Anyone Else Finding Available Software Tools Very Poor At Screening Out Land-locked?

Land Investing
1

I have noticed the two biggest software tools out there that claim to use AI to screen out landlocked parcels do a very poor job of it. Anyone else experiencing the same?

2

Even with the right tools I have bent rules just to get a deal done.
Fighting through some bad lots comped against good lots.
Fundamentals matter. The right on the ground partners matter.

3

These tools are only as good as the sources they draw from, and the sources they draw from are only as reliable as the county’s data (and, in the case of road access, it also depends on how up-to-date the satellite and road maps are).

With every data service I’ve used, I’ve encountered occasional errors and problems. The more rural and sparsely populated the county is, the more problems I tend to encounter (most likely because these counties have a smaller population and tax base to fund their GIS parcel mapping systems and county records).

Case in point, when I built my self storage facility, it took 3 years for Google Earth to stop showing it as a vacant lot. I’ve also had parcels in the SW US that also took years for the county to update the owner of record (people were contacting me thinking I was the owner, when I had sold those parcels long ago).

It’s super annoying, but you basically have to tolerate some of these imperfections here and there if you’re going to use an online data service. Even so, it’s still more useful to have these filters than not to have them at all.

For me, the big takeaway is: don’t actually buy a property until you’ve verified the road access. Using a data service is good enough to filter a list for your initial outreach (recognizing that a little bit of the information may be wrong or outdated), but when it comes to your actual buying decision, you’ll want to go beyond the data service and verify it with boots on the ground or a survey.

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4

Thanks Seth. But I’m wondering if I should scrub out what the software(s) says is landlocked from my mailing list.

5

If you don’t want to buy landlocked properties, then yeah, I would scrub them out.

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