- So you want to buy
yourself a piece of land, but you don't have a lot of this. So how is it that you're gonna be able to find cheap land, but still be able to
do what you want to do with the piece of land. Today I'm very honored
that I have my friend, Cheryl Sain coming on here who's actually wrote a
book about buying land. And we're going to be going and exploring the best
ways to buy cheap land, where to find it, if you need a real estate agent, and about owner financing. Cause' I know a lot of you want to know about that. - My name is Cheryl Sain I've been in the real estate industry for 20 years now. A few years ago I decided I was gonna do, like a little God, for the residential agent community. And it ended up turning into a book and it's really been successful so far. And I just want to help
everybody with that. - So where can we find cheap land? Cause' that's what everybody
really wants to know. - I always tell clients who- and people call all the time, "Where can I find some cheap land?" You're gonna have to go out away from the city to find less expensive land. And I have found the best thing to do is just go drive the area that you think you want to be in. Unless you're trying to buy some investment property of course, from another area. But I always say, go
drive around the area. Look for abandoned houses or trailers or overgrown property. Look in the newspapers. Inherited property is always really, really good to reach out to the family members
because a lot of times they don't want to mess with it. Foreclosures with your county is a great place to start as well. Also with Craigslist or eBay. But you're gonna have to
go a little bit further out to find a less expensive
or cheap property. - So how would you suggest somebody buy it with a promissory note
or owner finance, Cheryl? Because I know that's what a lot of people are going to be doing because they don't
necessarily want to have to deal with the banks. - Well, there's a lot of
good owner-seller financing that takes place every day. There's a lot of precautions. I would suggest you definitely get an attorney to do that. Have them write it up. If you don't have a real estate agent, a lot of real estate agents will help do an owner financing
situation for a fee. And it's beneficial for the owner or seller, because they
can make more money. They can charge a higher interest rate and they can collect that money, that income until it's paid off. But there's a lot of things
you need to be aware of when you're doing owner financing. If an owner is selling a piece of property that they have a mortgage on themselves, you need to make sure
that you cover your bases, that when you're paying them the money for the loan, they're paying the mortgage that they already have on the property. So that's just another precaution. That's why it's good to have
an attorney involved with that. Yeah, it's a great way to have a an opportunity to own land that you otherwise would not have. Banks typically charge
a large down payment. If they do loan on land at all, which is really hard to find. - If someone was to do an owner financed property, would they get the land contract from the owner itself? Or would you have an attorney draw up the land contract? - I would have an attorney draw it up, if you do not have representation by a real estate broker, to write it up for you. A lot of times they'll do it just for a fee to write it up, you know, for their company. But if you do not have a real estate agent that you can trust to do this that's familiar with land transactions, I would definitely use an attorney. - Attorneys are your friend when it comes to anything legal. Especially if you're gonna put in a lot of money over a lot of years - Does size really matter when it's coming to buying a homestead? (grass rustling) I totally fell in a hole. - To me, it's always dependent on your intended use of the property. You know, certain properties, you've got to make sure
you've got the soil if you're going to do a septic system. For example, in our county, we have the initial septic field, but we also have to have a repair field that's the same size as the original. So if you're taking up
half of your front yard for the septic system, you gotta have the equivalent of that amount of land for a repair field. And then you've got your setback. So you've got to have, depending on what size the house is or if it's a trailer or whatever you're using it for, you've got to have enough land to cover whatever those municipalities require for utilities. - The best kind of land is the kind of land that already has improvements on it. So what would be the best kind of improvements to be looking for when you're on such a limited budget? - This is just my opinion. Some of the basic things you would need to look into first would be the zoning and if there's any
easements on the property, access to the property, public utilities to the
property, of course, you've gotta be able to have electricity. And then your accessibility
to water and sewer, or well and septic. And if it's well and septic will perc. So there's much more to learn prior to the closing of a property that you want to know about, probably. But it's all always,
almost always intended use. - What is perc? - Percolation. That means the soil's
ability to accept water. That means the soil's
ability to accept water. Because if you have a septic system and you have lines going out from the septic tank, it needs to be able to be absorbed into the soil. - You're going to be doing some investigating when it comes to a piece of property. Whether you're buying it
through the traditional way of a real estate agent
and working with a lender, or you're going to be doing it yourself, Cheryl's going to be telling us the best way to investigate
a piece of property when you're purchasing it for yourself. Hey, do you know what that is? It looks like a snake hole. - First thing I would start with is, if they have an address, call the county tax department to find out call the county tax department to find out who owns the property and the parcel ID. And then you can start your investigation. You're going to need to know how to use the GIS system, which is the geographical
information system, To start with a research
for a piece of property. Each county will have their
own GIS system typically. Across the whole country you can just pull out
just about any county. And if you have an address or an owner's name or a parcel ID, you can put that in the
search bar for that site and it will just bring you up a map, show you where the property is, the outline of it, and then typically on one side or the bottom or the other side, there is another tab that gives you all the information about the property. Keep in mind, these GIS systems are not
updated instantly or daily. Some of them, they may
take a while to update. Just, wonderful, wonderful place to start - Here in Louisiana,
and in many other areas, it's not uncommon for people to have a piece of land that's for sale, but a portion of it is
considered leased property and they have cattle or
livestock grazing on it. So what do you do when you have a piece of property that you're purchasing that already has a land lease on it? - You've got several options. You can close on the property, you could get it under contract, you can close on the property after the lease is up, or you can assume that lease and keep it in place if you're not going to
develop the property. So really it's a negotiable thing. Often, if they're going
to develop the property they'll just let the lease run out. It could be an assumable
lease to the new owners, or you just need to wait or you just need to wait until the lease is completed. Because if it's a crop, they need that time for the crop to grow and to harvest that crop. So they may put the
property on the market, but they may say, "we'll sell it, but we can't close till
after the crop is harvested." Okay, that's fine. You know, that gives you time to do all your due
diligence in the meantime and get approvals. But that's how we handle that. We either let the new
buyer close on it early and assume the lease, or we wait until the lease is up, or they just continue
the lease and, you know they're just gonna keep the property cause' they just want to hold it for future development. - So how important is the zoning? I bet Cheryl has a lot to say about that. Because if you're getting goats and cows and putting in a farm, it's going to make a difference. - You want to go homestead on there. You need to make sure it's
residential, first of all. Sometimes when people have it Sometimes when people have it in an agricultural zoning, then they're not paying
as much taxes on it. But when they go to sell the property, they have to pay what's
called rollback taxes. The county wants to recapture those taxes because they're changing
the use of the property. And you definitely want to check the zoning for homes and make sure it's residential. See how many houses you can get if you buy a 10 acre track and the zoning is, say R40, that basically is one house per acre. So you realistically could subdivide that property and put 10 houses on it. - But couldn't a piece of property be zoned partially agriculture and partially residential? It could have both. So that would be perfect for someone that was looking for a homestead, right? - Correct. - Even if you're buying
a rural piece of property and you think it's in the
middle of nowhere land, please, please, for the
love of everything holy, check to see if they have an HOA and see what restrictions are there because you can have- I'm telling you in the middle of a desert all of a sudden some
neighbor will scrounge up some old HOAs that have been filed just to make sure that you're not doing what they don't want you to do. And here's the question of the hour because I know you guys are
going to want to hear it. Do you really need a real estate agent to buy a piece of property? Or can you go at it alone? - Yeah, they could, especially if they've got experience. But if you're a first time, I would try to find
someone who's familiar, real estate wise, with land so that they can help you maneuver through the process. And check all the boxes that you need because when you get into what's required for that property, if you're going to build on it and depending on the use, the soils are very important, the survey is very important, the zoning is very important. And these are things that you're bound to resale on a house. You don't have to do that because that's already been done. But I definitely would look for an agent that has sold a lot of land or specializes in land to do that so that they can help you maneuver through some things you may not think of. - I also know a really good source, a book that I heard about that people can look at. You want to show people your book? She wrote a book about buying land. So if you're going to go at it alone and you don't have a real estate agent, get the book on it that was written from a real estate agent. Have you ever heard of mineral rights? That's something you're gonna wanna know when you're purchasing a piece of land, it may be owned by somebody else. In the state of Louisiana, if you bought a piece of property you don't actually own the
mineral rights underground. So always check ahead of time, if you're gonna allow somebody to excavate the property,
for mineral rights. Because they may not even be yours to give permission for
people to excavate it in the first place. So do that. And that is the thing about mineral rights is that no matter what state you live in, there is no blanket understanding of mineral rights. Because every state has different laws. Some of them will say you own everything you know, three feet below. Even some states have this
thing about air rights too. So you have to be careful like you don't build
your building too high because you can't because everything above,
let's say you know, a hundred feet doesn't belong to you. It belongs to somebody else. You know, you have to check to see who owns what before you
start building stuff. (lighthearted piano music) - Now let's say another thing on surveys, and I'll cover this in the book, if your survey that you're looking at on a property you're purchasing goes to the middle of the Creek and it's an old survey and you don't get it resurveyed, that Creek could have changed direction and you may own less land or more land. You don't really know. It's important to have a, like you said earlier a survey every time, every time. - This goes back to like people doing handshake deals. Even if you're doing an owner finance and you got your own title attorney, you're still gonna want to go ahead and make sure you have your own survey. Because even though, you know, the person that's selling says I just had a survey done, don't necessarily trust
everything that you see. You have to investigate yourself for peace of mind. And never shake somebody's hand and say, oh I'm just going to pay you. We don't have to do any paperwork. That isn't good either. - Yeah and I hope we can
get that message across. If nothing else from this video, we can get the message,
do you have a survey? - And if you want to know more about different kinds of surveys and about land you probably want to click
this video right here. Have you seen- I'm sure you've seen this one, Cheryl. Thank you Cheryl for doing this with me and I know you have got
some great information that you can share with people.
