The Raw Land Buyer's Due Diligence Checklist

The road you drove in on might cross someone else's land. If there is no written, recorded easement giving you the legal right to use it, the neighbor can gate it off tomorrow — and you'd have no legal recourse. This happens more often than buyers expect, because sellers often don't realize it either. "We've always used that road" is a habit, not a legal right.

These kinds of informal access arrangements are called prescriptive easements, and standard title insurance explicitly does not cover them. Title insurance only covers what's documented in the public record — not informal arrangements. If your only practical route to the property crosses someone else's land without a document on file at the county recorder, that access is not insured. If the seller says "we've always used that road," that's not a legal right. Require a written, recorded easement as a non-negotiable purchase condition before you commit any money.

The fix is to have a licensed land surveyor document the legal access situation and, if needed, record a formal easement — a process the seller should pay for before you close.

Full guide: landlocked land and access easements →

A percolation test — "perc test" — measures how quickly water drains through the soil. If you want to put a septic system on the land, the soil must pass this test first. No pass means no permit for a standard septic system, which means no building permit for a house. This single test has derailed more rural land purchases than almost anything else.

Don't accept an old test — sanitary codes change, and a test from several years ago may not meet current standards. More importantly, don't accept a test done in summer. A proper evaluation requires two excavation pits dug 8 feet deep, tested during the wet season — in late winter or spring, when the water table is at its highest. Sellers often present a test done in August when the soil is at its driest. That result will not predict what happens when the rains come. Heavy clay soil or shallow rock (less than 4 feet from the surface) will fail a standard perc test, forcing you into an engineered septic system that costs $18,000–$35,000 more than a conventional one — if a permit is even possible at all.

Some counties also require a licensed soil scientist to evaluate the soil structure beyond the basic perc test. Budget for the full evaluation. Shallow granite bedrock is the single most common reason raw land builds never happen.

Full guide: perc tests, and what to do if the land fails →

In most Western states, the mineral estate is legally dominant over the surface estate. If an oil company, railroad, or timber corporation reserved mineral rights in 1941 — or 1908 — that reservation travels with the deed in perpetuity. The mineral rights owner holds implied legal authority to enter your property, construct access tracks, and operate drilling equipment on your surface without requiring your consent or compensating you beyond a narrow "reasonable use" standard.

The phrase "severed minerals" appears nowhere on MLS listings and is never volunteered by sellers. You discover it in a 60-year mineral deed run — a title search specifically examining the chain of mineral title going back six decades. Major mineral severances were common between 1900–1960 when railroads, federal land grants, and oil companies purchased surface parcels while explicitly reserving subsurface rights. A parcel that has changed hands twelve times since 1940 may still carry a 1938 Standard Oil mineral reservation.

If minerals are severed, request a Surface Use Agreement from the mineral rights holder before closing. This is a negotiated document limiting where and how subsurface access may be exercised. It does not guarantee protection but provides contractual recourse if mineral operators damage improvements.

Full guide: mineral rights and how to check who owns them →

"Power at the road" is the single most misunderstood phrase in rural land listings. It typically means an electric line runs along the road somewhere nearby — not that you can actually hook up to it without significant work. Getting actual electric service connected to your parcel often costs $6,000–$12,000 for a basic connection, before any permits. That's just to get a meter. Running line to your actual building site is extra.

If the parcel sits 600 feet off a county road, or the distribution line must be extended to reach your building site: overhead single-phase extension runs $12,000–$25,000 per quarter-mile. Underground trenching through open soil averages $18–$35 per linear foot. Through granite substrate — common in the Sierra Nevada, Colorado Rockies, and Pacific Northwest ranges — trenching may require explosive blasting, pushing costs to $65+ per foot.

Call the local rural electric cooperative directly — look them up by county, give them the parcel's address or tax ID, and ask for a written "new service extension estimate." They will tell you exactly what connecting will cost. Do not rely on the seller's guess. If you're considering going fully off-grid with solar, model that cost honestly too: a complete residential solar-plus-battery system runs $35,000–$70,000 installed.

Water rights law in the United States splits along a geographic fault line at roughly the 100th Meridian. Understanding which doctrine governs your parcel determines whether the creek running through your property is a resource or an irrelevance.

Western states (17 states from the Dakotas westward): Prior Appropriation. The governing principle is "first in time, first in right." Water rights are issued as adjudicated decrees by the state engineer's office, tied to a priority date and a specific beneficial use. Under prior appropriation, the state owns the water. Senior rights holders — who may be miles away — can legally call on that water source first, leaving you with nothing in a dry year. A 1887 decree calls first; your parcel calls last, and "last" may mean zero water. Adjudicated basins — particularly in Montana's Clark Fork drainage, Idaho's Snake River basin, and most of Colorado — are fully allocated. New rights are simply unavailable at any price in fully appropriated systems.

Eastern states (east of the 100th Meridian): Riparian Doctrine. Landowners whose property abuts a natural watercourse have a right to reasonable use of that water, so long as it doesn't unreasonably interfere with other riparian users. Water rights generally travel with the land rather than being separately deeded. This is meaningfully more favorable for rural buyers — a stream crossing your property in Tennessee is a genuine asset.

Domestic well permits carry state-specific exemptions and caps. Wyoming permits exempt domestic wells to 25 GPM (W.S. 41-3-907); Idaho limits exempt domestic use to 13,000 gallons per day; Montana limits exempt wells by flow rate (35 GPM) and annual volume (10 acre-feet per year) — not by depth (MCA 85-2-306). In all cases, request written confirmation from the state engineer's office — not from the seller's agent — before treating a well permit as a given.

FEMA flood maps are notoriously outdated — the agency acknowledges a lag of 10 to 20 years between actual floodplain conditions and updated map panels. Zone AE = high-risk. If you build a structure and carry a federally-backed mortgage, flood insurance is mandatory. For raw land, the designation matters mainly because it determines where you can build and at what cost. Zone X means low-to-minimal risk. But Zone X in 2004 may be Zone AE in 2026, particularly in river valleys that have experienced watershed development upstream. Pull the current Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) from the FEMA Map Service Center and compare it to recent Google Earth Pro historical imagery, checking for evidence of inundation.

Army Corps of Engineers wetlands jurisdiction is the more dangerous issue for buyers. Under the Clean Water Act, the Corps has regulatory authority over "waters of the United States," which includes not just navigable rivers but seasonal wetlands created by stormwater drainage, isolated prairie potholes, and ephemeral streams in arid zones. A parcel that appears to be dry grassland nine months per year may contain federally jurisdictional wetlands that prohibit fill, grading, or structure placement. Violating Section 404 of the CWA carries civil penalties exceeding $50,000 per day.

Note: Sackett v. EPA (2023) significantly narrowed this jurisdiction. Ephemeral runoff channels generally no longer qualify, but wetlands with a continuous surface connection to navigable waters still do. Get a wetlands delineation before building near water.

A jurisdictional wetland corridor bisecting a parcel can effectively eliminate the buildable envelope entirely. The Army Corps Nationwide Permits (NWP) program allows some minor impacts under categorical approvals, but anything beyond minimal fill triggers an individual Section 404 permit — a multi-year process with no guarantee of approval.

For any parcel with seasonal water, pooling, or marshy ground: run it through the USFWS National Wetlands Inventory map (free online tool) as a first screen, then hire a qualified wetlands delineator to physically walk the property and document what is and isn't jurisdictional. This is money well spent before you close.

"Agricultural" zoning is not a building permit. In many Western counties, A-1 or AG zoning requires a minimum lot size of 35 acres before a county building permit will be issued for a principal residence. If your 15-acre parcel is zoned A-1 in a county with a 35-acre residential minimum, it cannot be built on without a variance — and variances are discretionary, not guaranteed.

State law and county planning codes operate independently. A state that broadly permits rural residential use may have individual county ordinances that impose stricter setbacks, wildland-urban interface construction standards, or conservation overlay districts. Call the county planning department directly, give them the parcel APN, and ask what uses are permitted by right and what requires a conditional use permit.

CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions) run with the land, not with the seller. A parcel in a 1972 ranchette subdivision may carry private deed restrictions that prohibit manufactured housing, limit livestock counts, require architectural committee approval, or ban short-term rental use — none of which appear in county zoning records. These are found in the recorded subdivision plat and Declaration of Restrictions at the county recorder. A defunct HOA still has its covenants; the restrictions remain enforceable by adjacent parcel owners even if no HOA board exists to enforce them.

Road associations — separate from HOAs — are particularly hazardous. A private road maintained by a non-incorporated association may assess unpaid road dues as a lien against individual parcels. Confirm whether an active or dormant road association exists and whether any current assessments are unpaid.

The recorded survey on file with the county may be 50 years old. The legal description in the deed may reference corner monuments that no longer physically exist or have shifted. "Paper roads" platted in 1928 subdivisions may have been physically vacated in 1955 but never formally removed from the plat — leaving easement corridors that cross your buildable area on paper.

The legal description in the deed uses a surveying system from the 1800s — describing land as fractions of sections and townships. The physical markers that define those boundaries (brass caps set in concrete) shift over time due to frost, erosion, and vandalism. What the deed says you own and what the markers on the ground indicate can sometimes be different. A licensed land surveyor re-establishes those corners using recorded measurements, and occasionally the result surprises people.

Do not buy what you can see. Buy what the legal description says — and confirm those two things match. The fence line is almost never on the legal property line. Fences are built for practical reasons, not legal precision. If a neighbor has been using land up to a fence line for 20 years and that fence turns out to be 10 feet inside your legal boundary, they may have a legal claim to that strip under "adverse possession" — a doctrine that can transfer title to someone who openly uses land long enough.

A standard boundary survey is appropriate for most raw land purchases. ALTA/NSPS surveys are the commercial gold standard and worth the cost on complex parcels with multiple easements, water features, or high development value. It locates all easements, encroachments, improvements, and monuments to a standard acceptable to the title insurer. Cost ranges from $2,000 on a small rural parcel to $8,000+ on complex terrain.

A title search examines the chain of ownership going backward in time, looking for gaps, errors, and encumbrances. For raw land — particularly in the American West — a 40-year search is the minimum. The reason: railroad land grant patents, federal homestead acts, and BLM disposal patents from the late 1800s through the 1930s frequently carried mineral reservations, right-of-way grants for future federal projects, and timber easements that were never extinguished. A 20-year search from a typical residential title plant will miss these.

Heirship gaps are common on rural parcels. A landowner dies in 1963 without a will — legally called "dying intestate" — and the family divides the property informally among relatives without going through probate court. The legal record of ownership breaks at 1963, and every deed written after that is technically built on a shaky foundation. Clearing this up requires a "quiet title action" — a court process where a judge formally establishes who owns the property. It can take 12–18 months and cost thousands in legal fees, which is why it's the seller's problem to solve before you close, not yours.

Read the Schedule B exclusions on your title insurance commitment before closing. Schedule A covers what you own. Schedule B covers what the insurance does NOT insure — and this is where most raw land surprises live. Common Schedule B items on rural parcels include: pipeline easements, power line easements, road easements of record, unrecorded survey stakes, and matters that would be disclosed by a current survey. If a Schedule B item concerns you, ask the title company to insure over it, or require the seller to cure it before closing.

Raw land generates $0 in income while relentlessly consuming capital. The naive analysis looks only at purchase price and ignores the compounding annual cost of simply holding title. Most buyers do not run this math before signing a purchase agreement, and many are surprised when their $15,000 "affordable" parcel costs more to own each year than a financed vehicle.

The annual cost of owning raw land has five components most buyers don't think about until the first bill arrives:

• Property taxes. These are calculated on the assessed value — which on rural land often differs significantly from what you paid. Confirm the actual assessed value and tax rate with the county, not from the seller.
• Loan interest. Raw land loans run 8–10% through Farm Credit or agricultural lenders, and 12–15% through seller financing or hard money. Unlike a home mortgage, these rarely have 30-year terms — expect 5-year balloon notes or 15-year amortizations with 25–35% down.
• Road maintenance. Shared private access roads need gravel, grading, and ditching every year or two. Budget $800–$2,200 per lot per year depending on road length and condition.
• Fire and weed control. Many Western counties legally require defensible space clearing and noxious weed treatment — and they can lien the property if you don't comply.
• AG tax rollback. If the previous owner had an agricultural tax exemption and you change the land's use to residential, you may owe 3–5 years of back taxes at the full rate, with interest. This shows up at or after closing.

The infrastructure math compounds the holding cost picture. The $15,000 parcel that requires $94,700 in baseline infrastructure — well drilling, engineered septic, private road construction, and power extension — effectively costs $5,485 per usable acre by the time you break ground on a structure. A $120,000 parcel with established utilities and permitted access may represent better capital efficiency by an order of magnitude. Run the full cost model before your earnest money check clears.