In this episode, the $75-80/month Land ID premium tier justifies its 8x cost over the $10 base plan through unlimited saved state maps with custom overlay defaults (contours, wetlands, FEMA flood zones), Google satellite base layer selection for superior resolution, and elimination of cross-state navigation bugs.
Key Takeaways:
- State-specific saved maps eliminate repetitive setup Creating 50 saved state maps with default overlays (contours, wetlands, flood zones) saves hours monthly versus re-selecting settings per property.
- Google satellite beats default aerial 90% of the time The base “aerial” layer defaults to lower resolution—switching to Google or Satellite base maps dramatically improves visual clarity.
- 3D view plus right-click navigation unlocks slope analysis Right mouse button rotates perspective on 3D terrain view, eliminating need for separate Google Earth sessions during initial property review.
Listen to the full episode for the complete overlay strategy and workflow optimizations that justify premium tier pricing.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. Today, I just wanted to go over my land ID setup as a couple folks have reached out about that noting, you know, it’s just go-to tool that’ll use in land daily diligence. And it’s not like land ID really needs me to advocate for.
it’s usage, I think it’s probably the most widely used, aerial mapping tool, within the land industry. And it’s, you know, especially if it’s lowest, priced here, you know, pretty much anybody can afford it, regardless of where you’re at within your land investing journey. It’s like 10 bucks a month.
at its lowest version here, but I wanted to share a little bit more on how we utilize it specifically, and that might improve your flow a bit more and ensure that you’re using its best features in the most robust fashion possible. we actually pay for the highest tier, which…
I think you can buy either annual or monthly. And I think there’s a bit of an annual discount, like a lot of SaaS products, it like roughly equates to 75, 80 bucks a month with tax. It’s definitely one of the higher priced SaaS tools within our tech stack. But I mean, it’s just invaluable to utilize in my opinion, just with kind of the ease of finding properties all across the country and the overlays being at
at your fingertips. Plus, like that’s the main mapping tool that we’ve built into the land price or format as well. So I just think it objectively correlates so well across the entire country. And the overlays are just super helpful for noting things down where you can build logic rule sets around them.
so with that in mind and why we pay for that highest tier is primarily so that we can save an unlimited number of maps. So I think the middle tier allows you to save like three, three separate maps, maybe a little bit more, but certainly not unlimited. And I think we used to do that. We’re cheaping, cheaping out on, on the deal.
And you can stick with that tier, but the, it’s certainly better than the free because sometimes if you’re just using the, not the free, like the lowest, like the discover map feature, you can go across all states within the country, but, and land ID may have fixed these issues over time, but routinely there was, there were bugs and it would just freeze and.
kind of run into various errors if you’re trying to go all across the country and find different parcels. So in our experience, it’s a much smoother, process when you’re actually selecting a state and just staying within that state. So you run into less of those bugs again, this was several months ago. So it’s possible that Lannadias fixed those issues. but on average, their state by state maps seem to be more robust.
from a backend perspective anyway. And so, you know, within that middle tier, we would just pay funding to a certain state and then we wouldn’t necessarily save them all the time because you were limited. Like, okay, just forget this. Let’s get the highest tier here. It’s worth paying for it. We use this all the time. We can shave off some additional seconds. So now I just create a saved map for each state in the country. So it’s just easy for me to…
around as necessary, but really the key part of having those saved maps is that I can save my default overlays within each of those maps. So first from the actual map selection, I forget what they call it directly, but it’s, know, whenever you can select your base map, I think that’s actually the
the term within land ID here. I think it defaults to aerial, I want to say. And that is almost always lower resolution than a couple of the other base maps. And some states won’t have that. Like there’s usually three satellite imagery based maps in most states around the country, but some states only have two. So just be aware there are differences on a state by state basis.
There’s always that base aerial though, but that’s rarely the best resolution. The best resolution is usually Google’s maps or satellite as an option instead. So just check in whatever state you’re in. Okay. What has better resolution? And sometimes it can even vary kind of by county basis, but usually it’s going to, you know, one of those is going to be, you know, the best resolution or at least equal to each other.
or maybe they, you know, images were taken in different seasons. So you might be able to see more depending on when that satellite imagery was fully taken. And so you can set that as a default instead of having that default aerial imagery, you’re not having to reselect that every time you go to that state. So that’s one default selection. And then on the actual overlays, I will default to selecting contour.
wetlands and FEMA floodplain maps. So regardless of where I am in the country, those are usually going to come into play virtually anywhere that you operate. So I like to have that as a default. then generally, you can’t default the selection to it when you’re…
selecting a lanyardy map, but typically I’ll always just click on the 3D map icon in the lower right portion of the user interface. Just so it’s, and you can actually use your, if you’re not familiar, your right mouse click to kind of scan around and adjust the view perspective of the map. I know.
There’s a surprising number of folks who are not aware of that feature on land ID. So that helps you visualize the contour a lot more with its own limitations. Nothing is going to be an actual site visit, of course, but to give you a general idea and not having to go into Google Earth or anything like that, it’s basically the same thing. You can get a slope approximation in addition to having those contour overlays.
on your maps also help from a 2D perspective. So those are my default ones. I’ll also turn on soil overlay virtually any property that I’m looking at, but that’s not default because it’s just, too messy and too noisy to see beneath all those various, you know, pretty saturated colors that soil maps bring out. So I’ll just turn that on as necessary to assess soil and then turn it back off.
And then other ones, other overlays that I will routinely check, but not always, depending in what area that I’m in. I often like turning on pipeline. That’s not available in every state. But usually in the states that might have more pipeline activity, know, Texas, for example, you can turn that on and that’ll be available within that state. I also like looking at transmission lines.
or railroads as well, because the overlays are very stark and have good contrast to them. So it’s easier to visualize the transmission lines. You got to be careful because sometimes those overlays, they cover up pretty minor transmission lines that are not really that much of an issue from a visual perspective for any presumptive buyers. And then some of those massive high lines that
Nobody really wants to live next to you can even like, you know hear that buzzing when you pass by them Those will be covered by the same type of overlay. So you still have to be careful look out for visual characteristics even with that in mind So those are the other ones that I will turn on Sometimes I’ll turn on the well overlay. That’s not reliably in every state either but you know, especially if I’m in a rural area I want to see okay. Can I get a quick?
heads up on whether I think wells are going to be more common in the area versus possibly having public water access, community water access, depending where you’re at. So that can be another helpful one plus you can get an indication of when wells were installed and some detailed info. That way, beyond that, there aren’t
other overlays that I will routinely check as much. I occasionally the land use perspective I’ll look at actually from a basement perspective, I’ll check out the street one, especially in an area where there might be a lot more tree cover. I want to see is there maybe private road access to give me a better idea on whether there is a present easement or yeah, I can’t really see the road.
nearby, that one is going to be helpful as well. Plus it can give you an indication of a building footprint, not always, but those street overlays can recognize structural improvements, especially significant ones, if they might be covered up by tree canopies, for instance. So that is another option, but that gives you a general overview on how we’re typically.
using land ID. I know there’s other options on there. I’m not being exhaustive in terms of how we might use it, but like 99 % of the time, these are the more routine features. So to summarize again, make sure that you have a saved base map that’s either Google’s or satellites is usually going to be the best resolution possible. And then contour wetlands and flood zone as a default overlay.
And then you can just save your map, you know, and I will just label like, you know, the state acronym TX Texas map. So then I can just click on that, boom, it goes straight to Texas and has my overlays in place. Easier for me to find whatever property that I’m looking for. So hopefully all of this is helpful to you, whether you’ve already been using land ID or want to upgrade to the higher tier or you haven’t tried it before.
That this could be an avenue to give it a shot. So with all of that in mind Serious land capital for any of your funding needs land daily intelligence Facebook group for zero cost review of your land deals and landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to price land remember land on conference only handful of spots left the landonconference.com Use my last name
UFF for $200 off your ticket. Hope to see you there. Subscribe and share. Take care until next time. Bye.
