Caveat Emptor: Buyer Beware

Ashleigh and Anna were taking the kids for a walk down the trail at the new farm the two families had just bought. It had been raining, a frog choker, running some of the creeks out of the banks. But all that was over, and it had cooled off enough to get out for some fresh air.

As they walked along the creekbank, Cooper noticed something shiny along one side of the bank. Being curious as any 6-year-old, he had to get a stick and dig it up. His brother Jeb helped as they worked to uncover the new treasure. As they worked, the two moms were talking about what they thought may have been in the area.

“You would think it was probably just farmland,” Anna said. “It doesn’t seem like there is any old industrial sites around here.”

Ashleigh said, “I have heard about some kind of military training site was in this area during World War II. I think it was more related to just getting in shape, not any kind of explosives or that kind of thing.”

About that time Annie James pointed at something her brother Deuce was dragging from the woods. Just then Cooper gave a big pull and what he had been working on came loose, and he pulled it up out of the ground, too.

They had found some old tractor parts. This had been a farm going back hundreds of years. It was always an area of creeks and mostly flat ground. Native Americans had camped in the area, in fact artifacts were common enough if you spent a little time looking for arrowheads or other utensils. In other words, people liked this area as much as the deer and turkeys. The farms were probably cotton and part of a larger parcel 100 years ago. Most of the open land around there now was in pasture, not planted crops. But the land was still there.

People had been there for centuries. What could there be on the land?

This is a question you really need to concern yourself with when you decide to plunk down that down payment on that new hunting tract you have just found. I’m not suggesting you need to get a $2,000 Phase 1 Environmental Study on your new 20-acre property. I am telling you to take a little time to see if you can find out what may have been there before. How do you do that? Some of it is simple, some takes a little more work, but if nothing else you get a sense of history of the new to you farm you just purchased.

Caveat Emptor means buyer beware, and that certainly applies to land purchases.

Pull up the parcel on Google Earth, for example, and add the ap for USGS topographical maps. When you do, and you see all those old homesites on the property that don’t exist anymore, there may be a clue. If you are more urban than rural, it may be a real eye-opener. Another thing Google Earth can do is provide a historic view of the aerial view of the property going back 20 to 30 years. Even that can be helpful to find where a barn used to be or a transmission repair center.

Go to the County Courthouse and pull the deed on the property. You can find older deed information for free by going on your county’s GIS qpublic site. Look up the property, and more than likely you can find more than one owner’s deed book and page numbers—and plat book and page numbers. Then go to the courthouse and look it all up. Deeds can be quite helpful, particularly when they show who specifically owned the land or if a use is indicated, like “…conveyed to Mike’s PCB burial and Nasty Chemical Disposal Company Inc. to dispose of bad stuff.” or something similar. Maybe not quite that blatant, but you may get a clue of what to look for.

If a corporation has recently purchased land within a mile of your farm, you may be able to inquire with them if they did a Phase 1 and if they would share it. The Phase 1 reviews properties within a certain distance of the target property—and might also give you a clue. Georgia is a “Caveat Emptor” state, buyer beware or “as is, where is, no warranties offered or implied.”

If I know of a defect, as a Realtor, I must disclose it, but “by owner” sales, not so much. Get a professional Realtor!

The author Ed Fickey is an Associate Broker licensed in GA/AL/TN/SC/NC.