Purchasing Land

[livetohunt]

Guys, I sure appreciate all of the information and advice. I am going to get a realtor and go from there.

Get a good agent in your area that sells a lot of land..Other things to look at close are easements, and to check your neighbors out close..When I buy land, I always look for/assume for worse case scenarios on neighboring properties. By this I mean do they shoot guns a lot, have dogs that bark all day and night, 4 wheeler trails next to the line, etc..Good luck!

 

[ucfireman]

When YOU have it surveyed as part of the purchase, make sure to ask them to mark the boundaries on all 4 sides. It will cost a little more but will come in real handy when the surveyors "only find the 4 corner pins" and skip doing a cut trail on one side. Happened to me.

Then, if I was you - make sure you do something to mark the boundary that can not be messed with - maybe a mowed trail, firebreak, fence, something where the neighbor/local hunter has to physically cross to enter.

I don't know who did my place in Coweta but they used concrete markers (like water valve markers) about every 100 foot on one side, nice. One side is a fence so its good and the other 2 are roads.
My Heard county is 2 tracts. I had the surveyor put pins every 50ft on the 2 long sides (1200+-ft) and then corner pins on the back (400+- ft and a dam to the pond) the front is a road and only corner pins (3) . I also had a big pin put in at the back corner of the 5ac tract.
But I know where all my lines are.

 

[ucfireman]

Get a good agent in your area that sells a lot of land..Other things to look at close are easements, and to check your neighbors out close..When I buy land, I always look for/assume for worse case scenarios on neighboring properties. By this I mean do they shoot guns a lot, have dogs that bark all day and night, 4 wheeler trails next to the line, etc..Good luck!

You could probably check with your local law enforcement or code enforcement to see if there are problems in the area. But get out and drive around in the daylight, You would be surprised at what you don't know was there. Drug houses, burnt out houses, squatters etc.

 

[bfriendly]

There should be a PLAT MAP and with that you should be able to determine and “mark” them as you walk....ANY PARCEL should have one. Check the yax assessors office or your realtor can pull it up and email it to you with a few minutes

 

[DocBar]

I recently bought a tract that was listed at 111 acres. Walked the property, found where it appeared the lines were located, checked that against the county GIS and then made an offer based on the entire tract, not a per acre price. Paid for a survey and ended up with 115 acres. I still would have bought it if the survey came back at 105 acres but it was nice knowing I’d saved a few bucks. Moral of the story, if you’re reasonably sure you’re going to buy it then paying for a survey is worth every penny (after you have a contract).

 

[TomC]

Its amazing how many people are CLUELESS as to that they really own in terms of acreage and how many people apparently buy tracts without surveys. Lost out on a tract I really wanted to buy about 6 months ago because the owner was convinced he had 10 acres more than he really did, even though no one agreed with him including his listing agent. He didn't own what he thought he owned. Costly mistake on his part when he bought the land to hunt on 5 years ago and bought it without a survey. The info on file at the courthouse may not be precise if a survey is not on file.......I kooked at the documents for this property and the terminology was "44 acres more or less". Lot of ambiguity in the term "more or less" to the tune of approximately 10 acres. I wouldn't buy any land without a survey!!

 

[nmurph]

There should be a PLAT MAP and with that you should be able to determine and “mark” them as you walk....ANY PARCEL should have one. Check the yax assessors office or your realtor can pull it up and email it to you with a few minutes

Most of the time there is a plat. They are located in the Clerk of Courts office. You can also go to the GA Clerk of Courts website. They had have an online subscription based database of deeds, plats, liens, and other legal docs. There are several different levels of subscription from single use to yearly. What the tax assessor has is a service (usually Qpublic) that overlays the the numbers (coordinates) from surveys onto something like Google maps. The lines that represent the property boundaries are usually reasonably close but definitely aren't perfect enough to know if you are 5ft inside your property or if you hunting on the neighbor's land. I took a new listing today and Qpub showed the property line as running through the center of the house. The owner showed me a survey pin that was 100ft from where it was shown online, and the whole street showed property lines running through the middle of every house on that street. Other times it can be accurate within foot or two. You just never know.

Most realtors don't utilize the GACOC online on a regular basis and an old survey is of limited value. Unless you can find an existing pin, you are stumbling in the dark trying to find lines. Pins get removed by angry neighbors who don't agree with the survey results. Trees that are slashed to mark boundaries die, get cut, or the slash will heal over. If you have an idea of a pin's location, a metal detector is useful in this situation. Sometimes you get lucky and have a permanent monument, feature, or landmark. You can use a compass, a laser rangefinder, a metal detector, and a machete to ferret out other pins from a survey's data once you can find one pin. But often you are playing pin the tail on the donkey and the survey is just a.piece of paper.

 

[nmurph]

Its amazing how many people are CLUELESS as to that they really own in terms of acreage and how many people apparently buy tracts without surveys. Lost out on a tract I really wanted to buy about 6 months ago because the owner was convinced he had 10 acres more than he really did, even though no one agreed with him including his listing agent. He didn't own what he thought he owned. Costly mistake on his part when he bought the land to hunt on 5 years ago and bought it without a survey. The info on file at the courthouse may not be precise if a survey is not on file.......I kooked at the documents for this property and the terminology was "44 acres more or less". Lot of ambiguity in the term "more or less" to the tune of approximately 10 acres. I wouldn't buy any land without a survey!!

I sold a nice tract last summer that surveyed out to have 22.something acres more than what county had on the books for the parcel. I listed and sold a house two years ago and I told the owner I thought his pool was on the neighbor's yard. He called me every name in the book and insulted my knowledge. The buyer insisted on a survey and it turned out his pool's deep end belonged to the neighbor. That was fun to get untangled and sold.

 

[nmurph]

A good idea is to sink the surveyor's pins below ground and out of sight. Then put another iron rod in the ground adjacent and leave a couple of feet sticking up and slip a piece of PVC over this rod.

 

[TomC]

What't the best way to walk a straight line between two surveyors stakes that are a LONG way from each other Any phone compass app or something? I know where my stakes are but would like to know exact boundaries??

 

[Dylinthehatt]

Download HuntStand select the piece of land. And follow the boundaries on your phone while walking to land.

 

[carlan]

As a registered land surveyor, there is some good & bad information in this thread.
I may be a little biased but I would certainly have something surveyed before I bought it unless there is a recent survey available.
The ONLY way to know where the property lines are is to have a surveyor stake the lines. You can get close if you have identified corner pins & can use a compass. I have seen timber men get very close that way.
The apps & even qpubic tax maps with property information are only as good as the information used. I have seen many that are very close & a lot that are nowhere near.
I recently surveyed my family property to split up & came up 30 acres short of what we always thought was there since my grandparents bought it 100 years ago.

 

[Mike 65]

What is the average cost to survey a 30 acre tract?
i understand there are variables.

 

[carlan]

What is the average cost to survey a 30 acre tract?
i understand there are variables.

It depends on where it is, how grown up it is, what kind of deed or plat of record you are dealing with & exactly what you need.
I typically charge around 50-60 cents per linear foot. Add up the footage around the property and divide 2 will get you in the ballpark for me.

 

[Lead Poison]

Make sure you research to make sure you own all mineral rights as well. I know someone who got burned badly when they bought land in Alabama, only to see it torn completely up when a company came to mine the bauxite from it. There was nothing he could do and his dream became a nightmare.

 

[boykin1989]

I purchased a parcel of land a few years ago. It was listed at 250 acres. I kept playing with a land mapping app and it was showing up as only 200. Needless to say, I had a survey done and it came out to 204.87 acres. It saved me almost 100k to pay for the $3,500 survey....

Also, the only problems that I have on the property are with the southern neighbors that have used my trail in the past when it was owned by another party. They thought they were entitled to continue to use my trail... Game warden had to escort them off the property after I told them that I did not want them on my land. Good fences and good boundary ID's make for good neighbors.

I only wish I knew about the bad neighbors before I closed on the property. Very thankful that I had the property surveyed so I knew my rights when I had to deal with trespassers.

I always recommend having a survey completed. How do you know exactly what you are buying without one?

 

[Throwback]

Good general info here

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fist-full-of-dirt/id1505260479?i=1000484857240

 

[Throwback]

Let me give you a real life example of my situation last spring. After 3 years of negotiations and multiple times having the deal fall apart, I was one day away from closing on 75 acres. To provide a little more color, it was a purchase from a family member and the land had been in my family for well over 100 years. My father killed his first buck on this property 50 years ago. So the tract and the boundaries were known. Albeit, the tract was what remained of a much larger farm that had been subdivided multiple times over the years. All boundaries that were recorded/reflected on the tax maps were exactly as I had known them to be all my life, 46 years old to be exact. I had a friend stop by to cruise the timber and rather than getting a call telling me what the timber value was, I was greeted with bad news that the tract was not 75 acres but rather 62 acres.

In a mad scramble, I postponed the close, spoke with several surveyors and they all viewed the tract and due to time constraints, attested to the approximate acreage based on GPS. The owner (family member) would not budge on the price in spite of it being 17% smaller. To say I was frustrated is an understatement. In the end, I pulled my offer.

Fast forward to September, the owners (family) reached out to me to see if I was still interested. Because of my high level of confidence in my friends knowledge that had alerted me to the acreage issue, along with the surveyors that I spoke with and using online acreage mapping tools, I made what I considered my best and final offer. While I did not want to throw away three years worth of effort, I dropped my offer price 25% and said take it or leave it.

Two weeks later, I closed on the farm and purchased it in conveyance of the tract and not by the acre. I still have to get a survey done so that I can get the tax records straight, but, given the recent pandemic, the extra $3K is not in the budget this year.

The moral of the story is, do not trust the seller to know the exact acreage or believe the tax records are correct either. The only way to know is with a survey.

Have a friend that bought land that was supposed to be 40 acres AT MOST. Seller was thinking it was 38ish. Ended up being like 44 after a survey (Place has never been surveyed on two sides) . Like getting 4 acres for free.

 

[westcobbdog]

You could probably check with your local law enforcement or code enforcement to see if there are problems in the area. But get out and drive around in the daylight, You would be surprised at what you don't know was there. Drug houses, burnt out houses, squatters etc.

not code but law yes, most have it online now.

 

[Waddams]

https://beacon.schneidercorp.com/

For starters, before paying for a survey, I'd find the parcel online. The link above can get you to most GA counties that don't have their own. It's not always up to date, though, but it's a starting place. Should be able to find the state, county, and then the parcel if it's in the site's database.

The parcel information should also show acreage, past ownership transactions, tax information. There might even be plat and deed book references. From there, you can go to the County courthouse (or you can order remotely in some places I think) and get a copy of the current plat and/or deed to the property. If you know a surveyor, or a real estate broker, they can also sometimes find the deed or plat on the GSCCA website. Maybe they'd do you a favor and download it? Or the seller's agent's broker could go find it?

Sometimes, there's isn't a plat, but there's almost always a deed. I say almost always because I recently had a situation on a project at work where an old bit of right-of-way for a public road was in dispute. Road was relocated 40 years ago. Most of the prior ROW had been conveyed back to adjacent owners, it was all nice and neat, except this one corner. Two different ownership claims came up and the records all pointed to it never being conveyed to either claimant. And the local county had bought easements for prior work on this corner from BOTH PARTIES in the past. One of them has been paying taxes on that corner for 2 years (but not before) despite no clear record of ownership conveyance. It's still not unraveled. So just an example where the records aren't always clear, adequate, or correct.

So all that to say, I'd look at the current court house ownership documents of record - deed and plat. If no plat, then the deed should contain a written description of metes and bounds that may or may not be easy to follow. But if you can follow the descriptions and plat mapping, rent a pin finder from Sunbelt or United, and take the records, see if you can follow the records and find the pins. If you do, I'd recommend to flag/stake them for future reference. I'd also save a GPS pin at each location in Google Maps or something. You can then straight line between them on an aerial to get a better idea of the boundaries, if they match up with mapping you have from online or a plat, etc.

This might give you enough to answer boundary questions. If all this seems too much for you, hire a surveyor.