The Buying Raw Land Checklist

The short version

Stage one costs

$0 kill bad parcels from your desk first

The clause

contingent on perc the most valuable sentence in the contract

Down payment

25 – 50% raw land, versus a house mortgage

Loan term

10 – 20 years not 30, and at a higher rate

Legal access

is not a road a visible lane proves nothing at all

TX rollback

3 years and it lands on whoever changes the use

Why the order matters more than the list

Most land-buying checklists give you thirty items with no sequence. That is how people spend $1,200 on a perc test for a parcel that turns out to have no legal access.

The principle: spend nothing until you have to, and when you do start spending, buy the cheapest deal-killer first. Title and access can end a deal before soil is even relevant, so they come before the ground tests, not after.

Stage 1 — before you make an offer (free, from your desk)

All of this can be done in an evening, for nothing, without contacting the seller. The point of this stage is to eliminate bad parcels at zero cost.

• Pull the parcel on the county GIS or appraisal district site. Acreage, legal description, tax status, current valuation, and whether it carries any special-use appraisal (which matters a great deal later — see the tax section).
• Check the FEMA flood map. Free, official, and it takes two minutes. Full detail below.
• Pull the USDA Web Soil Survey for the mapped soil series and its known limitations. It does not replace a site test, but a parcel mapped as heavy clay with severe limitations for septic absorption has just told you something important for free.
• Look at whether the parcel touches a public road on the map. If it does not, read the landlocked section before you go any further.
• Check zoning, and separately check subdivision or POA restrictions. These are two different systems and people routinely check only one.
• Find out what utilities exist at the road versus what is a quarter mile away. The difference is often five figures.

Stage 2 — the one sentence that protects you

What a passing or failing result actually lets you build, who is legally permitted to run the test, and how long a result stays valid are covered on our perc test cost guide, along with what your options are if the land fails outright. The procedure itself — and why a test can be quietly wrong — is in the perc test guide.

Stage 3 — the option period, in cost order

Now you spend money, in a sequence chosen so that the things most likely to end the deal are checked first.

1. Title commitment and a full easement review. Before anything else. Access and encumbrances can kill the deal on their own, and they are the cheapest thing to find out about.
2. Survey. Boundaries, encroachments, and — critically — whether the recorded easement route is physically buildable rather than merely recorded.
3. The waste path. Soil evaluation or deep hole test, percolation test, and confirmation that there is room for a reserve area as well as a primary drain field. A lot that percs but has nowhere for the replacement field may not be buildable at all.
4. Water. Well feasibility, neighboring well depths and yields from your state's well-log database, and quotes from a driller. Neighbors' logs are public in most states and are the best free predictor you will get.
5. Power. Get a written estimate from the utility for the run to the building site. This is the single most commonly underestimated cost on raw land, and the estimate is usually free.
6. Physical access. Driveway route, culverts, grade — and the practical question nobody asks: can a concrete truck and a drill rig actually get in? Building the driveway is its own project on a long or steep approach.
7. Permitting. Call the county and ask what is required to put a dwelling on this specific parcel. Get the answer in writing or by email. A general ordinance is not an answer.

Stage 4 — before you close

• Re-run the title for anything recorded during the option period.
• Confirm the survey is on record.
• Verify no rollback tax exposure transfers to you — see the tax section.
• Confirm the septic and well permits are actually obtainable, not merely likely.
• Clear any outstanding lender conditions.

Close only when access, water, waste and power all have documented answers. Not promising answers. Documented ones.

What does "landlocked" actually mean?

A landlocked parcel has no legal right of access to a public road. It is Other property surrounds it, and reaching it means crossing someone else's land. Without access rights, financing, development and resale all become difficult or impossible.

The distinction that catches people: a road is not access

This is the most common expensive surprise in rural land buying, and it is entirely preventable in an afternoon.

How to check, in order

1. Order a title report. This is the definitive step. It shows whether a recorded easement exists.
2. Examine the title and every recorded easement to establish what rights actually attach to the parcel.
3. Get a survey to confirm boundaries and show whether the parcel is in fact landlocked.
4. Ask the title company one specific question: will you insure marketable access? Title companies decide separately whether to insure title and whether to insure access. If they decline to insure access, that is the clearest answer you will get and it costs you nothing to ask.
5. Talk to the neighbors. Historical access arrangements are often informal, long-standing and undocumented — which is useful information either way.

If it is landlocked

Easements run with the land, which is the good news: a recorded easement stays in place when you sell and when your neighbor sells. It is not a personal favor that evaporates with a change of ownership.

Where no easement exists, the legal fallback is an easement by necessity, and it has a specific two-part test. You must prove:

1. Unity of title — that at some point a single owner held both parcels and then divided them.
2. Reasonable necessity — that the easement is genuinely required to use the landlocked property.

Proving the first means a deed examination and a title search back to the split. It is a court process, not a form you file.

Why is financing raw land so different?

Three structural differences, and they all point the same way. A house is easy to appraise, easy to resell and can generate rent if the borrower stops paying. Raw land does none of those things, so the lender prices that in.

How land lending differs from a house mortgage

	Raw / unimproved land	A house mortgage
Down payment	25 – 50%, with genuinely raw acreage at the top of that band	Commonly 3 – 20%
Term	10 – 20 years typical	30 years standard
Rate	Roughly 1 – 3 points above a comparable mortgage	The benchmark
Who lends	Community banks, Farm Credit institutions, seller financing	Almost any lender
Underwriting	Often a written development plan, and stricter credit	Standardized

Bands are indicative and move with the rate environment; lenders in the same town differ by more than the national averages suggest. Get two or three quotes rather than assuming.

The part buyers do not know: who actually lends on land

Standard conforming mortgage products largely do not cover land with no existing improvements. That is the structural reason your usual lender says no — not your credit.

• Community and local banks hold land loans on their own books and know the local market. Often the most practical route.
• Farm Credit institutions are a federally chartered lending cooperative specializing in agricultural and rural real estate, and can offer materially longer amortization on qualifying rural property. The USDA Farm Service Agency's Farm Ownership program is a parallel route.
• Seller financing — a loan from the seller rather than a bank. Common on rural land, and frequently the practical answer when banks pass. Get it papered properly.

One caveat worth knowing before you plan around it: recreational and hunting land rarely qualifies for the longest terms. Ten to twenty years is realistic there.

Zoning says yes. What can still say no?

Two entirely separate systems govern what you can build, and buyers routinely check only the public one. A parcel can be zoned for exactly what you want and still be contractually barred from it.

Public: zoning and building code

• Permitted uses, and whether residential is one of them.
• Minimum lot size — which in septic country is often driven by the health department rather than the zoning board.
• Setbacks from every lot line, maximum height, maximum lot coverage.
• Whether accessory dwellings, shops and barns are allowed.
• Whether a manufactured or mobile home is treated differently from a stick-built house. Very common restriction, and a very common surprise.
• Minimum square footage for a dwelling.
• Whether the parcel sits inside an overlay district — scenic corridor, watershed protection, historic, airport approach.
• Whether it is legally a buildable lot of record at all, and whether it can be divided further if that is your plan.

Private: deed restrictions, CC&Rs and the POA

These sit on the title itself and bind you entirely independently of zoning. Look for:

• Minimum home size; exterior material and roofing requirements.
• An architectural review committee.
• Bans on manufactured or modular homes.
• Prohibitions on living in an RV while you build — which quietly destroys a lot of build plans.
• Livestock and outbuilding limits.
• A requirement to build within a set number of years of purchase.
• Mandatory POA dues and road-maintenance assessments.

Also check mineral and water rights. Across much of the West and throughout Texas the surface and mineral estates are severed, and a third party may hold the right to drill on your surface. You can own the ground and not own what is under it.

For zoning, get the answer for this parcel in writing from the planning department. Not the general ordinance, and not a verbal.

How do you check a FEMA flood zone?

Officially and for free, at the FEMA Flood Map Service Center — the public source for flood hazard information produced for the National Flood Insurance Program. Where digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps exist, the same data is available in GIS form through the National Flood Hazard Layer.

Two cautions the FEMA site itself makes:

• A newer map can supersede whatever you download today.
• FEMA may process map changes after the map's effective date, so the published map may not reflect the current determination for a specific parcel.

So check the county's own flood viewer as well, and verify both the hazard area and the base flood elevation.

What the designation means

A Special Flood Hazard Area has a one percent or greater chance of flooding in any given year — the "one-percent-annual-chance flood," also called the base flood. Zone letters worth recognizing are A, AE, AH and AO inland, and VE, which is coastal high-hazard and the most restrictive.

There is no such thing as a no-risk zone. There are lower-risk and moderate-risk ones.

What building in one requires

• Flood insurance becomes mandatory, not optional. Federal law requires federally regulated lenders to require it for buildings in a Special Flood Hazard Area within participating communities.
• Construction is regulated. The community must keep an official record showing that new buildings and substantial improvements in identified flood hazard areas are properly elevated.
• Elevation Certificates. Expect to file one at construction-drawing stage and a "Finished Construction" certificate as-built — and that one must be received, reviewed and corrected before a Certificate of Occupancy is issued. Elevation Certificates must be prepared and certified by a licensed land surveyor, registered professional engineer or architect.
• Coastal parcels may need more. In a Zone V or Coastal A Zone, a geotechnical soils and foundation analysis by a registered engineer may be required.

The escape hatch

If you believe a parcel has been incorrectly mapped, you can submit a Letter of Map Change request to FEMA for a formal determination. The main types:

• LOMA — where a structure or lot sits on natural high ground at or above the base flood elevation.
• LOMR-F — where fill has been placed to elevate it.
• LOMR — for larger revisions.
• CLOMA / CLOMR-F — conditional letters commenting on whether a proposed project would warrant a change.

And one practical point that saves good parcels from being dismissed: a property partly in a flood zone is often still buildable, if the building envelope is outside it. That is exactly what the survey and elevation work determine.

What happens to the tax bill?

Raw land carries a tax angle that has no equivalent in residential buying, and it can be worth five or six figures either way.

The valuation

Land in qualifying agricultural or timber use is appraised on its productivity value rather than its market value. On rural acreage that difference is dramatic — it is the reason two neighboring parcels of similar size can have wildly different tax bills.

In Texas the relevant provision is the "1-d-1 open-space" appraisal under Tax Code Chapter 23, Subchapter D. To qualify, land must have been in qualifying agricultural use for at least five of the preceding seven years — rising to five consecutive years inside city limits — and agriculture must be the primary use, not incidental. Applications go to the County Appraisal District, and the deadline is April 30 of the tax year you want it for.

The rollback

When the qualifying use ends, the county recaptures the tax difference for prior years. This is the part that surprises buyers, and the Texas rule has moved twice in six years — so the history matters:

Texas rollback tax on a change of use — how the rule has changed

Change of use occurring	Look-back	Interest
Before 1 Sep 2019	5 years	7% per year
1 Sep 2019 – 14 Jun 2021	3 years	5% per year
On or after 15 Jun 2021	3 years	none

Basis: House Bill 1743 (2019) cut the period from five years to three and the interest from 7% to 5%; a subsequent amendment to Tax Code §23.55(a), effective 15 June 2021, removed the interest entirely for changes of use on or after that date. This provision has now been amended twice in six years — confirm the current rule with your county appraisal district before you rely on it, and note that other states differ substantially in both look-back period and interest.

The three rules that keep buyers out of trouble

Two practical consequences. Absentee owners commonly maintain the valuation through a grazing lease with a neighboring rancher — which is often the simplest way to keep it while you plan. And wildlife management is the underused option: land already qualifying for agricultural appraisal can generally convert to a wildlife management valuation while keeping the tax benefit, which suits buyers who want the land for recreation rather than production.

County acreage minimums vary, so work with someone who knows yours — and check whether the parcel already carries a valuation before you assume anything about the tax bill you saw in the listing.

What does listed acreage actually verify?

Less than people assume. Listed acreage is a record figure, not a measured one.

It typically comes from the county appraisal district or from the deed's legal description — and on rural land that description may trace back decades or a century to metes-and-bounds language written with rough instruments and monuments that no longer exist. "Thence to the large oak" was a perfectly serviceable description right up until the oak came down.

It tells you what the taxing authority believes you are buying. It does not tell you where the lines are.

What a current boundary survey does that a listing cannot

1. Locates and sets physical corner monuments — so you can actually see your boundary.
2. Identifies encroachments. The neighbor's fence, shed, driveway or barn over your line. This is the single most common surprise on rural acreage.
3. Plots recorded easements on the ground, so you can see whether the access route, utility corridor or pipeline runs straight through your intended building site.
4. Reconciles conflicts between adjoining deeds. Gaps and overlaps are common on old rural descriptions and are nobody's fault.
5. Produces the acreage figure the lender and title company will actually rely on.

Get it inside the option period, while you can still walk away.

The one thing to take away

Land does not come with disclosures. A house purchase hands you inspection reports, seller disclosures and a decade of comparable sales. Raw land hands you a legal description and a price, and everything else is something you went and found out.

Which is why the sequence matters so much. The four questions — access, water, waste, power — are answerable in that order for progressively more money, and any one of them can end the deal. Answer them cheapest-first, inside an option period, with a perc contingency in the contract, and the worst realistic outcome is that you spend a few hundred dollars learning a parcel was wrong.

Skip the sequence and the worst realistic outcome is that you own it.