Acreage on Property is Half What listing says! (contingency, foreclosed, agent)
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I live in Georgia (USA). We are looking at buying a rural property that is listed as 39 acres and it has a house on it that needs work because the guy who was building it ran out of money and it was foreclosed on and now is bank owned. The GIS (tax) record shows it as being 39 acres. We realized last night as I was looking at the adjacent properties that there is NO possible way it is 39 acres. The property next to it which is much larger is only 36.21 acres. That's how we discovered this. I found a measuring tool in the GIS toolbar that I used to measure the property that we want and it measured around 23 acres which is nearly half the acreage it is being marketed as! I also measured the adjacent properties the same way and those numbers matched what the record shows. It's definitely THIS property that is listed wrong. My question is have you seen this happen before and how much could we get the price reduced because of this? And what steps would you take? I'm leaving in a few to go get a copy of the deed to see what it says. Something is definitely wrong.
Interesting. I suspect that everyone -- seller, bank, agent, etc. -- has probably been going by the tax records and never questioned it. First, ask the seller if he has a survey of the property. The GIS records are notoriously inaccurate in many areas. We had a listing recently that was advertised as 2.1 acres both on the tax records and by the seller, but when the title company and the surveyor got together, they realized that it was only 1.7, due to a discrepancy on a purchase 15 years ago by a neighbor. (This is why you have title insurance, btw).
A copy of the deed may only give you metes and bounds, which you may be able to follow on GIS, but it may be tricky. I suspect you are going to want to get an official survey. THEN you and the seller need to consider how this plays out.
If you have trouble getting a copy of the deed, PM me.
Is it possible the property you are looking at is actually 2 lots? They may have been combined for tax purposes, yet still be 2 separate lots on GIS system.
Any offer that involves that much land should include a survey contingency. If the survey comes back showing less than what the offer to sell claims, you can of course bail out or demand a reduced price, which you may or may not get.
But I would mention it up front to the seller (or agent if it is listed) and see what happens. There is no point in your pursuing it further and paying for a survey if the seller won't reduce the asking price.
Is it possible the property you are looking at is actually 2 lots? They may have been combined for tax purposes, yet still be 2 separate lots on GIS system.
We have that out here A LOT. One address can have several tax lots so if you just look at the lot where the house is located you won't see the other tax lots that convey with the deed.
Is it possible the property you are looking at is actually 2 lots? They may have been combined for tax purposes, yet still be 2 separate lots on GIS system.
I really don't think so. I'm a real estate broker myself and have been using GIS for years. But I haven't practiced real estate in years and even when I did, it was commercial. So I'm not very knowledgable but GIS I am very familiar with. I measured all adjacent properties and they matched the acreage on their record. The only one that doesn't match is the one we want to buy.
Interesting. I suspect that everyone -- seller, bank, agent, etc. -- has probably been going by the tax records and never questioned it. First, ask the seller if he has a survey of the property. The GIS records are notoriously inaccurate in many areas. We had a listing recently that was advertised as 2.1 acres both on the tax records and by the seller, but when the title company and the surveyor got together, they realized that it was only 1.7, due to a discrepancy on a purchase 15 years ago by a neighbor. (This is why you have title insurance, btw).
A copy of the deed may only give you metes and bounds, which you may be able to follow on GIS, but it may be tricky. I suspect you are going to want to get an official survey. THEN you and the seller need to consider how this plays out.
If you have trouble getting a copy of the deed, PM me.
Today I went to the courthouse and got a copy of the deed but I didn't have a chance before leaving (they were closing for the day) to check if the metes & bounds were on it and they weren't. I have to go back tomorrow and get the copy of the plat book & page # document that shows the metes & bounds. The deed did state the acreage is 39 acres though which is just not possible unless the parcel next to this one is wrong. My dad is a retired residential realtor and he told me a survey on a parcel this size would be $6k-8k which is way more than I want to spend.
Today I went to the courthouse and got a copy of the deed but I didn't have a chance before leaving (they were closing for the day) to check if the metes & bounds were on it and they weren't. I have to go back tomorrow and get the copy of the plat book & page # document that shows the metes & bounds. The deed did state the acreage is 39 acres though which is just not possible unless the parcel next to this one is wrong. My dad is a retired residential realtor and he told me a survey on a parcel this size would be $6k-8k which is way more than I want to spend.
Also, I meant to add that today my Dad sent me a link to a website where you can enter in the metes & bounds information and it will calculate the acreage.
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