[TrackerFF]

More than once I've read stories about small local counties selling huge plots of lands to companies promising to build data centers, only for those companies to flip the land instantly for double or triple the price.

There seems to be no shortage of desperate rural areas that are more than willing to sign ridiculous no-strings-attached deals with companies, in the hopes that they'll geta a couple of years with economic stimuli.

I can't blame them, I'm from a small place like that, and have seem some atrocious deals go through.

I think that if you're unscrupulous enough, there's a killing to be made by those type of grifts.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

But why don't those small local counties desperate for funds just sell their plots of land for double of triple the price themselves?

[TrackerFF]

Lack of network/connections. The first company that flips the land, will go into the deal with potential buyers, and lowball the crap out of the seller.

Sometime the sales (when they flip) are done via acquisition by the target company.

In all practical sense, the first buyer functions as a scout, doing research and negotiations, and make at tops a couple of million. A nice payday, but not enormous amounts of money. But for sure money that would have come handy for the county that owned the land.

[mothballed]

Well the city could just sell the land for 2-3x the price from the get go, but Karen and the people she elects wants to pretend like their zoning and red tape policies are saving the spotted owl or keeping their retirement nest egg valuable or whatever, so inevitably they red tape themselves into a corner at which point the grift just becomes too juicy and the greedy voters hand the opportunity to an even greedier and cunning bastard on a silver plate who will package it up and sell it to a fake "data center" and the developers get their way anyway.

[smallmancontrov]

"value creation"