One may think of buying a land for various purposes, Investment is one among them and if you are thinking to buy a land to get out of the rat race of the city, there are certain things you need to know, and this blog will explore them all with you. It may not be an easy process but here we are going to discuss some of the best kept secrets when it comes to buying land.
Introduction
The decision of purchasing a land is a critical one as it involves your hard-earned money. It is on the purchase of land for the investment purposes you put on your money and any kind of wastage of such investment out of ignorance of Disadvantages of buying a specific piece of land can cost you high. So, here are certain things at which you should look at upon before buying a land – 1. Address of the Land, 2. Acreage of the Land 3. Price to be paid for the Purchase of the land, 4. zoning – Pros and Cons
These are the things that one should know about the Land. First thing is the address, the second thing is how much the acreage is, has it got any kind of surveys that have already been done and if it had a perk test, any other improvements that has been made to the land, including clearing, if the four corners of the property have been marked. The next thing after it is the price. The next consideration after that is the zoning. If you are buying it for your home, most likely you are going to be buying it as residential zoning or rural track. Now the next thing you should know about the property is all the pros to the specific piece of land. And the next thing after that is all the cons, all the things that are wrong with that piece of land. So that way the break-down of the exactly which piece of property is the best to buy can be made to stay on the track. Because soon as you start looking at a lot of pieces of land, they all start kind of jumbling in your head. Once you walk one piece of dirt, they kind of all runs together. So, keeping all these things in mind before buying a property can save you a lot of time in the long run when you are trying to find the perfect piece of land for what you are trying to do with it.
1. Address and location of the Property
If you look at piece of land with the urge to buy it, the first thing which must come to your mind is whether it be good to stay on the road passing by this land or is it even permitted to live besides such road, what is the scenario of the maintenance of such road? It could be subject to government maintenance (i.e. County and the state officials) or it could depend on the neighborhood people to regularly maintain such road. You must be careful with the rights in the bundle of rights coming to you with the purchase of the Property because it could happen, you bought a property just to discover it later that although you are the owner, still you do not have the access to the land (i.e. the right to use the Road which provides an entrance to your land). If you are looking for a land in a remote area for it is generally available at low budget price, you should always do enough maneuver to know whether there is availability of the required mobile network for connecting people and for Internet Purposes.
You may become eager to purchase a piece of land when you come to know about the inexpensive price of such land and you would think wow it is great deal but again you should be very careful about the bundle of rights appurtenant to such land, because you may own a piece of land which is landlocked, i.e. which does not have an access and once you purchase such land out of ignorance of any such fact of non-access, you will end up dragging yourself into a long-term unsuccessful litigation to get yourself the easement right to access your Real Property (i.e. such a Landlocked land). It may happen that even though you were able to drive up to the piece of property, and you were able to walk onto the piece of property with no problem, but you might not have the right to the access to that specific road. It might be a private road or a private driveway, belonging to somebody else. When you are researching these properties, make sure it is not landlocked. And when you are looking at property, make sure you wear muck boots. When you are looking at raw land, you never know what is hiding under the leaves. But the good suggestion is to go visit that property anytime of whether. Especially after it rains, one should observe where it is holding water. One should see if it is mushy in some spots. Does it look like it is really overgrown? Is there a big pile of leaves that have a lot of undergrowth? Those are the kinds of things that are going to end up costing money to have fixed over time.
The next thing at which you should take your consideration to is the terrain at which your property is situated, especially where the water is flowing in and out. You should never remain in the ignorance that the such terrain is flood zone and could be subject to the Disaster. The next thing you should take into consideration is does land have a positive report of the recent survey being done to area at which the land is situated. Even if the sellers have a survey on file, it could be an old survey made pretty long ago, and you want to make sure that survey is recent and correct. Now, if you are walking the property and they have an up-to-date survey. You may be able to catch the corners of the lot. Meaning that they have put some pylons in the ground itself and you can find those to find out where each corner of the lot is if you are having trouble finding those and the seller says that have them take a metal detector and you will be able to see where those corners are then you can take a piece of string around each corner so you know exactly where that property line is.
Just look at that. It is very important. You want to own all the timber rights to that piece of property. To get a more specific view of the flood zones, you can go to the FEMA.gov, and you can actually type in the address of the property itself. And they will give you the flood maps for that specific area. If the piece of property doesn’t have an actual address and where it says to be determined, you can still get a roundabout by looking at the map and stretching it out. Now, if you looked on FEMA and you still can’t find it. You can always, during your inspection period, have a flood certification certificate done for that specific piece of property. Again, this is really good, if you are in an area that floods quite often. But for goodness sakes do not take the seller’s word for it. That that area has never flooded before. It is not like somebody would lie about.
Now, Timber Rights not, everybody has them believe it or not even if you buy a piece of property you may find out that the timber doesn’t belong to you as the new buyer if you look in your state contract they normally have a section that says how much of the timber rights belong to you as a new purchaser so you may not be able to log the area that you are thinking about putting your new home on whenever you are filling out your contract to buy that specific piece of land, make sure that it says in the contract that you will own all the rights to that specific use of the property. With that, also you want to make sure there is no land leases already onto that piece of property. And if there is any land leases on that property, find out how long they are there for. Because nothing would be worse is if you started a whole project building your house. And then the logging company comes in and says, “oh we are going to take down all these trees.” And they don’t care about your project whatsoever.
2. The Acreage Aspect and Utilities
You may find yourself in a situation where you find a particular piece of land and wonder about its good acreage. Then you start planning for its division among your family members. You may think of splitting the cost of the purchase into your family members. But there are instances where you cannot have the joint ownership of the piece of land.
Sometimes with a piece of land in the restrictions, the subdivision of such a land is not allowed. There might be filed restrictions that limit you from actually being able to subdivide that piece of property. In some cases, the Real Estate Agent that has it listed will know if it can be subdivided but if they don’t you can go ahead and take it up to the county courthouse for the Planning and Zoning and inquire them if you are going to be able to do that.
The best piece of land is a piece of land that already has utilities on it. In a lot of cases when you are buying raw land, you are not going to have the required utilities to it. Now you want to consider not just the fact of the sewage, you are going to also want to consider electricity as well. And if electricity can come out to that specific area. Next you should take out your cell phone. Cell phone has become very important in today’s world, you want to make sure that you have a decent signal out there. Along with this one has to make sure that there is the availability of the internet out there as well. Especially if you are going to be one of these work from home people. Like, you are leaving the big city, and you want to get a piece of land. You want to make sure you are going to have internet so you can go ahead and do your job.
3. Price
If someone wants to find some cheap land, he wants a deal when he is buying a piece of land. And a lot of people generally do get really good deals when they have gone to tax sales and bought pieces of property that way. But when one goes for doing that, he should make sure that he has done all his research on that piece of property, to make sure there is no other liens on it. Not just a tax lien. And that is another one that you are going to make sure that it is not landlocked.
4. Cautions Before Purchase
Now, suppose you are in a mood of purchasing a property, one more thing you should do is go to the title office and have a title search done. You have to make sure that the person selling you the land must be the absolute owner of it and that he really owns it.
5. Zoning – Pros and Cons
There are options available to look out for is to buy a campsite land. This Campsite Land can be rent out to campers. There are people that are looking for a place to pitch their tent. Renting a campsite property can get you money. All you have to do is to look for something called campsite land, and you can rent that land out to campers. You could rent your land out and basically pay off your tax bill with that campsite land. It is income producing property for you. Now that is really good business plan, and a lot of money can be made doing that. Especially if you are buying a cheap piece of land. Again, one should look up the restrictions for that area. Even though it is zoned for a campsite, whether or not you are allowed to put like little fires there. Is it allowed to put a permanent structure on there, like a tiny home or yurt. One can even go for glamping site. It could be a good idea to buy a piece of land that has an old like manufactured home on it, or an old house. These kinds of homes have everything that is already going to that piece of property. And it is less expense on you as a purchaser. Not only that most likely there is a survey that is on file. And you pretty much know exactly where the setback is for the house that you are planning on building. Except for the fact that it might be landlocked. Don’t assume to know the zoning of any specific area. Even though this may look residential it may be zoned agricultural never assume. It is very important especially if you are trying to build your own home, imagine driving up to the most perfect piece of dirt and all you see are houses around you and you are like, oh! look at this piece of land it is up for sale, it is for sale by owner and the reason that it was for sale by owner because is zoned commercial or zoned something that wouldn’t allow for you to build your own house now here is the thing if it is zoned commercial or agricultural and there is a bunch of other properties around if that are residential properties, you may be able to re-zone that property, you may be able to take the plot map that has been done to that specific piece of land and you might be able to have it rezoned residential since there are so many houses around it. It is just an extra step that you may have to do. This way you can tackle the zoning issues.
I am a Commerce Graduate and Real Estate Consultant.