes the land as forestry/forest land, with the forest map not yet fully finalized and ratified. Apparently, older aerial photography shows the land with a different, non-forest appearance, while more recent imagery/inspection shows it as forested.

So there may be a possibility of challenging the classification, but it would require time, lawyers, foresters, historical aerial-photo analysis, and potentially court proceedings. My very rough, completely unqualified estimate is maybe a 50% chance of successfully changing the classification.

At the moment, this makes the land extremely illiquid.

But if the classification can eventually be changed, the economics could be completely different. Given the location, size and surrounding land values, I could potentially be looking at a property worth hundreds of thousands or potentially much more, depending on what ultimately becomes legally possible.

The other outcome is obviously much simpler: the classification cannot be changed, the land remains essentially unusable, and I've burned $5–10k on a piece of land I may have to hold indefinitely.

I'm deliberately not paying for due diligence upfront. At this entry price, I don't particularly want to circulate the exact property details beforehand to people with much more capital or expertise who might simply take the opportunity themselves. So I'd rather keep it secret and take the gamble, then spend money on a lawyer, engineer and forester to investigate the possibilities.

So I'm treating this purely as a speculative long-term bet, not as a normal real-estate investment.

Would you take the gamble, knowing that the downside could be losing essentially all of it, but the upside could potentially be very large?

submitted by /u/Ok-Leading6971
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1w7txgv/would_you_gamble_5k_on_7000_sqm_of_land_with_the/