This episode systematizes the evaluation process for properties impacted by flood zones and wetlands, establishing frameworks that account for buildable area coverage, access route complications, and buffer zone restrictions. The analysis emphasizes that end buyer intent drives impact severity, with residential structural improvements facing the most restrictions while agricultural or timber uses may remain viable despite significant environmental constraints.
Key Takeaways:
- Buildable area and access coverage determines impact severity Properties with flood zones or wetlands affecting primary building sites or transit routes from road frontage face major devaluation, while impacts limited to non-buildable portions create minimal buyer concern.
- Neighboring improvements don’t guarantee current buildability Existing structures on similar flood zones may have been grandfathered in before restrictions tightened or built when different regulations applied, requiring verification that current rules allow building rather than assuming comparable properties prove feasibility.
- Wetlands buffer zones extend restrictions beyond visible boundaries Regulations typically create 175 to 300-foot buffer zones from wetland borders where building is prohibited, potentially impacting buildable areas even when wetlands don’t directly cover them or exist only on neighboring parcels.
Listen to the full episode for detailed guidance on comparing flood zone types (500-year floodplain versus 100-year versus floodways) and when to order wetlands delineation reports before closing.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. I’ve been recording video guides for hours today, trying to wrap up the script for the land price or software, all the various demos. We were getting very, very close here. working through the largest subtopic to get through.
Uh, so it’s been a bit of a grind. Um, but a lot of those videos, uh, have to deal with, um, surface quality of a particular property. And I wanted to go over, you know, this can be a very extensive topic, but I wanted to go over some of the key, um, notes regarding flood zone and wetlands. You know, this is remarked upon.
many times within the land industry. And every area of the country might be a little bit different, but wanted to provide maybe a bit more nuance on how to approach properties that might be affected by those particular features as parts of the terrain. So starting with flood zone, really the key there is
first determining whether the end buyer pool will be looking to build a structural improvement on the property, particularly a residential one or commercial that’s going to be a bit more rare on average in terms of deals that we may routinely look at. So that’s also going to apply for wetlands.
But being able to determine, okay, is my own buyer pool gonna be able to structural improvement? Yes or no. Those types of properties are going to be more affected in a negative fashion in terms of their evaluation in relation to properties that are more residential in usage or maybe.
have some utility for agricultural or timber utility instead. So in our experience, most properties are going to have some potential for structural improvements on that. It’s usually the highest level of value add you can do for most properties. something to…
Keep in mind there, but if you’re very, very certain, yeah, there’s unlikely to be these structural improvements, then just keep that in mind. That’s kind of the first thing that you want to be asking for in relation to those properties. Then you really want to be assessing the potential buildable areas as well as the access points for the properties. Again, this will cover both flood zone as well as wetlands.
wetlands being a more negative impact on average than flood zone. So if you have a smaller property, I don’t know, say less than two acres, usually there’s rarely going to be more than one possible buildable area, even on larger acreage, sometimes there will be. So you just have to…
kind of use common sense and then ask local experts to visit if it’s a little unclear, you know, is the primary buildable area should be relatively flat, not always, but most of the time it should be an area that can be cleared and usually is gonna be a bit closer to a primary.
road frontage that is aligning against one of the boundaries of the property. If the property is accessed by an easement, then usually that buildable area will be closer to where that easement access is, the actual property boundary. So if any of those…
buildable areas are impacted and covered by flood zone and wetlands. That’s a flag there. And even if they’re not, if they cover any of the, know, quote unquote transit area, or the road frontage area, where you’re going to be accessing the property and eventually the buildable areas. those would also be, you know,
negative flags because you’d have to be doing some type of improvements to access that billable area. You know, usually via some type of driveway or other…
you know, trail trail system. but again, usually if it’s a structural improvement, you know, what would, would default to a driveway in most situations. So that’s what you’re going to be looking out for. And then, from a flood zone perspective, you’d want to be looking to see if any neighboring properties,
and not necessarily immediate next door neighbors, but other neighboring properties are also impacted by flood zone in their buildable areas. And whether there are residential structural improvements or potentially commercial again, it’s going to be lesser or more rare on average in the area. I like to use roughly a half mile radius.
Um, but, know, can be more or less depending on how conservative you want to be in your assessment. So if there are other structural improvements within flood zone nearby, uh, you want to consider the type of flood zone. Cause, uh, usually the, um, primary three that you’re going to find on any mapping software, you know, land ID is the most common. You’re going to see a 500 year floodplain.
100 year floodplain and floodways with floodways being the most restrictive and negative impact on valuation. Generally 100 year floodplain and then 500 year floodplain. So if your primary buildable area is covered by a certain type of flood zone, just call it a 100 year floodplain for instance, and then you can see.
other neighboring properties covered with flood zone that are being built upon, but all of them are within a 500 year floodplain, then it’s more likely that you’re not going to be able to build on the property that you are considering compared to if it was the same type of floodplain as where there are already existing improvements on the property. And even if there are,
It’s still something to investigate further before purchasing the property because plenty of times, depending on the year those improvements were built, it’s possible that flood zone expanded into the area after those properties were built. so they might’ve been grandfathered in or maybe the flood zone was just grant or was available or present. And there were different regulations in place.
that allowed for building in that area, whereas at this current point in time, there might be more restrictions. So you always want to be double checking and not just taking things for granted, even if there are other structural, residential or commercial improvements within the area on the same type of floodplain.
The same would hold true for wetlands. On average, it’s far less likely for there to be structural improvements on wetlands throughout the country. Sometimes there are, so you always want to be double checking on that anytime you do see that there are residential commercial improvements on wetland impacted property.
An additional piece too, is that if there are wetlands on your property and they’re not impacting the primary buildable area or one of the potential buildable areas, every part of the country might operate a bit differently in regard to regulations. But oftentimes there are buffer zones from the border of the wetlands that
are going to be restricted for where you can build in. Usually they might be 175 to 300 feet on average. Not always, but that’s just an example there. So you’d want to be keeping that in mind to where you might consider it to be the buildable area of the property to be clear of wetlands, but in terms of buildability, it still might not be feasible.
This can also be true if wetlands aren’t even affecting your subject property, but might be on a neighboring subject property. So want to be cautious there as well and measure the buffer area from potentially neighboring wetlands that could be nearby your potential billable area. So that’s another thing to keep in mind. And anytime there might be a question about wetlands impact on…
your property, you’d probably want to order a wetlands delineation report regardless because it’s possible the wetlands might be impacting more or less of the area that the aerials are showing. So familiarize yourself before purchasing any of those properties, particularly high value ones that really lend themselves towards structural improvements for your end buyer pool.
That is just a refresher or hopefully providing some new nuance in regard to assessing properties affected by those surface quality features. So hopefully that helps more could be said about that, but wanted to pop in and share what I was already talking a lot about today in regard to some of these diligence features built within the land price or
.ai tool very soon to be tested. Can’t wait. I’m getting sick of recording a lot of these videos that almost done. Promise. If you’re looking for any funding on your land deal, seriousland.capital and check out land daily diligence Facebook group for zero cost reviews of your land deals. just crossed the 800 member mark earlier today. Great to see a lot more folks finding the group and getting utility out of it. I’m very excited to be sharing more value and see you on the next one. Take care now.
