Land is the most honest-looking purchase in real estate and the easiest one to get wrong. There is no roof to inspect and no furnace to age out, so people assume there is nothing to check. Then they own forty acres they cannot build on, cannot access in the wet season, or cannot get water to.
I have bought land, sold land, and built on land for thirty years, first across the Midwest and now here in West Tennessee and North Mississippi. The good buys and the bad buys are separated by the questions asked before closing. Never assume. Verify.
The questions that matter
- What is the legal access? A gravel drive you used at the showing is not access. Recorded easements and road frontage are access. If your route in crosses someone else's property without one, you have a problem waiting for a disagreement.
- Where are the utilities, really? Power at the road is not power at your build site. Ask what water, sewer or septic, power, and internet will actually cost to bring where you need them. In rural West Tennessee and North Mississippi that number can change the whole deal.
- Will the soil do what you need? If there is no sewer, your building plans live or die on a perc test. If you are farming, soil type is the business plan. If you are building commercial, geotech matters. Test before you close, not after.
- What does zoning and the county allow? The seller's opinion of what you can do with the property is not binding on anyone. The county's opinion is. Verify current zoning, and if your plan depends on a change or a variance, price in the risk that you do not get it.
- Where are the lines? Old fences are not surveys. On rural parcels the difference between the deed and the fence line can be measured in acres. Get a current survey.
- What about water, floodplain, and drainage? Bottomland is beautiful in October and underwater in April. Check the flood maps and ask the neighbors what the property does in a wet spring.
The seller's opinion of what you can do with the property is not binding on anyone. The county's opinion is.
And one more: why is it for sale?
Every piece of land has a story. Estate sale, family split, a plan that did not get approved, a farmer retiring. The reason behind the sale tells you about price flexibility, timeline, and sometimes about problems nobody typed into the listing. Understanding the why is often the most valuable due diligence there is, and it costs nothing but a conversation.
How I help
Land deals reward preparation and relationships. Over thirty years I have built a bench of surveyors, engineers, contractors, lenders, and attorneys who work on these transactions every week. Financing raw land is its own specialty, and I can point you to lenders who actually do it. My job is to help you ask every question on this list before your money is at risk, and to structure the contract so the answers protect you.