For legacy landowners
What the buyer already knows about your land.
Plain-English explanations of the terms that decide what a tract of Central Texas land is worth. No jargon, no sales pitch, and nothing here requires you to call anybody.
The homework
Ten things a buyer’s team studies before the offer.
If you own land in this corridor, these are the ten questions that have most likely already been answered about your property by somebody who has never met you.
- Utilities
- Whether water and wastewater can actually reach the tract, at what capacity, and who is obligated to serve it.
- The utility CCN
- Which provider holds the certificated right to serve your land. It decides who can bring service, and on what terms.
- Electric capacity
- How much power is available at the property today, and how much could be brought to it.
- ETJ and city limits
- Whether the property sits inside a city, inside its extraterritorial jurisdiction, or outside both. It changes what can be built.
- Access and frontage
- Whether the road frontage supports the use a buyer has in mind, and whether access is by deeded frontage or by easement.
- Floodplain and topography
- How much of the acreage is usable, where drainage goes, and what detention a project would have to build.
- Future land use plans
- What the city or county has already published about what belongs on your side of the road.
- Adjacent development
- What is entitled, platted or under construction next door, and what that does to the value of your frontage.
- Entitlement path
- Whether zoning, platting and annexation are realistic here, how long they take, and who has to approve them.
- Ag valuation rollback
- What happens to the tax valuation when the use changes, and who carries that cost in the deal.
What the buyer knows™
The terms, explained.
These come up in nearly every land conversation in this part of Texas. None of them is complicated once somebody says it in English.
Sewer nearby is not sewer
A wastewater line running past your fence does not mean you can tie into it. Capacity, the service provider’s obligation, and who pays to extend and upsize the line are all separate questions — and all three change what your land is worth to a buyer.
CCN
Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. It is the state-granted right to provide water or sewer service in a defined area. Whoever holds the CCN over your land largely decides who can serve it, which means it decides a great deal about what can be built there.
ETJ
Extraterritorial jurisdiction — the ring outside a city’s limits where the city still has some say, particularly over platting. Whether your tract is in the city, in the ETJ, or outside both changes the rules, the timeline, and the buyer.
Option period
The window in which a buyer can study the property and walk away. It is normal and often reasonable. What matters to a landowner is how long it runs, what it costs the buyer to extend it, and what your land is doing — and not doing — the whole time.
Assignment rights
The right for a buyer to hand the contract to someone else before closing. There are legitimate reasons a developer asks for it. There is also a version where the margin between your price and the next one leaves the table without you.
PID and MUD
Public Improvement District and Municipal Utility District. Two structures for financing the infrastructure a development needs. A buyer who can use one may be able to pay more for your ground than one who cannot.
Ag valuation rollback
When land under an agricultural valuation changes use, the taxing authority can recapture the difference for prior years. It is a real cost in a land transaction, and who bears it is negotiable — ask your CPA about your situation.
Takedowns
A structure where a buyer purchases the land in phases over time rather than all at once. It can be worth agreeing to. It can also mean you are financing someone else’s project without being paid for it.
Highest and best use
The most valuable use that is physically possible, legally allowed, and financially feasible. It is the question a buyer’s team answers before they call. It is usually the question the landowner has never been asked.
$30,000 an acre and $8 a square foot
Two ways of quoting the same ground that are not remotely the same number. Land quoted per acre and land quoted per square foot are usually being bought by two different kinds of buyer, for two different purposes.
The corridor, honestly
What’s real and what’s hype.
Every figure carries its source and its date. Where a number is an asking price rather than a closed sale, it says so, because those are not the same thing and nobody should hand you one while calling it the other.
Taylor ISD enrollment, down since 2016, to 2,904 students across seven campuses — during the decade a semiconductor fab was built in town.
Source: Texas Tribune Schools Explorer, 2026.
Thorndale ISD enrollment, up over the same period, to 666 students across three campuses.
Source: Texas Tribune Schools Explorer, 2026.
Milam County residents in 2025, against 24,754 at the 2020 Census — and essentially flat from 2024. Capital and construction jobs have arrived. Permanent residents have not yet followed.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau via FRED, series TXMILA1POP.
Drought Warning for the East Williamson County Regional Water System at Lake Granger, affecting the City of Taylor, Lone Star Regional Water Authority and Jonah Water SUD.
Issued by the Brazos River Authority, 24 August 2026. Reported by the Williamson County Sun, 25 August 2026.
Growth in this corridor is real, and it is also uneven, and the two facts sit next to each other more often than anyone selling you something will admit. Water is the constraint most people are not watching. It deserves to be in any conversation about what a tract of land here will support.
One chance to sell the family place. Make it the right one.
If you own acreage in this corridor and somebody is knocking, a Legacy Land Value Review will tell you what you own before you decide anything. It is free, and Brad takes one a week.