"There's still a big capital crunch," says Art Macaraeg, a broker with Marcus & Millichap who brokered the deal. "Developers aren't able to get loans to build anything so why would they buy?"

The most recent fulfilled a requirement for Cox Communications, which was looking for a site within its network boundary, Macaraeg tells GlobeSt.com. The company plans two sub-5,000-square-foot buildings. The company paid $788,436 for the 1.8-acre site at Ann and Simmons, behind a Taco Bell, a Chevron and Star Nursery and across from an Albertson's shopping center.

"They didn't need frontage and all the utilities are already in," says Macaraeg, who also assisted in the site selection process. "It was perfect for them; they were willing to pay for that."

Knowing the state of things Brian Gordon, a partner at the locally based business research and advisory firm Applied Analysis told GlobeSt.com without knowing anything about the buyer that "it was probably an end user that acquired the property for some specific purpose. End users are driving the bulk of the demand that is taking place."

With sales volumes way off, pricing has been affected, says Gordon, who is in the process of finalizing his firm's quarterly analysis of vacant land sales in the region. The average land sale price in the second quarter--after excluding a large, undisclosed distressed sale--was $304,400 per acre, according to Applied Analysis.