# When Looking for Land: Tip List



## therunbunch (Oct 5, 2009)

DH and I are trying to look at all our options. We REALLY want to buy some land. Can you guys help me build a tip list for what kinds of things we should be looking for? Questions we should ask? Considerations to be made?

This is what we want from our ideal place... 

Build a house or put a mobile home until we CAN build our house
A garden... 
Minimum of 5 acres but have dreams of much more!
Maybe some cows or a horse at some point... 
And of course chickens.

We're brand new to this whole homesteading thing and we're reading everything we can get our hands on.

We want to keep the future in mind and prepping... but we're not sure what resources we should put on our list... like should we demand a place with water on it?

I'm confused, but I want to make sure that if we buy land that we are buying land we can really USE and live with for the long haul. I don't want to look back and think.. oh man, we should have gotten land here, or with this or that.

Make sense? Seems like all I have is questions, but I'm determined to figure all this homesteading stuff out!!!!


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## okiemom (May 12, 2002)

Water drainage. Does it hold water. How does it drain in regurads to your house and barns

for septic systems does it perk. not as important now as everyone is going to the anarobic systems. 

if you want to have crops is it rocky, condition of the soil.

can you get electric water and propane on your property?


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## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

Water is at the top of the list of needs. Then look at what plants grow there. If there are water plants, you know there is standing water even if it's not there now. Plants will tell you if it's too acid or alkaline. Or if there are too many noxious or dangerous weeds.
Know what kinds of trees you have and whether they are desirable or easy to remove if not.
Do you get sun for a garden? Is it very exposed to constant wind? A good place to put a garden is important- you can amend the soil but not add more sun.
No matter what the size of land- check out neighbors. And make sure you are zoned for animals.
And a bazillion other things too


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

You live in Texas?

Water. 

If you do not HAVE it, then you must be able to have city water. Otherwise you will be taking home jugs of it to water your vegetable garden. My husbands uncle had a cistern that was fed from the roof, but, I believe in Texas it does not rain for some months out of the year.

Also, does Texas have caliche layers? Or soil with a high salt content?


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

Look at every piece of property that you have the time to visit. When I was looking at property it really helped me to look at property that I did not want because it refined what I did want.


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## barn-apart (Feb 10, 2005)

Check all building codes,rules,laws for the area you are searching. One of the worst things is to find a place you like, purchase it and find there are laws prohibiting you from doing something you wish to. Some may have laws againt livestock, or limit the size if you house or have setbacks from the property line that may eliminate the best building location, and dozens of other insane rules put in place by goverment or home owner assosiations.


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## WolfWalksSoftly (Aug 13, 2004)

Check for Easements.. you don't want there to be any. Especially Conservation, Corporate.


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## tjmomof4 (Mar 31, 2007)

Get a survey, look into water restrictions. If you're on town water in the West, don't count on irrigating hardly anything with it. You need your own water, and the right to use it for irrigation. Ask about soils, not just for fertility, but also to find out if there are problems in the area with swelling, for the sake of your house foundation. Some soil will require much more expensive foundations than others. How deep is the soil? Where is bedrock, and what kind is it?
HOA? Even if it's lenient now, be wary of a group of neighbors who want to control each other. I've seen it get really ugly.
Don't trust everything your real estate agent says. Stop to talk to the neighbors BEFORE you buy.
Good Luck!


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## Lyra (Sep 15, 2009)

barn-apart said:


> Check all building codes,rules,laws for the area you are searching. One of the worst things is to find a place you like, purchase it and find there are laws prohibiting you from doing something you wish to. Some may have laws againt livestock, or limit the size if you house or have setbacks from the property line that may eliminate the best building location, and dozens of other insane rules put in place by goverment or home owner assosiations.


Agreed.

Also, check to see what basic services are offered and the government structure in the area. Most people don't think of it when they buy a piece of rural property. Companies can or can not provide services based on townships. It can affect your water, sewer, garbage disposal, internet access, cell phone coverage, etc.


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## Pony (Jan 6, 2003)

WolfWalksSoftly said:


> Check for Easements.. you don't want there to be any. Especially Conservation, Corporate.


We had some really nasty trouble with land in WI because of easements.

Not talking about utility easements, though you do need to be clear about those. I'm talking about people having the right to cross your property, which leads to their friends crossing your property, and so on and so on.

You don't want an easement on your property. 

And you don't want to be landlocked, either, so make sure you have access to your land.


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

Your Title Report will confirm if "Mineral Rights" have been sold. Be sure and check that! Neighborhoods, even in rural areas, can institute CCR's. These can prohibit mobile homes and get downright ridiculous with many other restrictions. We are renting out the property my DH was living on when we married (next week, it will be 6 years- 2nd for both of us). The CCR's restricted the parking of boats, extra cars, travel trailers, and also mobile homes. It just so happened DH was living in a mobile home with CCR's prohibiting them (CCR's done by the new homeowners in nice big 2 story homes behind his). I don't need to add the City & State Codes/Laws... 

Our property offers what we most wanted:

Stick built shop
Home (wanted little farmhouse, got big double-wide remodeled mobile, OK)
Office (just wanted an extra room, but got an office building 16 X 16 attached)
Carport (a bonus, too, so two of our vehicles are under cover)
6.68 Acres (we thought we wanted 2.5 acres...NOPE, needed more)
A lot of marketable 2nd growth timber, so we logged about 40 large Cedars & a few Firs.
ZERO Wetlands (most properties here have Designated Wetland Protected Areas...DIDN'T WANT THAT)

We now have 5 acres in forest (self-sustainable wood source+), 2,500 sq foot raised bed garden area soon to increase in size..., a fruit orchard of 20 trees soon to increase, and 1.68 acres is cleared for all of this
Great little town
Great community feel
Wonderful neighbors (!!!)
Salt water minutes away...free seafood to harvest! 

Sun exposure? Important for energy efficiency in home placement! Also, for garden, orchard, etc...

I think some was repeat otherwise most everything covered...


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Home is truly where the heart is.....there are so many lovely suggestions above... You will probably sigh....and just know when you find the right spread! I can only add that the emotion that you will feel with help you decide once you have filled the criteria of what you require....

Best of luck to you!


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## Tinker (Apr 5, 2004)

There are some great tips here. I'll add that using the above guidelines, buy as much property as you can afford. You say you want 5 acres. If you plan on a few cows & a horse, I would recommend more than 5. You want your house area, and garden. That would basically leave about 4 acres for pasture. I would much prefer to have extra acres, so you could expand your livestock in the future. Also if you are in a dry area, you won;t get much grass off those 4 acres, and will have to buy more hay. Whereas if you had 12-20 acres, with decent rainfall, you would probably only need to hayfeed a small herd in the winter. I realize additional acerage means more taxes, but I know several people that bought 5 acres, and now feel limited, and want more.


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## farmerbrian (Aug 29, 2009)

Im not actively looking for land right now, but this thread contains lots of great info that I have been looking for. 

Cleared land in CT is outrageously expensive, usually because it is or was and active farm that is about to become a subdivision. I'm talking $50-100K per acre. However in the more rural sections of the state I have seen forestland for $5K per acre or less. 100 years ago CT had a lot of farmland that has all gone back to forest (or big ugly houses depending on region) after the farmers left. 


What signs can I look for in a piece of forest to determine if it was, or has potential to be, fertile cropland? Rockwalls are everywhere in the woods here. Are these a good indicator that some farmer way back when cleared all this land for crops and pulled all these rocks out of the ground? Would you expect to see rockwalls around pasture land too or just cropland?

I see many posts in this thread about water. We are blessed with very steady rainfall here about 4 inches per month every month of the year. So too much water is more of an issue than too little I think. I read somewhere that certain hardwoods like Hickory or Sugar maple are "pinnacle" species (wrong word maybe) and indicate deep healthy soil and good drainage. 

One more question, someone told me the water table will rise if you clear all the trees in a small area. This doesnt sound quite right to me. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

Brian


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## Terri in WV (May 10, 2002)

I haven't seen anyone suggest title insurance. Speaking from experience, when you buy, make sure you get it. A year after we got our first house I received a letter that we were illegally living in it. Come to find out it was sold for taxes at the same time that it was foreclosed on. It took over 6 months and 2 law firms to get it straightened out. I'm just glad we had the title ins.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Terri in WV said:


> I haven't seen anyone suggest title insurance. Speaking from experience, when you buy, make sure you get it. A year after we got our first house I received a letter that we were illegally living in it. Come to find out it was sold for taxes at the same time that it was foreclosed on. It took over 6 months and 2 law firms to get it straightened out. I'm just glad we had the title ins.


Your title company didn't look in the recorder's & treasurer's offices before you bought? I'm not understanding that at all. I understand that there are occasionally strange problems that can arise, but there would have been recordings filed months ahead of a tax sale. It's not even within reason that the person doing your title search would miss that. Somebody dropped the ball big time.

Look, I'm sorry you had a problem, but I traded rural properties in northern Nevada for a few years and never had a title policy. A lot of the properties traded for less than a title policy would have been. I used to go to the county recorder's office in person, but it's a lot easier now that most counties have recording activity available online for free. If I saw a problem, I walked away from the property.

It's also a good idea to check at the treasurer's office to see if taxes are current, and to check at the assessor's office to verify that you don't have any bootlegged structures or projects on your property (fire insurance won't pay if a structure isn't inspected and burns down). I look at those offices online too.


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## francismilker (Jan 12, 2006)

Two tips I've seen that I think are truly right on the money: Water, and water drainage. These two seem to be more problematic than any I've ever seen or heard of. If you buy a piece of property that is sub-irrigated with poor drainage you're gonna be dealing with mold, mildew, and mud 24/7/365 for the rest of your life. If the property doesn't have good water, you're gonna deal with hauling it or boiling it for the rest of your life.


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## MN Gardener (Jan 23, 2008)

Make sure the land is both legally and physically buildable for what (and where) you want to build it for. I have seen 20 acre tracts of land that had a creek with wetlands running through them and then have a pipeline or other type of easements going through them. Because of the set backs for the wetland and the pipeline easements the parcels were basically unbuildable unless you wanted to build a bridge across the wetlands and build a 500 sq ft house. These parcels were legally buildable, but not physically ideal to build. Of course, this would work for some, but not for most.  As far as title insurance goes, always get it. In Terri's case if the foreclosure sale and tax sale happened within a day or two of each others then there is no way the title co would have caught it. They do a tax search and it only shows that the taxes are delinquent, which are them paid up in full at closing. The title insurance more then paid for itself. Title insurance is not usually that expensive.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

MN Gardener said:


> In Terri's case if the foreclosure sale and tax sale happened within a day or two of each others then there is no way the title co would have caught it. They do a tax search and it only shows that the taxes are delinquent, which are them paid up in full at closing. The title insurance more then paid for itself. Title insurance is not usually that expensive.


That couldn't happen in Nevada. The county has to take possession of the property as trustee before it can be sold for taxes. The process takes a while, and a pretty difficult to miss recording trail is created.

Moreover, if the property is being sold at a foreclosure auction (i.e., a trustee sale) there are several filings that need to be in place in the recorder's office; a Default, a Substitution, and a Notice of Trustee Sale. It simply wouldn't be possible for the treasurer and the mortgage company to step on each other's toes in that process, since they would both need to be designated as trustee in the recorder's office.

Don't your treasurer's have to post tax sales in the newspaper? How do investors know what to bid on if tax sales are kept secret?

I bought my home at a trustee sale and I have absolute confidence in the integrity of the deed. I feel a lot better doing my own diligence, particularly after hearing Terri's story.


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## Spiralina (Oct 17, 2009)

It's been my experience that...

The best land is land that was bought and paid for by an ancestor. 

Keeping it deeded in his or her name is best. Accessible to heirs and where possession is 9/10th of the law. 

Then the key is to make of it what you can.


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## TJN66 (Aug 29, 2004)

Interesting thread. I'll keep an eye on this one.


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## happydog (May 7, 2008)

Before you decide on a new town, wander through the walmart and look at the shoppers there. Eat a couple of meals at the local diner. 

We eliminated a close runner up when we ate at a diner that kept reminding us of Deliverance. The town we finally settled on had walmart shoppers that looked like our family and/or people we'd like to have for neighbors.

Look at TONS of land, even the junk the realtor sends you on. The land we eventually bought didn't look that great at first glance. I had my heart set on a spring but the listing didn't mention water.

We didn't find out until we got there that it had a wonderful flat southern exposure for gardening, and a ridge to shelter it from the prevailing winds and a creek. And it wasn't until after we'd made the offer and walked around it a few more times that we discovered it had several springs, and a great low spot waiting to become a pond.

It took us 2 years to find the perfect place. I'm glad now that we didn't settle. Don't give up!


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## swollen tongue (Mar 9, 2006)

Water is the very most important priority. Also consider this after you have a homestead......you have to be a plumber,surveyor,water co.,sewer co.,painter,carpenter,agriculturist,logger,road builder,repairman,applianceman,farmer,maintnenceman,fence builder,electrician,and manymore things that don't come to mind right now. Other than that.......life is good!!


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## Spiralina (Oct 17, 2009)

Yes, we have an artesian spring and a pond site. A mini pond was dug that filled in with hundreds of crawfish. 

But the land is sloped with a fraction of an acre that is flat and treed. Ugh.

County Pagan


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## keweenawkats (Dec 17, 2009)

I second much of the recommendations already offered. Take your time looking! And be willing to look at everything and anything. You will start comparing places and the process helps to refine what you really want.

And be sure to check out the neighbors. Take a walk in the neighborhood. Ask the realtor about the neighbors. If you're fortunate enough to know people nearby, ask them about the area. Look at the land you THINK you want in different seasons and at different times of the day/night. Talk to the county road commission; read the local newspaper(s); visit the local stores and diners; go to a township and county board meetings. In other words, consider yourself a private investigator striving to learn all you can about the area and its people BEFORE you commit to buying.

Research the land's sale/tax history by visiting the treasurer's, assessor's and deed's offices. If this is your first time buying property it will seem overwhelming but the more research you do, the more you'll learn. 

We found our place after looking for two years. On the day we drove out here we were frustrated after a long day of looking. We'd seen it online but thought it too expensive (which it was). We took the drive out here simply to take a break and so DH could see this area. The minute we approached the driveway we knew we wanted it. Unfortunately, we did not know things about the neighbors or the past uses of the land and NO ONE said a thing about using it as a dumping ground. Snow still covered the ground so much wasn't seen. WE eventually discovered the blight ordinance has never been enforced. And demand a survey if one is not offered as part of the sale.


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## khelzy09 (Feb 9, 2010)

factors to consider before buying land:

zoning requirements. check with local authorities to determine zoning ordinances and whether you can build the type of home you want before committing to buying the land.
smells and sounds. 
natural hazards. Obtain a natural hazard disclosure and look for soil problems. 
elevation. Find out if your parcel lies within the path of a potential landslide.
easements. If access to your land is provided by driving across an adjoining parcel, you should obtain an easement and make sure it is recorded. Find out who maintains the roads and what your prorata share might cost for upkeep. 
utilities. Water is important. Not all water is potable. Sometimes water rights don't "run with the land," which would mean you could not dig a well. Find out the depth of your water table and determine the difficulty of digging.
appraisal. If you're not planning to finance the land purchase through a conventional lender, which will require a lender appraisal, then obtain your own appraisal to determine an appropriate price before making an offer.


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## Loriann1971 (Sep 1, 2005)

barn-apart said:


> Check all building codes,rules,laws for the area you are searching. One of the worst things is to find a place you like, purchase it and find there are laws prohibiting you from doing something you wish to. Some may have laws againt livestock, or limit the size if you house or have setbacks from the property line that may eliminate the best building location, and dozens of other insane rules put in place by goverment or home owner assosiations.


I second this. When we bought our house we thought we could have chickens because the nextdoor neighbor had a huge flock. Turns out the zoning wouldn't let us. She was allowed to have them because she had been grandfathered in. She had been raising chickens since she moved into the house in 1949.


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## blooba (Feb 9, 2010)

Also stay away from the city limits. A freind of mine bought a property with a 200 stall barn on it, was installing fencing before bringing in her horses. It got annexxed into the city and she wasn't allowed to bring her horses in. So now she has a HUGE worthless storage barn.


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## francismilker (Jan 12, 2006)

happydog said:


> Before you decide on a new town, wander through the walmart and look at the shoppers there. Eat a couple of meals at the local diner.
> 
> *We eliminated a close runner up when we ate at a diner that kept reminding us of Deliverance*. The town we finally settled on had walmart shoppers that looked like our family and/or people we'd like to have for neighbors.
> 
> ...


A big Amen to that!


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## ArmyDoc (May 13, 2007)

farmerbrian said:


> What signs can I look for in a piece of forest to determine if it was, or has potential to be, fertile cropland? Rockwalls are everywhere in the woods here. Are these a good indicator that some farmer way back when cleared all this land for crops and pulled all these rocks out of the ground? Would you expect to see rockwalls around pasture land too or just cropland?
> 
> Brian


One thing that I've been doing is finding the parcel I am looking at on the Web Soil Survey site. It will tell you alot about the land you are looking at - drainage, crop capacity etc. it's great site: 

http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/

Just click the green circle to start. Zoom in on the map till you find the area you are interested in. The click the AOI button (Area of interest) to outline it. Then click on the soil data explorer tab, and click on the topic / report you want.


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## weedlady (Sep 26, 2005)

ArmyDoc said:


> One thing that I've been doing is finding the parcel I am looking at on the Web Soil Survey site. It will tell you alot about the land you are looking at - drainage, crop capacity etc. it's great site:
> 
> http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/
> 
> ...


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

farmerbrian said:


> One more question, someone told me the water table will rise if you clear all the trees in a small area. This doesnt sound quite right to me. Any thoughts on this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Brian


Yes it can rise. I've seen it. What's happening is that there is a high water table or an impervious layer just below the surface. The trees pull the water out of the ground (like a pump) and evaporate it so the surface stays dry. Once you remove the trees the water is no longer getting removed and it gets wet.


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## TexasCheri (Mar 3, 2010)

I'm new to this forum and hope to have my own piece of heaven. Meanwhile, I am also planner (as in land use planner). One of the most important things to remember when purchasing land, along with all the wonderful tips which have already been posted, is talk to your local county/city planning department about the surrounding land. If you are in Texas, you may be part of an ETJ (extraterritorial jurisdiction), which means a city can go beyond its corporate limits and zone land. While you would be grandfatherered, the big piece of land next to you could soon become a not-so-nice housing development. Plus being grandfathered means you can't expand and if something should happen, a fire, for example, you would only be able to rebuild what was already there.

Also, look at the major utility companies' rights-of-way and any future construction of water towers. These things are planned years in advance but you don't want to be surprised.

Many real estate agents don't understand or don't care about planning and zoning. Many cities or counties have their comprehensive plans listed on their websites. If you're not sure, call the planning department. If they won't talk to you, then call their boss. All of the future plans and build-outs within a city or county is public information.

After working so hard, you really don't want any surprises. While you may believe that you have rights since you might have been there first, I don't think any of you want to deal with snotty neighbors and constant complaints.


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## farmerbrian (Aug 29, 2009)

Yes the websoil survey tool is very cool. I like how I can outline a known property or landmark ( large field on state land that I hike frequently for example) to get an idea of how big 5, 10, 50 acres really is. 

All the soil data is great too!


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## CarolynRenee (Jan 30, 2008)

I'm sure it's already been mentioned, but I can't stress it enough.....

SURVEY, SURVEY, SURVEY!!

Sometimes people just think of it as an added "expense", but given my experience (personal & as an ex-real estate agent), it is a MUST HAVE.

Don't trust the agent, the neighbors, or the current owner to just point to a pile of rocks or a tree-line. 

Also, if it hasn't been surveyed in a while, and you have it done, make sure that there are permanent markers placed so you & your neighbors are aware of the lines. 

Good fences (and surveys) make good neighbors.

Edit: if the cost is off-putting, you can always put in the contract that a survey paid for by the sellers (or even split 50/50) is a condition of the sale.


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## Nik (Jul 31, 2004)

Ask around in the town to people who work in the city hall or recording office or mail carriers about the property. One property we were looking at I talked to the people in the town hall and found out that the guy had been trying to donate the property to the village for some time but they refused because there was an ancient lien on it. Another time a mail carrier tipped us off to problems with the neighbors around there which was one of the reasons the other folks had moved.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Nik said:


> One property we were looking at I talked to the people in the town hall and found out that the guy had been trying to donate the property to the village for some time but they refused because there was an ancient lien on it.


Why did you need to ask? Wasn't the lien on file at the recorder's office?


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## PhilJohnson (Dec 24, 2006)

What I learned is surveys don't always mean anything, at least not in Wisconsin. Issues like adverse use come into play and it doesn't matter what the survey says if someone has been using the land long enough (20 years to claim squatter's rights in Wisconsin).


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## Nik (Jul 31, 2004)

Nevada said:


> Why did you need to ask? Wasn't the lien on file at the recorder's office?


This was before we had gotten to the point of closing a deal, so it saved me some aggravation. The seller hadn't lived on the property in 50 years, he had inherited it when his mom died. I had stopped in there to actually find out about buidling codes and stuff like that when the lady informed me of the lein. If she hadn't, I might have had earnest money tied up for a while, that was why I was making a suggestion to ask around. You never know what info you can get.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Nik said:


> This was before we had gotten to the point of closing a deal, so it saved me some aggravation. The seller hadn't lived on the property in 50 years, he had inherited it when his mom died. I had stopped in there to actually find out about buidling codes and stuff like that when the lady informed me of the lein. If she hadn't, I might have had earnest money tied up for a while, that was why I was making a suggestion to ask around. You never know what info you can get.


But that's just the point; the time for due diligence is before you commit to a real estate deal.


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## Nik (Jul 31, 2004)

Nevada, I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make in your posts. My advice to the buyer was to ask around with various people in town to see what they could tell you about the property. When I was in the city hall asking about codes and other stuff, that was when the lady told me about the lein info. The actual recording office was 45 miles away, so it was nice of her to save me the time and hassle of going any further. Where I come from, that is due diligence. You seem to be insinuating that I wasn't doing what I needed to do. Whenever I've bought property before, after you research a property to the best of your ability, with the facts that you have available, then you make the deal. Then you draw up a contract and then hire a title company to research the title. They are the ones who find out about problems with a title. Most of the times a lein will be readily noticable, but not all the time. Even after you commit to a deal, they can still find something in the title work that the average person wouldn't notice or realize could be a problem. So even with due diligence, stuff can pop even AFTER the deal has been made. That is why it's called insurance.......


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Nik said:


> Nevada, I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make in your posts. My advice to the buyer was to ask around with various people in town to see what they could tell you about the property. When I was in the city hall asking about codes and other stuff, that was when the lady told me about the lein info. The actual recording office was 45 miles away, so it was nice of her to save me the time and hassle of going any further. Where I come from, that is due diligence. You seem to be insinuating that I wasn't doing what I needed to do. Whenever I've bought property before, after you research a property to the best of your ability, with the facts that you have available, then you make the deal. Then you draw up a contract and then hire a title company to research the title. They are the ones who find out about problems with a title. Most of the times a lein will be readily noticable, but not all the time. Even after you commit to a deal, they can still find something in the title work that the average person wouldn't notice or realize could be a problem. So even with due diligence, stuff can pop even AFTER the deal has been made. That is why it's called insurance.......


When I bought my home a few months ago I bought it at a foreclosure auction (a trustee sale). Currently they are selling about 500 properties each day in a 4 to 5 hour period at the trustee sale in Las Vegas, so the volume is huge. They auction properties very quickly, spending maybe 15 seconds on each property unless bidding gets involved. There is no time to do traditional diligence on properties under those conditions, and it certainly can't be done during the auction.

After the auction each day at around 3:00 I would go back to my hotel room and start doing diligence for the next day. I would pre-screen properties until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. It went something like this.



I would restrict the search to the parts of town that I wanted to live in, and also had a high probability of selling within my price range. I did that mainly on the basis of zip code in the trustee sale property listings.
I would restrict my search to single family homes (no condos) with at least 3 bedrooms.
I would take a look at the actual property online using Google Street View (the entire city of Las Vegas has been photographed).
I would go to the assessor's office web site to look up the property. That would tell me the age, construction type, bedrooms, baths, square footage, lot size, pools, assessed value, etc.
I would go to the treasurer's office web site to research the property tax. That would tell me the approximate tax bill I could expect and whether taxes were paid up to date.
I would go to the recorder's office web site to look at chain of ownership and research liens.
With the volume of properties coming up for auction I had to be fast, and I did it for several weeks before finding what I wanted at the price I could afford to pay. I would prequalify maybe 50 houses per day, but I also rejected a lot of properties out of hand. Of those 50 prequalified properties, probably 40 started at bids higher than I wanted to pay. I would make competitive bids on maybe 8 or 10 properties each day, but I normally got outbid on all of them. I would go back to my hotel and start over for the next day.

I could go into a lot more detail about what I would accept or reject in each of those steps, but a lot of that is personal preference. For example, sometimes liens aren't a big deal, if I can see for sure that it's just a trash pick-up lien. Those, along with sewer & water liens, are normally under $100.

In that process I had no time for a traditional in-person title search, and once I made a successful bid the title policy would be moot anyway (I paid cash). Besides, I did exactly what a title company would do, but I just did it online.

I'm not putting anyone down for having a title company do diligence, but it's not something that would have worked for me. A preliminary title search is normally around $200 to $250 and it's really something you can do yourself quickly online in most counties. Doing your own diligence isn't rocket science, and it's something that anyone with a homesteader attitude can learn & do.

Was it worth it for me to go through that every day for almost a month? Well, I got a 4-br home for $30,100 that sold for $178,000 just 3 1/2 years ago. I call that phenomenal, and anyone can do it.


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## willbuck1 (Apr 4, 2010)

You can save a lot of time and effort by buying it already cleared and fenced but it will be more expensive. I bought 22 acres and it really is a little small for true self sufficiency.


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