Land due diligence checklist
Almost nothing that decides whether a parcel suits you is in the listing. It is in county records, title documents and utility maps. This is the order to work through them, and who to ask.
Start with the things that can end the deal
Three questions can make a parcel unusable for your purpose, and all three are answerable early and cheaply. Settle them before spending money on anything else.
- Legal access
- Ask the title company whether they will insure legal access, and read the recorded easement. Not the photographs, and not the seller.
- Permitted use
- Ask county planning, in writing, whether your intended use is permitted on this parcel number.
- Wastewater and water
- Ask county environmental health about septic feasibility, and the state or local water authority about well permitting.
Title and recorded rights
Order a full title commitment and read Schedule B rather than the summary page. It lists the easements, restrictions, reservations and exceptions that bind you.
Ask specifically about severed mineral rights, severed water rights, conservation easements, utility easements, access easements, deed restrictions and covenants, and any lease over the ground including grazing, farming, hunting, timber or energy.
Ask what the title company will and will not insure. An exception is the insurer telling you where they see risk.
The land itself
Walk the boundaries, ideally with the recorded description in hand. Look for encroachments, occupied roads, dumping, old foundations, and any watercourse.
Check the flood map for the parcel, and look at wetlands and slope. Review the USDA soil survey for the specific soil units present, which matters for building, for septic and for agriculture.
Commission a boundary survey where boundaries matter, and consider an environmental review where previous use suggests it, such as former industrial, fuel storage, orchard spraying or dumping.
Cost to use the land
Get written numbers rather than estimates: electric line extension to your building site, water tap fee or well cost, septic design and installation, driveway and culvert, and any county impact or capacity fees.
Confirm the tax position: current assessment, whether a use-based valuation applies, and what a change of use would trigger in rollback tax.
Add the annual holding costs you will carry: insurance, road maintenance share, weed control, fencing.
Money and timing
Line up a lender that writes land loans in that county before making an offer, and make the contract contingent on financing and on the investigations above.
Give the contingency period enough room for a survey, a perc test and an appraisal, all of which can be slow in rural areas and seasonal in cold climates.
Where a key fact cannot be settled before closing, price that uncertainty or walk away. It does not improve after the deed records.
Who answers what
Keeping this straight saves weeks. Nearly every important question has exactly one authoritative source, and it is almost never the listing.
- County planning or zoning
- Permitted use, setbacks, minimum lot size, overlays, subdivision rules.
- County environmental health
- Septic feasibility, perc or soil evaluation, well setbacks.
- Title company and a real estate attorney
- Access, easements, restrictions, severed estates, what is insurable.
- Licensed surveyor
- Boundaries, corners, acreage, encroachments.
- State water authority
- Water rights, well permits, basin status.
- Serving utilities
- Line extension cost, capacity, tap and impact fees.
- County assessor and treasurer
- Valuation, tax bill, use programs, rollback exposure, delinquency.
- The listing broker
- What the seller says about the property, and the route to the seller for everything above.
Common questions
What should I check first when buying land?
Legal access, permitted use, and whether wastewater and water are feasible. Any one of those can make a parcel unusable for your purpose, and all three can be checked early at little cost.
How long should a due diligence period be on land?
Long enough for a survey, a perc or soil test, a title review and an appraisal. In rural areas those take longer than in town, and some are seasonal where the ground freezes. Ask your local professionals how long they currently need, then add margin.
Can I rely on the information in a listing?
Treat it as what the listing agent was told. It is a starting point for questions, not a substitute for the county, the title company and a surveyor. Nothing on this site is verified by us.
Do I need a real estate attorney to buy land?
In some states an attorney is standard in every closing. Even where it is not, land transactions involve easements, reservations and sometimes seller financing, all of which are worth a professional reading before you sign.
Check it with the source
This is general information, not legal, engineering or financial advice. Rules vary by state and county and they change. Get the answer that matters to you in writing from the office that issues it.
Related guides
Legal access and easements
A road touching a parcel on a map is not a right to drive on it. Legal access is the single most expensive thing to get wrong when buying rural land, because without it a parcel can be difficult to build on, insure, finance or resell.
Land zoning explained
Zoning decides what you are allowed to do with a parcel. It is set locally, it changes, and it is the single most common reason a land purchase does not work out the way the buyer expected.
Utilities, septic and the cost to build
Power at the road is not power at the building site. On rural land, the gap between a parcel and a serviced building site is often the largest single number in the whole project, and it is knowable before you buy.
Surveys, boundaries and acreage
The acreage in a listing almost always comes from an assessor record, not from a survey. Fences are frequently in the wrong place. If exact boundaries matter to you, only a licensed surveyor can establish them.