How does one research to be sure there are no leases, liens, taxes owed, etc?
Depending on your state you can either have a title agent or attorney review the title.
If you found it FSBO there is no need to involve a realtor(cringe at saying that... its how I pay the bills)
HOWEVER- Under no circumstances should you buy something WITHOUT TITLE INSRUANCE.
A title search shows you what is there. The insurance covers that and/or anything that is missed. Its the missed things that come up in the middle of the night and steal your property away or give you massive bills to pay.
GET TITLE INSURANCE.
If you have any specifics. Give me the location and I can get you your states requirements via attorney or title state. Its quite affordable and I for one would never buy anything without it.
No water or no developed water? There's an old saying in the west "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over". If you don't have decent water you don't have much.
Will the property perc for septic? If you have a high water table or lousy soil, it could limit or even prevent your ever being able to build on the site. Of course, if you are buying in one of this County's third-world states, the odds of any government entity stopping you from building may be low.
I'd try to hang out on the property some. There were some distressing posts recently about bowsiters with severe trespass and/or poaching problems. That won't show up on a title report or deed transfer, but it can sure impact your use and enjoyment of the property. Hunting season is over, so you won't be able to suss it out then, but a lot of times poachers strip a carcass and just leave it, so you can look for that.
What's next door? What's the zoning? If you're buying next to beautiful forested land that is zoned for forestry and logged next year, you not only lost your environment, but you gained all the noise while that's going on. Plus I'm not saying you have to be buddies with your neighbors, but if you are next to dope growers they will kill all the deer in the area. Meth cookers are another nightmare that aprouts up in rural areas.
Don't assume that the taxes will be equivalent to what they were pre-sale. Check on what affects the tax rate. Ag/ranching parcels are often/usually taxed at a fraction of recreational parcels. You may have to gin up some "agricultural' use to stay on the ag low-tax gravy train.
As you can see, it could be great, or it could really suck - do your due diligence. In commie Cali you can void a sale if the seller fails to disclose anything that they knew or should have known about that materially affects the value of the property. A lot of third-world states probably don't have that proviso.
Do I work out a purchase price with the seller and talk about inclusions/exclusions and then have the attorney type up a formal offer sheet? Is there such a thing. I have a real estate attorney to use but I am waiting to contact him until the seller and I would agree on the price and whatnot.
I am only looking at a 90 acre parcel. There is a small 24x30 cabin on the property and it has no running water and is run off a generator. There is electricity available right next to the cabin basically if I wanted it hooked up. Hunting cabins like this are common in MI and WI. I doubt I would ever put in a well as this property would be used for hunting only for my son and I. The camp I hunt at now in MI has a similar setup with no electricity or water and it works great.
He will know what to put in the intent to buy document, depending on where you live to cover you so, I'll leave that up to him and not advise you of my states laws, which might be different.
This will give the attorney time to do a title opinion. An attorney will do a title opinion to check for liens, title of ownership to be true and clean from all encumbrances, etc... What they won't do is guarantee the line calls. So, if it is a piece that is deeded for more than a few acres, I'd make an offer for it but, in the contract the lawyer draws up, tell him you want to be protected if the land survey shows discrepancy. Meaning, if the guy says 25 acres and it comes up to be 21 etc...
In a lot of situations, land these days have to have a recorded survey in order to get a note to purchase it. And, it is just smart business to have a title opinion as well. Also, it has become the norm for the bank to see the completed title exam before releasing the money. Not always but, it is becoming a requirement for average Joe's.
If I didn't know how to run the lines myself, there is zero chance I'd buy it if they weren't already marked in some capacity and had an official, recorded survey in the court house.
Follow these guidelines. You'll get what you pay for with no surprises. God Bless
Easements, check for them and who has them.
Might even check to see if the state has any say on access to the property if it has a stream or river on it.
Best of luck and happy holidays!
How much does a survey typically cost and if there is not one, is that my responsibility for peace of mind?
I would simply ask the owner for it. If they are unsure, take a ride to the assessor's office, get one of the clerks to help you look to see if one exists. If one does, it will come with the title search but, I would hate to wait three to four weeks on the title opinion to find that out. Finding an establishing where property lines are easy to do for people who do it. But, only a survey conducted by a licensed surveyor maters in court.
A survey simply establishes on the ground what the deed calls describe. Therefore, the deed trump's all. It is the defining instrument, as long as it has calls with bearings, actual distances, etc... If it doesn't that is where the survey will be used to establish those boundary's left not defined by the deed. Most areas have good deed calls now. So, if no survey exists, and the calls are descriptive, making it a straight forward process, it should be inexpensive. However, it should be paid by the seller. So, if you will take a few minutes to find out whether one exists before you make an offer, you can ensure that is the case what ever they think.
It sounds daunting but, the attorney will handle most all of it if you tell him too. Let them earn their money when the time comes to do so But, few minutes and a trip to the court house will prepare you to tell the attorney what you need them to do. And they will know what is needed on the letter of intent, plus the contract. Plus, how long to depend upon for the actual closing to occur, depending on the needs of this deal. It really is a simple ordeal if you approach it correctly. God Bless
While Randy has a point, You will have to pay for the attorney to draft it before knowing if a price can be agreed upon. And here me on this, There are few people who get kick backs, finders fee's, "a little extra for the heads up", like attorneys. I know because I get them from multiple attorneys when people approach them wanting advice on selling land, timber, etc... So the best way I know of protecting yourself, is not to ask one to do an intent to buy document until you have agreed upon terms with the owner. It DOES keep them honest.
The choice is yours and depends on how well you know the attorney. God Bless
"A survey simply establishes on the ground what the deed calls describe. Therefore, the deed trump's all. It is the defining instrument..."
That is not necessarily true. If that was the case, anybody with some measuring tools could go out and lay out the deed on the ground and establish boundaries.
A surveyor's job is to retrace the boundaries that have already been established and that requires knowledge of measurement, rules of evidence, principals of law and the ability to analyze the evidence and reach a conclusion on the location of the boundary. That specialized knowledge and experience is why we are licensed.
Any surveryor who merely stakes out a deed and ignores existing boundary evidence is not doing his job and is looking for serious trouble.
The deed does not trump all; it merely gets you to the location but the evidence and facts on the ground are what determine where the boundary is.
Granted, if there is no evidence of a pre-existing boundary then it's a relatively straight forward process to survey and stake out the deed.
If it goes to court and there is a discrepancy between the deed and the actual boundary evidence, the evidence will almost always prevail.
Good luck...
To the OP, I do this for a living. Don't get confused by accounts of personal experience. All great advice and helpful. However, follow the professional experience. And the debate about survey versus deed is irrelevant. I should have never mentioned it for reasons that happened. I forgot I was on the internet. I was just trying to give you the fast track on law, not opinion, so you would understand why I was giving you the advice I did. God Bless
If you have a metes & bounds boundary description that closes, many architects and any surveyor can run it through a program that will establish the enclosed acreage.
Ok with no water? Guess you aren't planning to irrigate any food plots either.
I'm sure there are cases where the deed has prevailed over field evidence but the evidence from each case will differ and of course all evidence is not created equal. I also know of numerous court cases where evidence on the ground trumped the deed?
You wrote:
"I can put a stake in the ground and call it a corner because it is evidence. However, if the deed calls don't match, it isn't the corner."
That may be true if you put the stake in the ground, however if the property was conveyed and surveyed years ago, say 1900 and the surveyor used his compass and chain (which was the proper method of the day) to lay out the boundaries and then set monuments at the boundary corners and then the new owners built improvements and established occupation in good faith based on those surveyed and monumented boundaries, those landowners have acquired bona fide property rights.
Now fast forward to 2014 and along comes Joe Surveyor with his GPS and his client's deed. He ignores the evidence on the ground and surveys and stakes out the description of the property and discovers that the corners and lines that he just staked out based on taking the math from the deed and placing it on the ground with his $30,000 high-tech sub-centimeter accuracy GPS do not match the property corner monuments that were set in 1900 or the fences and rock walls built on the property lines that have been in place for 114 years.
Joe Surveyor tells his client who then hires Justin Lawyer and off they run to court. Guess what...? The evidence on the ground is going to prevail and hopefully the lawyer understands that before he leads his client down the wrong path... And by the way, the surveyor could be found negligent for ignoring evidence...
There are just too many variables to make a blanket statement one way or another.
The DEED may be the defining instrument regarding the conveyance but it is just one piece of evidence in retracing a boundary and may not be the defining evidence regarding where the actual boundaries are on the ground (the lines defining the limits of established property rights).
It's misleading to imply (but then again this is the internet) that the Supreme Court has made a ruling that discredits all evidence in every possible situation in favor of the deed calls. Maybe they made that ruling in a specific case based on the specific facts and evidence of that case but any ruling would have to be examined in the proper context to see how it relates to the situation at hand. The Supreme Court certainly hasn't made a blanket ruling that states that the deed always prevails over all other evidence everytime! If they did, I would appreciate it if you would provide me with the name of the Supreme Court Case for my own educational purposes. I also do this for a living and have now for 37 years (I'm a County Surveyor)...
williamtell,
I agree with most of what you wrote except the part about the "basis of bearing". The Basis of Bearing of a survey is fairly arbitrary and refers basically to what the surveyor considered to be north for his survey (magnetic, true, grid, assumed) and has no impact on the accuracy or level of difficulty of the survey. It's a simple matter for a surveyor to rotate or convert the bearing system of his survey to match any previous basis of bearings. I think what you may be referring to is the Point of Beginning, which in Rectangular Survey States (Townships, Ranges and Sections) like Wisconsin the P.O.B. would most likely be a Section Corner and multiple corners of the section will be needed in order to properly subdivide the section and determine the boundaries of the aliquot parts. Yes, old descriptions can be a problem but converting from rods and chains to feet is simple.
I realize that the OP probably didn't want a lesson in surveying and I apologize but you guys are in my wheelhouse here...
Thanks again everyone. I greatly appreciate you all taking the time to knowledge share with me.
A couple things above. Somebody mentioned to be sure and aquire the mineral rights. If there is any oil or gas production around , this might be impossible. It is most places in Texas.
And even though the surveyors of today have much better equipment and ( we hope ) knowledge than those of 1900 , there are professional surveyors and there are guys that play at surveying for a couple years and move on. Lots of difference in knowledge levels even within the same company. I have witnessed this over and over. A big name company does NOT guarantee the best either. I've seen some genuine idiots from companies that have multiple offices all over and some very talented guys that work for a single office outfit with two or three crews.
Best of luck to you, ain't nothing like owning your own ground !
