http://www.thelandgeek.com Hi, Mark the Land Geek here. Let's talk about those 3 fatal mistakes in buying land that I see the average real estate investor making every single day.

0:00 Confirm Seller Owns Property
2:34 Check with Planning/Zoning about Restrictions
4:32 Make Sure Taxes are Paid Current

First big mistake -- you've got to call the county recorder and confirm that that seller owns the property. So what do you do?

First of all, you find out exactly what county that property is located in. Then you quickly go on at naco.org, and it's www.naco.org. That lists all the counties in the country. Do a quick search. You can do with the state, you can do the county -- whatever you want to do, but make sure you go there.

Then all you need to do is if you don't want to talk on the phone, you can email the recorder and simply ask who owns this property at this legal description. They will email you back where they'll tell you it's Frontier Equity Properties LLC.
When was it recorded? And that gives you a big clue as to how long did that seller own that property. Are they buying it for long-term? Are they flipping it? What's going on with that property? It kind of gives you a little bit more in the story anyways.
So now you've got that information. Again, email our seller now and say, "Hey, can you fax me or email me a copy of your recorded deed for that property?" When they do it, we get to go, to take some time, a little sketchy. If they don't do it at all, don't buy the property.

What I have seen is people go online and they can just easily copy now whatever ad is online and say, "Hey, that's my property". They can use a fake PayPal account or a fake Escrow account and take people's money. The typical term for this is a 'phishing' scam. That is the number one fatal mistake that I see people make. You've got to confirm that that seller owns that property; otherwise, who knows what you are getting into.

Now there are situations where I have actually sold property on an auction and that's a whole other ballgame because I am just controlling that. If that's the case, then you need to have a copy of the auction agreement to see that they are controlling that property. Otherwise, look out - not a good thing at all!

All right, second most fatal mistake I see the average real estate investor making online is they get really excited about the property. They are going to build their dream home there or they are going to put their RV on the property. They are just going to camp out and hang out six months out of the year, or they are going to raise sheep, they are going to do something cool on that property.

But they don't confirm with the County Planning and Zoning Commission if what their use for that property is allowed. And so they will invest thousands of dollars, ultimately to be disappointed, and 99.9% of the sellers out there, they don't guarantee that property.

You are stuck with it and now whatever dream you had to do on that property is wasted, and then you've got to go on and try to resell that property and so whole hassle and just a big bar of disappointment.

So, what do you do? Like we did with the first mistake, we've got to contact the County Planning & Zoning Commission. We are going to go back to our website www.naco.org. We are going to find our county and we are going to call or email planning and zoning.

We are going to give them the legal description of that property along with the assessor's parcel number and we are just going to ask the questions -- what restrictions are on this property? What can I do on this property? Can I build a house? Can I raise sheep? Can I camp? Can I put my RV? All these things are very important when trying to determine that your use for that property is allowed. So it's very, very important that you do that.

The third most common fatal mistake I see buyers making every day and being really, really disappointing with their purchase, is not calling the County Treasurer to confirm that the taxes are paid current. This one is really something that I have seen time and time again, bite people on the tush.

So it's really important that again, we are going to go back to our site www.naco.org -- N-A-C-O, we are going to find our County Treasurer, then we are going to shoot them an email -- again, with the legal description and assessor's parcel number and that information you should be able to get from your seller very easily and it should be on the ad. If it's not, you need to email your seller and get that information.

#buyland #landbuyingmistakes #landinvesting