Each property listed for sale on our website can be built upon and developed in various ways. Whether the land can be developed in the way you specifically want to develop it, however, is a different question.
For information on how a property is zoned and may be used, buyers are encouraged to review the individual listing page or contact the County Zoning Office directly for additional insights.
Each individual listing page, if not its headline, will clearly indicate whether the property has utilities or how close the nearest utilities are to the property.
While Hemingway Land does not normally acquire and sell properties with wells on them, in the rare circumstance in which we have one, it will be clearly indicated in both the headline and the property specific details included on that property’s listing page.
As ‘water table’ is one of those topics we can not provide an exact answer for, we do not like to speculate on it so as not to misinform our buyers. Anyone curious about water table depth is encouraged to contact well drillers who are local to the region of the property as they will be a far greater source of information on the topic than we could ever be.
When available, the drill depth of wells in close proximity of a parcel will be included for reference on that property’s listing page.
All information about annual taxes will be included on a property’s listing page. Please see the tax information section in each individual listing or, for further information, contact the Treasurer's office in the county in which the parcel is located.
Yes. The Hemingway Land Company keeps the taxes on our inventory current throughout the year, paying them either at the time we purchase the land or during the individual tax seasons when additional amounts accrue. Any properties with an outstanding balance will be brought current at the time of conveyance (sale).
No there are not. One of the guarantees that we make to our buyers is that there are no back taxes or liens associated with the land you're purchasing and at the time of conveyance all taxes are current.
For more information about the guarantees we make to our buyers please visit our Seller’s Disclosure page here.
Most mineral rights were purchased and/or retained decades back by the original developers of the land. Unless it’s specifically stated on the individual listing page, The Hemingway Land Company makes no claim to owning or selling mineral rights.
Unless you’re purchasing from an oil and gas interest or from a family whose been in possession of the land for a hundred plus years, you’re unlikely to acquire mineral rights when purchasing property from us or anyone else.
The Managers of Hemingway Land list properties in multiple counties in multiple states in diverse geographic regions which we will not be local to or have first-hand experience with. Anyone curious about average temperatures, precipitation or other weather-related questions is encouraged to Google “Average Temperature + County, State” of the property you’re considering purchasing.
The Hemingway Land Company purchases real property for the sole purpose of re-selling it. In the interest of transparency, everything we know about each parcel is disclosed in the listing and nothing is withheld.
While The Hemingway Land Company does a great deal of research on the properties we buy and sell, our research is typically limited to making sure we can convey clear and marketable title and that there are no back taxes or liens associated with the land. While we try our best to provide relevant zoning information and insights on each listing page, we cannot anticipate every question we may receive, nor can we know all of the zoning ordinances in any given county (much less multiple counties). Because of this, we always encourage our buyers to go directly to the source and speak to the people who work in the Planning & Zoning Office of that specific county. That offices' website and contact information is provided on each of our listing pages and will be a far more authoritative source of information about what the county does and does not allow then we could ever be.
Once again, we encourage you to call the county directly and ask them. In most counties an RV can be parked on a property for limited periods of time – typically anywhere from 30 to 90 days. This, however, may involve a special permit and depending on how strict the county may be, additional requirements may be made about how waste is disposed of during that time. Buyers are encouraged to familiarize themselves with whatever regulations and demands a county makes on an RV owner prior to purchasing property.
As is to be expected, anyone building a permanent domicile will need a temporary dwelling during the time of construction. This sort of thing will always be County-specific, but in most jurisdictions anyone with a Building Permit will have a six to twelve month window of time to use their RV as a temporary home. Moreover, most building permits can be renewed or extended for additional time to accommodate delays in construction.
No. You can hold the property for a hundred years, do nothing with it and you will be well within your rights as the owner of the land.
Time limits on building refer to how long you have to complete construction from the time you break ground, not from the time you purchase the land. These time limits typically exist for properties that are part of Home Owners Associations. Normally these Associations will want to prevent against half-built structures sitting for too long driving down the values of neighboring properties and homes. Hence, they put time limits on how long someone has to complete construction.
Please note, however, the county the property is in will have to issue a building permit. That permit may allow for more or less time before expiration or renewal.
The information provided on each property’s listing page includes the Assessor Parcel Number (APN) and Legal Description. Typically, when you’re speaking with the County about rural, vacant and undeveloped land you will use one of these to denote the property or its general location.
Not recently and not by us, no.
Most regions we buy in were platted out years ago. Stakes or pins may have been used to mark property boundaries but it’s typically questionable whether they still exist or can be found. While they may be there, we don’t make that guarantee to our buyers unless stated in the individual listing.
The GPS coordinates we give you to locate the lots are fairly accurate and if used for scouting, will get you to a location that will give you an excellent sense of precisely what chunk of land it is that you’d be buying. For a specific sense of where the lot begins and ends, however, it is ultimately best to hire a local surveyor.
Three reasons:
Put another way, the properties we sell have been discounted below market value to comfortably accommodate these additional costs for the buyer. Any survey required of the land is the buyer’s responsibility.
As this is not a service we employ very often, it is unlikely we will be able to recommend anyone. Additionally, unless we have worked with a vendor numerous times and are confident in their service, pricing and professionalism it’s unlikely we’ll be willing to vouch for them. Our best recommendation is to simply Google ‘Surveyor + County, State’ of the property you’re interested in.
You or your contractor will need to contact the local utility company. Contact information for those service providers can be found on each individual listing page.
In most cases you’ll need to get a well drilled and installed. Some listings will be in areas where city water may be available. For properties where that service is offered, the listing page will always make mention of it.
The Managers of The Hemingway Land Company are professional investors - not builders, contractors, well drillers, septic installers, fence builders or surveyors. We strongly encourage anyone looking to get a realistic sense of building costs to call vendors in the local area of the desired property for quotes on whatever service it is you’ll require should you purchase the land.
Yes, in fact we encourage all prospective buyers to visit the property they’re interested in prior to purchase. We understand that not all buyers are able to do this which is why we provide photos taken from each property we list along with drone videos. In the absence of being able to physically walk the land prior to purchase, reviewing these photos and videos can be an excellent way to gain insight into what the property, its terrain and surroundings are like.
No. We do not have staff in most of the areas we buy in nor do we employ realtors. Anyone interested in scouting a property is encouraged to, but they will have to do so by themselves. Because of this, we highly recommend studying the property’s location on the interactive maps we have provided on our listing pages prior to scouting.
Without knowing your start point, we’d prefer to simply direct you to our listing pages where plenty of maps and images will be provided to help anyone find the land they’re looking to scout.
Rural, vacant and undeveloped land does not typically have a street address assigned to it. In rare instances where it does, we will disclose that address on the property’s listing page.
Again, the interactive maps we provide on our listing pages will show you where the property is located. From there you can “eyeball” the location and the best route to take. For properties where it may not be as obvious, there are countless mapping apps you can download which can help with scouting and identifying land that doesn’t have a formal street address. All those mapping apps typically need to locate the land is the parcel number, which we have provided on each of our listing pages.
Our photographers typically use MapRight when they scout and shoot our properties. They speak highly of it.
Absolutely not.
While the Managers of Hemingway Land like to be as accommodating as possible with our buyers, this is one thing we can not allow.
No. The Managers of Hemingway Land are professional investors, not realtors or brokers. All the properties listed for sale on our site are ones we buy specifically for the purpose of resale. They are “For Sale By Owner.” We do not represent sellers or their properties.
While The Hemingway Land Company would never discourage anyone from seeking proper legal counsel, we have gone through great effort to simplify the buying process with straightforward, easy-to-read contracts. Furthermore, land acquisition and resale is not typically a heady or paperwork intensive process and rarely does it involve more than a notary. In fact, in our experience, the participation of an agent or attorney is the exception and not the rule when it comes to legally conveying rural, vacant land from one party to another.
All this being said, if a buyer feels more comfortable having a professional review our contracts or advise them during the purchasing process, we would never object.
A couple reasons…
First, because we do not assume the average person can or would want to charge multiple thousands of dollars on one of their credit cards at one time, we use the earnest money deposit as a way for a buyer to initiate the transaction and claim the property without having to deal with the headache of declined payments or personally calling their credit card company to authorize the charge. After we have your deposit we will contact you about your preferred way of funding the remaining balance – whether that be additional credit card charges, a wire transfer or a cashier’s check.
Second, in situations where a property is of a particularly high dollar value (say, over $10,000) we encourage our buyers to close through a Title/Escrow company. This company is a third-party intermediary who will handle both the conveyance of the property as well as the disbursement of funds. In addition, they investigate and insure the title history of the property. That said, this is typically a protracted process which can take a month or longer before you are asked to fund the remaining balance. During that time, we are not getting paid for the land and we’re also not able to sell it to anyone else. Before beginning that process we ask for an Earnest Money Deposit to demonstrate that the buyer is, in fact, serious and committed to purchasing the property.
In short, the five hundred dollar deposit is used both as an easy way for a buyer to initiate transactions as well as to demonstrate their commitment to purchasing the land.
If you’re electing to close outside of escrow and plan to simply pay us with a credit card, wire transfer or cashiers’ check, we’ll want the balance paid within a reasonable amount of time. Say five days.
If you’re electing to close through a title company, the remaining balance will not be due until close of escrow, roughly thirty days later or whenever the title company completes their work. Whichever comes first.
Likely nothing. For anyone trying to purchase a property whose card keeps getting declined, you’ll need to call your bank or card issuer and discuss the problem with them. In our experience, this happens either because the payment amount is outside the buyer’s typical spending habits or because the purchase price exceeds some daily limit the card holder is unaware of. Whatever the issue, it’s unlikely we will be able to remedy it.
Certainly. Simply contact our office and we will accommodate your daily limit by accepting a smaller amount to begin the payment process.
Please note, however, that the remaining balance will need to be paid within a reasonable period of time per the charging limit on your card. Example: If a buyer has a charging limit of $1,000/day and wants to purchase a $5,000 property, we’ll expect the remaining balance to be paid within five days.
Contact our office and we’ll accommodate whatever purchasing method works best for you. While credit or debit card is the easiest for us, we can accept payment via wire transfer, cashier’s check or PayPal.
Please be aware, however, that while we are willing to work with buyers on alternative payment methods, we will not hold a property indefinitely waiting for someone to mail us a check or wire us money.
Yes, but it must be a cashier’s check or money order. Additionally, you must contact us in advance of sending the check so we can provide check writing and mailing instructions. It is also encouraged that you contact us in advance, so we know what property you’re attempting to purchase and so we can monitor the mail for when the check arrives.
Hemingway Land is the name of our company and our website. For tax and accounting purposes, however, we buy and sell land using a number of different LLCs. If the County has updated their files and is displaying one of our companies as the owner, they will likely also list the address. If it’s a PO Box out of Las Vegas, Nevada, that would be us.
In any given county government there will be a Clerk, an Assessor and a Treasurer and often times it takes a while for all three to update their files accordingly when a property has changed hands and a new person has been recorded as the owner.
Additionally, because most counties, especially the rural ones, do not expect real property – whether that be a house or a farm or a piece of vacant land – to sell more than once in a calendar year, they do not have a system in place to track conveyances in real time.
Similarly, many counties only update their records when it’s time to send out the tax statement, which in some cases may be a year after we’ve acquired the land.
While life would be a lot easier for us if ownership records could be updated faster, they rarely are. And because we tend to own these properties for narrow windows of time, it’s more common that anyone looking at County records will find the name of the previous owner rather than our Company. This is why we provide all of our buyers with proof of ownership in the form of the recorded deed which conveyed the property to us. It’s our way of demonstrating that we do, in fact, own the thing that we’re selling you.
For any potential buyers skeptical of the legitimacy of this operation, we’d encourage you to close through a title/escrow company. This will allow a third-party intermediary to handle both the conveyance of the property as well as the disbursement of your money. We should mention, however, that this will incur additional costs and those costs will be the responsibility of you, the buyer. Similarly, in order to enter escrow, there must be a signed Sale/Purchase agreement between Buyer (you) and Seller (us). In the interest of not wasting our time we request a non-refundable deposit of five hundred dollars before we begin drafting this contract or hiring the title company.
If you’re a cash buyer with no lender involved it should not take more than two weeks, particularly if we have already closed on the property through the same title company in the last three months. That said, title companies are notoriously "deliberate" and it's always safe to budget four, or as many as six weeks to accommodate their “methodical” nature.
For those wanting to learn more about the buying process and the various ways we can close a transaction and transfer title into your name, please visit our How It Works – Buying From Us page.
For those unfamiliar with what a title company does, please visit our Title/Escrow Information page which goes into greater detail about the process of closing a transaction through title and escrow, answering all the common questions we typically get from our buyers.
No, this is not a service we provide. Title companies sell title insurance. We sell land.
No. We pay for title insurance when we are the Buyer and we expect the same of the people we sell to.
No. We do not pay for your title insurance, your survey, your perc test, your septic inspection, your well installation, your fence construction or any other costs which would reasonably be viewed as the buyer’s responsibility.
Certainly. Generic versions of all of our standard contracts can be found linked on our How It Works – Buying From Us page. Additionally, each property’s listing page will have either the Sale/Purchase Agreement or Land Contract associated with that property’s proposed purchasing method.
To review a generic version of one of our standard Sale & Purchase Agreement contracts Click Here.
Unless indicated on the specific property’s listing page, we do not like to finance land or enter into agreements where someone pays off the balance of the property slowly over months or years. Unless a buyer can place a substantial deposit (say 30-50% of the purchase price), we typically can’t afford to entertain the discussion. And even then, it will still be property specific.
All this being said, there are plenty of resources online where you can obtain funding for purchases such as this. We discuss some of these options on our Financing Information page and would encourage anyone interested in learning more about such options to read that page and visit the websites we recommend there.
Additionally, a simple Google search of lenders local to the property may yield some results of banks and credit unions with favorable terms.
What terms do you want?
Like most things in business, this is open to negotiation, particularly if you can afford the considerable down payment. If you’re willing to meet that requirement, we can be flexible on a lot of the other points such as monthly payment, duration and interest rate. All this being said, it should be understood that as with purchasing a home or a car, paying the balance slowly over time will mean that you are paying more in the long run.
To discuss this in greater detail, it’s best to email us your information with proposed down payment and what type of monthly payment you can afford or would prefer. As these are usually the types of conversations that require some deliberation, we’d prefer to respond thoughtfully via email rather than “riff” on the phone. Hopefully we’ll be able to devise a payment plan and terms that work well for both parties.
NOTE: Serious inquiries only. Don’t initiate a twenty-email back-and-forth about potential terms and then follow it by asking us what state the land is in.
In a payment plan, once a buyer makes a down payment, The Hemingway Land Company will sign a land contract with that buyer which spells out the monthly payment and terms. The property is then the buyer’s to use and the Land Contract is the legal agreement which demonstrates the buyer's equitable interest in the property.
Only when the property is paid in full will The Hemingway Land Company deed the property into the buyer's name.
Our refund policy is that we do not offer refunds.
If we have conveyed a piece of property to you, we trust that it was after you had done the appropriate due diligence required for you to be satisfied with the purchase - whether that be scouting the land, speaking with county officials or getting quotes from local vendors. If you did not elect to take the appropriate measures to confirm the piece of land you purchased was what you wanted and suited to your needs, we will not be responsible for refunding the purchase.
Additionally, at checkout you are prompted to acknowledge our Terms & Conditions of sale which state, among other things, that all sales are final and no refunds will be afforded. This disclaimer is written at checkout, here and multiple other parts of this website specifically to dissuade people from making impulsive or uninformed decisions.
On the bright side, however, if you have made a mistake with your purchase, you can take comfort in the fact that you now own an asset which you likely bought for below market value. This means you can list the property with a realtor – or even by simply putting ads on Craigslist or Facebook – and resell the land for a profit. Many of the people who purchase from us are professional investors who go on to ‘flip’ their purchases for a profit. In most cases, you can easily do the same.
No. It’s Non-Refundable for a reason.
Once you place a deposit on a property, we de-list that property from our website as well as all other land listing sites on the internet. We draft contracts, we open escrow and we notify other buyers that the land has been sold. This takes both time and effort and we do not give that over freely. This is one of the reasons the Non-Refundable Earnest Money Deposit is set so high, so buyers will do their own research and exercise a modicum of discretion before initiating the transaction. Only if we are unable to fulfill the terms of the agreement and convey the property to you with clear and marketable title will we refund the otherwise Non-Refundable Deposit.
You may. One of the advantageous things about transferring land in the U.S. is that the buyer does not have to sign. The seller signs as the ‘Grantor’ granting the property to the ‘Grantee’, or receiver of the grant. A child not of age to sign legally binding contracts does not need to sign to receive or take ownership of land.
Unless specifically stated on that property’s listing page, it’s unlikely we own the adjacent lot(s). Normally if we do, we will list them as one larger property instead of several smaller ones or we will indicate on the listing page that the adjacent lot is also in inventory and available for purchase.
Yes, land in the United States can be purchased by anyone who is not subject to American trade restrictions like citizens of North Korea, Myanmar, or a small handful of other countries.
No. The process is exactly the same as it would be for an American.
Because The Hemingway Land Company records the new deed for our buyers (and hence, eliminates the extra expense and hassle of recording) this means that the deed must first be mailed to the County Clerk or Recorder's Office. Once it has been recorded it is then forwarded on to the buyer by a representative of that county's office. From start to finish this process usually takes about three weeks. Longer if it has to be mailed internationally.
Contact our offices here.