Hey Gang! Welcome to Part 2 of using GIS as a tool in your property search. If you missed Part 1 of this two-part series, I would like to encourage you go back and read, “GIS: A Powerful Tool for Your Property Search – Part 1“, and then come back to read Part 2.
Just to recap, previously, we talked about what GIS was and how to find the tool for your county in your state. In today’s post, we will not teach you how to use the tools, but rather talk about how the county GIS websites were useful for us and continue with the introduction to the tools via a couple of examples with video below. However, we still hope to give you enough information to help you see the benefits in learning how to use the tool.
How Did We Use GIS?
We found that when looking for property listings online, the selling agents will sometimes only give you but so much information. To me, this is just enough to entice you to call to learn more. I, on the other hand, am the guy who doesn’t want to be bothered when I walk onto the car lot or into the furniture show room – yes greet me, but then leave me alone until I need you and this is no different. GIS was able to give me more information without wasting gas driving two counties away to look at land that contained deal breakers.
For us, a search would typically go like the following:
- Located a Property
- Once the property is located, look at any maps provided for the listing
- Locate the property on Google Maps (or Bing Maps)
- Locate the property in GIS
Why all the steps? Well each step has its purpose as you will soon see.
We’d look for land that was in the price and size (acreage) ranges that we wanted. Once we found something that intrigued us, we’d check out the maps provided in the listing. Unfortunately, we found that a lot of the maps provided, would only show the a general location of the property. This would suck because it would almost make you want to call to find out more, but we would keep digging. If an accurate address was provided then we’d look up the property in Google Maps to see what was around the property. Like us, you’ll want to know how the neighbors maintained their property. Was there a hog farm next door? Was there a chemical plant in the vicinity? All of these things can be answered by having a simple aerial map such as Google Maps and/or GIS.
What Did GIS Provide Us?
For us, GIS helped to tell us some key important elements:
- Was the property shaped like a square, circle, or car key (believe me, you’d be surprised at the shape of some parcels of land. Sometimes, it would almost make you wonder if the folks were high when they drew the lines!)
- Was the property sloped to one side, flat, or had rolling hills?
- Was there a river cutting through the property? What other water features did it have?
- Was it in a flood plain?
- Was it in a Watershed (which brings about it’s own set of rules and limitations)?
- What types of soil did the property have? This is important because it will help inform you whether the land is good for farming or building. In addition the soils can be a good indicator as to whether or not the land will perc. We talk about that in the post, “Don’t Ever Buy Land That Won’t Perc“.
- Was it zoned for Agriculture (which is what we wanted)?
As you can see, we were able to find out quite of bit of information prior to stepping foot onto a property.
What to do Without the Exact Property Address?
Now, let’s suppose, we didn’t have an exact address? That’s when you have to get a little creative with Google Maps and GIS. Going into super sleuth mode, you can still find what you’re looking for on the property. Once you open your respective GIS tool, you can use a few things to help you:
- The street name or cross roads provided in the listing.
- The acreage, if correctly provided.
- The parcel number or pin number on the map, (if it is provided in the listing).
Sometimes a property listing will provide a map with GIS information on it. If so, you are in luck! More than likely it will show the parcel ID or Pin which you can input directly into the county’s GIS tool to go directly to the property. If you are only given the address and acreage then you can go to the street in GIS and start to “drive” down the road, clicking on the parcels of property as you go to find acreage that matches (or is close enough to your listing acreage). By doing this, you can get exact addresses and use Google Maps to do street views (if available) as well.
For some, this may be more work than you wish to do, but the more information and knowledge we had, the better decisions we felt we could make without relying on a realtor to share them with us.
I realize this may be a lot to digest, so I created a video to demonstrate how we would look for land with both an exact address and one where we have to do a little research. I hope this helps! Also, here is the direct link to the video if you wish to open it in YouTube – https://youtu.be/TRzdROx6vqU.