Stephanie asks: Who is the right person to answer questions from the Land Buying Checklist?
Steve Bliss, of BuildingAdvisor.com, replies: Most of the issues raised in the Land Buying Checklist are also discussed in Questions to Ask, which suggests where to get answers to questions about vacant land. Questions are broken down by the various types of professionals, businesses, and government agencies whom you can go to for information.
While a good home inspector can do a pretty thorough job of inspecting a house for construction defects (although they frequently miss things), they cannot tell you about problems with title, liens, HOA regulations, and so on. Similar, with land, you need to speak to number of different people for help with evaluating the site.
And while home inspection is now a common profession, land inspection is not. I am not aware of anyone who offers this service to individuals. Large developers can hire land development consultants, who will evaluate a piece of land using engineers, surveyors, and other professionals as needed.
The closest you can probably get for one-stop-shopping would be a surveyor, who could give you a detailed legal description of the land, its boundaries, its general zoning status, any problems with protected wetlands or flood plains, any improvements on the property such as utilities, and any encroachments such as easements, as long as these are readily accessible in public records. If the land has a recent survey on record, you can obtain this information from town or county officials, but may still want a surveyor to help you understand the information, which can get pretty technical.
More detailed zoning information about what size house you can build with how many bedrooms you would need to confirm with the town’s zoning officer. Some older lots have grandfathered zoning status that might be less restrictive than the current regulations.
If you suspect that their might be water, drainage, or septic system issues with the land, you may want to have an engineer (civil or geotechnical) or septic system designer take a quick look.
With unimproved land (also called “vacant land”) there are no real short cuts here, but a lot of work to figure out what you are buying. The phrase “caveat emptor” – let the buyer beware – is applicable here. With improved lots from a developer, with utilities and permits in place, there is much less risk for the buyer, but you will pay a premium for the improvements.
Before hiring any professional to assist with your land research, provide them with a list of questions and find out ahead of time which they can answer and what the cost will be. If you are lucky, you can find people to give you a “best-guess” professional opinion without doing thorough (and expensive) research at this point in your search.
Read more on who to hire to evaluate land.
KC says
What Type of Company Will Inspect Building Site?
We are planning to build a house on rural land in Oregon. We want to have someone come out and evaluate the site and particularly the water and any issues, concerns, considerations before we start building. What is the job or service name or title of someone that would be skilled at that kind of on-site evaluation. We don’t know what job title or company services descriptions we should look for.
We have talked to the local county building office but they surprisingly said they don’t know what that would be called as they don’t encounter that issue very often.
Thank you for helping us identify the service we need.
buildingadvisor says
While there are plenty of land-use consultants available to large developers, there are few if any who will evaluate an individual lot. So you need to piece together your own team of experts depending on the specific types of issues and questions. In general, you would hire a well driller to advice on wells, a septic system designer to advice on perc testing and system design, a surveyor to establish boundaries and deed restrictions such as easements, and an engineer (civil or geotechnical) to look at soil and drainage issues.
Some firms employ both surveyors and engineers, so you may be able to find one company to handle a broad range of issues. In your search, look for firms that have worked with residential clients on single-family projects. This is more likely to be a smaller firm or single practitioner, so it may take a bit of digging — no pun intended.
Learn more about who can help you evaluate land.