Multiple Lots Listed Under One Parcel Number

Due Diligence
1

Hi,

This is my first post in this forum but - 2 second bio - I have industry experience (as an agent) and have been following/implementing retipster content for the past few months.

I got a response from a recent mail campaign from an elderly landowner that says he has 52 lots, which he bought 40 years ago, that he’d like to sell. When I went to the county database to research the parcels I found that only ten results are listed under the owner’s name and it appears that’s because the majority of the parcels are grouped in their database and in their mapping interface. For example, the description of one parcel # is “S ABER BROADWAY LOTS 1-6 INC & LOTS 14-17 INC BLK 36” - apparently 10 lots. And when viewed through their GIS map it shows as what looks like two parcels

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Further confusing things for me, the parcels are listed as 0 acres and I don’t yet know why.
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I’m going to contact the county tomorrow and see what additional info I can gather but I was wondering if anyone in this community had encountered a situation similar to this and had any thoughts/insights/advice to share.

Based on my initial research it looks like a majority of the parcels are landlocked and the terrain is questionable, so there’s a possibility the payoff might not be worth the headache even if I could buy these for next to nothing but in any case it’s something I haven’t come across before and I’d like to learn from it if possible.

2

@josh-white-0 it’s not terribly uncommon to have multiple lots grouped under a single (or in your case, two) parcel(s).

As for the difference between the 10 you’re seeing vs the 52 that this seller is referencing, I would just take your findings back to the seller and ask this question (you could copy and paste much of what you typed out above). It could be that he’s mistaken, it could be that they’re in a different part of the county, or they could be in another county altogether. It could also be that they’re owned by another person or entity that he controls… but I’m sure you could get to the bottom of it pretty quickly just by asking those questions directly of the seller.

As for the issue with 0 acres, that just looks like some kind of database error. Perhaps they never accounted for the size back when they did the last property transfer (which was apparently 40 years ago). You could get an approximation of this pretty easily by measuring it out with Google Earth. Here’s a tutorial on that:

3

@josh-white-0 isn’t the GIS provided with a tool to measure areas?

4

@retipsterseth Thank you! :pray: This is helpful.

5

@arturo good point that should be easily solvable thank you.