This episode exposes a recurring due diligence failure where county websites list incorrect acreage compared to satellite imagery measurements. A Tennessee property review revealed county records showing 95 acres while Regrid satellite analysis indicated closer to 80 acres (a massive 15+ acre, ~16% discrepancy that would significantly impact both purchase price and exit strategy). The lesson extends beyond simple measurement errors, as properties with significant terrain contour can show surface area variances between flat horizontal parcel boundaries and actual elevated landmass, though satellite systems may or may not account for this in their calculations.
Key Takeaways:
- Always Verify Acreage with Regrid or Mapping Software First: County records are frequently wrong by 2%+ (and sometimes 15%+), so cross-reference every property with satellite-based measurements using Regrid or Land ID’s parcel line tools before making offers or finalizing pricing assumptions.
- Acreage Discrepancies Over 2% Require Survey Discussions: When satellite imagery shows materially different acreage than county data, immediately flag this with sellers and negotiate either survey costs (potentially split or seller-paid) or adjust purchase price to the lower confirmed measurement.
- Significant Contour May Create Surface Area Variances: Properties with major elevation changes contain more actual surface area than flat horizontal boundaries suggest, though it remains unclear whether satellite systems account for this, so worst-case assumptions (using satellite figures) protect against overpaying.
Hear the complete episode for seller negotiation frameworks when acreage conflicts arise and how this recurring issue has cost deals in the past.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital vacant land funding partner. So today I wanted to comment on an issue we routinely see come up with various properties that get sent over to us and that we have dealt with previously by not checking carefully enough.
So that is where there are discrepancies with acreages that are listed on county associated resources for properties in relation to what might be found on parcel lines that are defined by satellite imagery, which is going to be typical on
services like regrid or when you actually draw parcel lines out on mapping software like land ID and then the gold standard is going to be a survey so For instance here why we’re bringing this one up today is we were sent over a 95 ish acre property in Tennessee You can actually see it
reviewed live on Lend Daily Diligence that I just did earlier this Monday, March 10th of 2020-2025 if you wanted to take a look at that one. But when we actually did the satellite imagery using reread, it was actually showing closer to roughly 80 acres. So massive difference in acreage from, you
a relative as well as an absolute value basis, which can significantly impact your anticipated purchase as well as exit price. If you’re using the wrong data, just using what is showing up on the county website. So in situations like this,
we’re always going to default to what regrid shows, or again, if you’re using, you know, parcel line measurements on mapping software like land ID. And, you know, if it’s a pretty basic shape, you can go ahead and just use, you know, land ID and, you know, instead of having to log into regrid and finding the property that way, mean, it’s saving you a couple clicks at least. But if it’s an unusual shape, you know, a whole bunch of curves and…
twists and turns, large acreage tract, it generally will make sense to just dive into re-grid to avoid user error and save yourself some time from that side, which made sense in this case when we were looking at this 95 acre tract. So when you check in on that and potentially, and I should actually back up for a second there because
There might occasionally be some error from the satellite imagery if the terrain has significant contour involved. It might not track precisely the true surface area of the parcel itself.
in relation to the horizontal parcel lines. I know that’s a little bit confusing here, but if you just take, for instance, a totally flat piece of land, just call it a square shape here, and you go ahead and measure out that acreage, that is going to be a lower number
compared to if you take the exact same parcel lines and instead of just a flat square, you go ahead and raise the middle of that square, I don’t know, like thousand feet. That naturally adds significant volume to the total landmass within that space and associated surface area. So all of a sudden,
you might have an inaccurate reading from the satellite imagery, but not necessarily. I’m not positive like on the technical stack on whether that’s taken into account from those satellite images. That’s actually something I’m gonna report back on looking into this further.
But nevertheless, it’s not something that we’d be wanting to take a bet on when it comes to actually purchasing a property. you know, we’re, you know, even if there is significant contour involved, we’re still going to assume that the satellite imagery is giving us the correct acreage in relation to what was listed from the survey perspective. And this is assuming there has been no recent survey or even older survey, assuming the land hasn’t.
Changer you know had some pieces subdivided off or pieces added on You know the actual acreage should be You know effectively uniform even if the survey was done, you know 10 20 plus years ago if somebody actually has a copy of that So when you go back to the seller let’s say in most cases that the satellite imagery is showing a smaller
acreage compared to what is on the county side you know if if there’s any pushback like hey you know we i know the county’s saying you know 95 acres that we’re looking it looks like the measurements actually closer to 80 in this case you know we can’t in good conscience make a offer on the full 95 acres
when there’s data indicating that it’s lower than that. So then, yeah, you might have to come to an agreement where part of the DD process will be getting an actual survey, assuming they don’t have one done. Now, this is where you really have to weigh the pros and cons. How good is the property? How motivated is the seller for you to potentially, you know, spot the cost of doing a survey?
and whatever, you know, the going rate might be in the area plus the time that you have to sink further into the, the analysis of the property. is it, something that you might be able to get the seller to share the cost for, or even pay fully. That’s going to be pretty rare in this industry, just given most sellers we’re working with are going to be fairly motivated.
you know, ask them to come out of pocket just to help clear up some information about the land is oftentimes going to be a hard sell, but it’s worth asking and kind of gauging depending on the particular situation. So those be a couple of suggestions on how to potentially approach it. Again, every circumstance is going to be unique.
In relation to the underlying property and how much inherent value there might be and again What’s the cost of the survey from both the time and monetary perspective? To look further into this Or you know if the difference is pretty minor, you know, usually like, know sub I don’t know 2 % or so where you like if something is is showing 50 acres on the County site, but like, know 49
49.2, 49.5 on reGrid, we’re not gonna be too concerned about that. But when it’s a little bit more substantial, and you could use that rough guideline of greater than 2%, fine. I wouldn’t ever worry about it if reGrid is showing that, there’s more acreage than there is on.
The county website usually doesn’t work in that direction, but you know, that’s only really going to serve in your direction occasionally we’ve seen that where You know, we agree to purchase out a certain acreage and then you know Either regrade or an eventual survey shows that there was actually more acreage than expected. That’s always going to be a pleasant surprise Because usually you just choose your own property unexpectedly so
in that direction, you don’t need to worry about it. It’s just when, when regrade is indicating, okay, there could be a, key discrepancy there. So, food for thought from that side. And again, we speak from experience. We’ve made plenty of these mistakes before. where now we just have a default, okay, check regrader, check the actual mapping software for every single. Property that we look at very early in our DD process to see if there’s any discrepancy.
And less than a year ago, we had bought one in Alabama where we were anticipating buying like 32-ish acres and then based on the actual mapping software, seemed indicated was a bit closer to like roughly 26 or so. And so like a pretty significant gap in acreage.
And we were still able to sell it profitably, not as much as we were expecting. And we didn’t even get a survey nor did the buyer and buyer require one. But it was more of a rough estimate based on the mapping software. So in that case, we keenly learned our lesson to always double check on this. No matter what property you’re buying, you can’t be too careful, especially in this market.
So there’s a lot going on in the macrosphere at the moment. So hopefully this one is helpful for you with both key tactics, what to look out for, how to approach this with sellers and continue to be conservative with your land purchases. So with that, if you are looking for any funding, check out SeriousLand.Capital. I had a ton of deals that we reviewed.
earlier today. A couple pretty interesting ones. And when daily diligence, which I mentioned earlier, Monday and Thursday, zero cost review of your land deals and landpricer.ai beta test invites should be coming out very shortly. My engineering team just provided a bigger update had a couple bugs to work through regarding the actual pricing summaries, but we are getting closer there to
fix the remaining key issues before we can go live. With that, take care. See you on the next one. Subscribe and share if this was helpful. Bye.
