Buying Land in Overton County: Questions to Ask Before You Make an Offer

I'm Bridget Salazar, OC Homegirl. I'm a REALTOR® with The Realty Firm and a Certified Residential Appraiser, and Overton County is my home county.

Buying land in Overton County is not like buying a house. With a house you can see most of what you are getting. With land, the things that decide whether you can build are invisible from the road.

I watch buyers fall for a view and want to write an offer the same afternoon. Then the questions start, and some of the answers cost real money.

So here is my list. These are the questions I work through with a buyer before we make an offer on acreage, in the order I ask them.

One note first. This is general guidance and not legal advice. Your contract sets the terms, and the county and state offices set the rules for the property itself.

Access comes first, every time. Not whether there is a road. Whether you have a legal right to use it.

Plenty of rural tracts around here are reached by a gravel drive that crosses somebody else's property. That is fine when it is a recorded easement. It is a problem when it rests on a handshake from twenty years ago.

Ask before you offer:

• Is the access recorded in the deed, and can I read it?
• Does the tract have frontage on a public road?
• Who maintains the drive, and is that in writing?
• Can a concrete truck and a septic installer actually get in?

Land with recorded access is not worth the same as land without it. A lender may also look at the two differently, so ask your lender early rather than after you are attached to the place.

This question ends more land deals than price does, so I ask it early.

If there is no sewer line, a house on that tract needs a septic system. The soil has to be evaluated and approved before anybody issues a permit to build. That is the perk test, and I wrote a whole post on how a perk test works.

Ask whether the land has already been tested. If it has, ask to see the paperwork rather than somebody's summary of it. Then ask when it was done and which part of the tract it covers. An approval is tied to a spot on the ground and a size of house.

Water is next. Is there a public line at the road, or does this tract need a well? Ask what the neighbors did. A well is a real cost and a real wait.

Then power, and then internet. Ask how far the nearest pole is. Running service a long way back to a building site is your expense, not the seller's.

Acreage on a tax record is not a survey. Fences wander. Old deeds describe corners that stopped existing a long time ago.

Ask whether there is a recent survey and ask to see it. If there is not one, decide whether your offer should depend on getting one. On a large tract I would rather know before closing than after.

Walk the boundary if you can. Look for what a map will not show you. A wet bottom, a bluff, a sinkhole. A trail somebody has been using for years.

Then ask how much of the tract is usable. Steep wooded ground and flat cleared pasture are both acres. They are not the same acres and they do not carry the same value.

Two tracts sitting side by side can carry completely different rules.

Ask about:

• Deed restrictions, and whether they limit a shop, a barn or livestock.
• Whether the tract can be divided, and what that takes.
• Utility easements and rights of way crossing the property.
• Whether mineral, timber or water rights were ever sold off.
• Whether the land is in Greenbelt, and what happens to the taxes if the use changes.

Greenbelt comes up constantly on acreage around Livingston. Rollback taxes are a real thing and the answer depends on your situation. That one goes to your CPA and the county assessor, not to me.

My buying land page covers how I work this list with a buyer, and buying land in Livingston goes into what comes up locally.

Land does not price itself off a per-acre figure somebody quoted at the feed store.

I price it the way I was trained to as an appraiser. I pull closed land sales that resemble the tract. Similar size, similar access, similar usability. Then I adjust each sale for the differences.

Size moves the number in a direction people do not expect. A big tract usually sells for less per acre than a small one. So you cannot take a farm sale and run that math on five acres near town.

When I am working for you as a buyer, that number is a pricing opinion built with appraisal methods. It is not a formal appraisal, and I will tell you when your situation calls for one.

Tracts vary enormously across Overton County, and that holds in Livingston and the rural communities around it. Coming from out of state? Start with relocating here. The order of the whole purchase is on how I help buyers.

Send me the listing link or the parcel number. I will tell you what I can find about access and soil work, and what land like that has actually been selling for.

If you already own land here and want to know what it is worth, that is selling land.

Questions about rollback taxes go to your CPA. Questions about the deed go to your attorney. Questions about financing land go to your lender, and the contract sets the terms.

Send me a message or call (931) 510-1346. I answer every question.