Author Topic: Diameter vs. circumfrence (Read 4319 times)

Frickman · « **Reply #20 on:** October 24, 2009, 08:35:44 am »

Ron Scott,

I've had that problem before. I got called to go find a property somewhere in such and such county. The landowners had purchased the property sight unseen at auction five years previous and had no idea where it was. They had paid property taxes on it for five years and had never visited it. They were trying to get me to locate it for free. No thanks. Find it yourself and I'll come look at. They never called back.

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #21 on:** October 24, 2009, 09:29:37 am »

Some of those deeds are to properties that don't exist. The county has them on the roles, but don't know where they're located. As long as someone buys it, they'll keep on collecting the taxes. They go up for tax sale every so often when the owners can't find it, and they stop paying taxes. I've found some of those properties, but the deed search can be mind boggling. I often had to go to warrant maps and take the ownership forward. Good for rainy weather and you have nothing else to do.

Tom · « **Reply #22 on:** October 24, 2009, 10:56:51 am »

We had a good example happen in our neighborhood. A fellow had several hundred acres passed to him through family. He built a private road and sold off lots. When all the lots were sold, he was left with this long, narrow strip of land that he couldn't use because he had give the right of way to his land customes. He was paying taxes on something he didn't want and the county wouldn't take it as a road unless he buried all kinds of infrastructure (water lines, etc) on it and paved it. He just let it go for taxes. The county put it on the courthouse steps for several years until someone came along and bought it for back taxes. When he realized what he had, he quit paying taxes on it too. Now it is "just there", being used for a road and no one adjacent to the property owns it and nobody wants it. One day, perhaps, someone else will buy it on the courthouse steps.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #23 on:** October 24, 2009, 12:56:38 pm »

Sounds like a mess. Here, we get a tax bill with the ID number on it. You can go to the Service NB office, get the map of it right then and there with the map coordinates of the corners, area in metric (ha/m²). Only trouble, it's just a map with lines on it, no aerial. You can pull an old orthophoto map at most of the offices with the property lines and old 25 year old photos in the underlying mosaic. They might even have paper copies of the new orthos made up. I know I've seen them at some farmer's offices before. You do have access to up to date photos as well from the web. Trouble is 99 % of the citizenry wouldn't have the programs at home to open the photo up and display it in a GIS in the proper map datum. Many don't even own a computer. If they are lucky they have a cheapo Garmin GPS to find a corner with the given map coordinates. Most older folks don't have one of those either and don't know what one is. Hopefully, the Garmin has the map datum used by your state.

Good luck with that. Even then it would be like me tossing an apple in a hay field and say go find it. There is no straight line path to the corner by road.

For me it's easy, I have access to those new photos and the property line overlays. I can download the most up to date available off the web. I then can see where the photo is sitting on a GIS and can open my map book and trace the road network to where the property is. Roads I can also get free if I want in digital format for my GIS (shapefiles). One possible thing that might trip someone up that has all these gadgets and software is the property ID might be retired when 2 or 3 farms where combined to make one ID. And even so, I believe the Pan information off the service web site shows that it was retired so it's pretty much idiot proof if you check your ID number. You'd have to check it at the service NB office or an online account you have for $10/month.

It's easy to say you can find any property when you know the system. If you don't know the system then your pretty much relying on someone else. Or as Dirty Harry would say" Your S**T out of luck".

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #24 on:** October 24, 2009, 01:33:33 pm »

All the counties have a map system, and most of them have it on photos. But, there are properties that just aren't mapped. They give those properties an ID number, but there isn't a map location for it.

They tax trailers here, even if you don't own the land underneath it. They have a tax ID number. You better know that before you go to the tax sale. You're not buying land.

Then we have those properties that overlap. They're another joy. The tax office isn't there to solve problems. They're there to assess taxes and collect them.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #25 on:** October 24, 2009, 04:46:15 pm »

They have survey engineers at our Service NB offices, maybe not all but I know a few who work at them. Our "tax offices" do more than collect the taxes and point fingers at file cabinets to search records from.

We have a separate assessment bureau that does the assessments and the municipalities have a slice of that tax to. My cousin is an assessor and his sister was also one in the Toronto area until she got tired of that rat race and came home to get a nursing degree.

Frickman · « **Reply #26 on:** October 24, 2009, 07:38:18 pm »

I'm glad you folks know how to do all that fancy detective work. I'll hire someone like you when I need your skills. If I have all the deeds and tax maps and a known corner I can do pretty good finding lines. I'm not a surveyor but I can find all the corners if there is any shred of evidence left on the property. My specialty is putting logs on the landing and lumber out the mill. That's what I do. I'll leave all the complicated stuff to you educated fellows.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #27 on:** October 25, 2009, 03:24:41 am »

I find it odd from reading a previous post that an owner wouldn't know his property he was purchasing or has owned for years. Why even own it? Are these speculators? I've never encountered an owner that didn't know his land. There might be the odd boundary dispute because both owners are too cheap to have a survey, but they know where it's sitting. Even out of province folks that ain't been here for decades know where their land is.

Ron Scott · « **Reply #28 on:** October 25, 2009, 08:15:40 am »

Yes, some are speculators, absentee owners, and those who have inherited property that they never were aware of being in the family. Most don't understand legal descriptions, nor can they explain where the property is if they have never been on it nor even in the state or country that the property has been in.

Had one awhile back where a Vietnamese girl inherited 80 acres from her father. She was in California, the property was in Michigan, and she never was in Michigan, nor on the property, couldn't understand the deed, nor the property description, nor what the property was close to. I did find the property after several telephone calls, and days of extra time, but still not sure how her father obtained the property.

Also, just had one a couple weeks ago where a wife in Vermont just inherited 40 acres after her husband died. She had never been to Michigan, nor was ever on the property, nor knew what the location was close to. I was able to walk her through the legal description she had and found out that the property was surrounded by State forest land on all four sides and had no legal access.

Locating forest land onwnerships are not always easy.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #29 on:** October 25, 2009, 09:34:25 am »

Inheritance is a different circumstance than the actual purchaser though.

So I'll assume speculators with lots of money to waste. Sometimes it pays off, but usually many decades later because of regular inflation or a hot market driving prices sky high. Just have to be in the right geographic area with a population boom. It's been a bust around here for a life time.

Phorester · « **Reply #30 on:** October 25, 2009, 11:01:40 am »

At first many years ago I was amazed that so many landowners didn't know their boundary line locations. Now I just realize that this is the way some people think (or don't think). I've had them walk right past a marked property line and not realize what those paint marks on trees, or old fences, posted signs, or a change in timber type meant. They continue on walking as if they were still on their property. They can't intrepret aerial photos, survey plats, anything.

I asked one landowner to locate his property lines on my aerial photo. He owned about 100 acres, but placed his property lines on the photo as encompassing well over 1,000 acres. Couldn't understand photo scale, fields, creeks, roads on it. He just drew lines. Couldn't find his property lines in the woods either. Didn't beleive me when I would stop him far shorter than he wanted to walk when I found clear evidence of his lines.

Had one lady say that all the properties surrounding hers were surveyed, therefore hers was too. That's a legally dangereous position to put yourself in. Had another landowner say he had a survey plat of his property, then handed me a blurry photocopy of the tax map with his parcel on it outlined with a black magic marker.

Every once in awhile I get the urge to do a detailed investigation of property line locations on particular properties. Just something that intrigues me about it to really get down to the nitty gritty. I've gone so far as to take the metes and bounds of surveys and map them out myself on a redi-mapper. I've found reversed bearings, mis-measured line lengths, surveys that came nowhere close to closing, etc.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #31 on:** October 25, 2009, 12:03:55 pm »

Getting back to the speculators in my previous post. I have here a "Valuation Day" appraisal for purpose of Capital gains when selling farm land. This is Dated October 1974.

125 ac Cultivated land $150/acre
10 ac Pastured land $40/acre
115 ac Wood land $20/acre

This is land that actually has merchantable timber, in those days when woodlots owners didn't liquidate their woods.

Potato shed 50 x 80 $32,000. This was brand new.
Gravity Fed spring $1000
10 room House $10,000

1970 MacCullough chain saw was on trade $150

highlight of the day.

Appraised at $73,400 including barns.

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #32 on:** October 25, 2009, 03:02:46 pm »

I can't recall too many times that a landowner walked a property with me. It didn't matter if I was doing procurement work or consulting work. I never expected landowners to actually know their property all that well. Most times the property came with the house or it was handed down.

I always draw a map of the property well in advance of doing any work and quite often before I see the property. Deed searches are easy to do and are good rainy day work. When you go to the property and talk to the landowner, they'll see you are well prepared, and you can often tell them things about their land or the adjoiners that they didn't know. Then, you look brilliant.

I did work for guys that worked on distressed property. The one was an attorney that did nothing but title searches. The man found all types of timberland that owners no longer knew they had. Sometimes he would force them onto the tax sales and buy them. Sometimes he would contact the owner and buy them for a low value. And if no owner was evident, he would do a quiet title. Quite often he found property that nobody else knew who the owner was. He kept me busy for a couple of years just selling timber.

Another guy bought well over 1,000 acres of distressed property. He was a state forester with a pretty high position. He retired and then timbered the properties. Became very wealthy.

WH_Conley · « **Reply #33 on:** October 25, 2009, 11:01:37 pm »

Ron, you forgot tell what your personal opinion of this guy is.

tughill · « **Reply #34 on:** October 28, 2009, 01:21:42 pm »

Hi Guys,
New to FF, but grew up working in my grandfathers sawmill, and went on from there.

I'm not really surprised by people who don't really know what's on their land. I have a neighbor, an older lady, who owns nearly 700 acres that she grew up on, but probably hasn't ever been more than 100 feet from the house/farmyard.

As far as measuring things, good luck. It's sad, but there are plenty of folks that work in the trades that can barely use a tape measure, much less do metric/english conversions, or fractional/decimal conversions.

What does baffle me, is how much money people tie up in land, and pay taxes and all that, and don't even attempt to do any sort of management of the resources.

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #35 on:** October 28, 2009, 01:53:10 pm »

As told to me by a realtor "They're just trees".

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #36 on:** October 28, 2009, 02:05:36 pm »

Ron they all say that here to, and $50 an acre is about all they give it. If they are selling farmland, the price on the woodlot at the back is way low. One reason why the owners liquidate before selling. But, even if it was mature timber on a farm the buyer is interested in the farmland so the woods get priced low around here. Some loggers have tried buying these farms when the timber market was hot. They would log off the lot and get stuck with the farm. Usually not a great farm, marginal in those cases. Good farmland gets sold faster than housing.

Phorester · « **Reply #37 on:** October 28, 2009, 09:09:36 pm »

RON: "As told to me by a realtor "They're just trees". Yep - they have no idea as to a monetary value of trees or timber.

A couple of my realtor stories..... Had a realtor who was talking about how many acres there were in a certain tract. He wanted to show me he was the "land expert" in the discussion. Looking at the plat, I couldn't come up with the same number of acres he was figuring. It was a rectangle and we were multiplying length x width of the perimeter & dividing by the # of square feet in one acre. Finally he puffed out his chest, stuck his nose in the air and said condescendingly; "well, you probably don't know this but there are 40,000 square feet in one acre!" I said, "no, there are 43,560 square feet in one acre". He stammered and blustered "well, 40 thousand's close enough!" He was automatically increasing every one of his acreage estimates by 10%.

Another realtor, like so many, had advertised a house as having "a lawn with magnificant old oak trees towering over the property", or something like that. We've all seen the studies that show that having a house with trees is supposed to increase the value of the house, something I've always questioned. So I asked him if he would reduce the price of the house if there were no trees in the lawn at all. He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world and said "No!"
So the trees really had no value to him.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #38 on:** October 28, 2009, 09:29:59 pm »

Phorester, some realtors may be foresters, but really most of them have no training in the field of forestry and there isn't much of a course load to be a realtor.

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #39 on:** October 29, 2009, 04:51:29 am »

Actually, there's a bigger course load to be a realtor than to be a forester. Lots more realtors than foresters.

I have yet to do an appraisal for a realtor. I've pointed out the advantages of appraisals and still they go out and make appraisals of a properties value. I've also solicited business from banks and others that deal in land. Never got a job from them. They all know how to value land. They go to the courthouse and look up similar values of land that has been sold in the area.

I had one landowner that I did a management plan on a recently purchased property. He's the only one I ever did this for. It shows how successful our profession has been in getting our ideas across. Anyway, his timber was worth more than what he paid for the land. When I told the realtor he did a disservice to his client, he told me he didn't care. He got his commission and that's all that mattered. It must be great being right all the time.

And, there is value to landscape trees. There's a way to figure it up, but I haven't seen a realtor that can do it. I've used the formula and have successfully used it in court.

News:

Author Topic: Diameter vs. circumfrence (Read 4319 times)