Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
We are in the talks of purchasing a piece of land in Northern Missouri. The owner has owned this farm for probably 50 years and has been paying taxes on it. As far as we know, it has never been surveyed. The owner has been paying taxes on 165 acres. The county assessor and the two most recent plat books say the farm is a sum total 165 acres (from 3 distinct, but regularly shaped blocks that are all touching). When sizing up the property for making an offer to purchase, we have checked the acreages multiple times using multiple sources. OnX, Huntstand, and other online sites that scrape county property data and overlay this over satellite imagery put this property all within 0.2 acres of one another. They all say the property is about 156 acres, or 9 acres short of what the county thinks the land has. I think at some point 165 and 156 were mixed up and the current owner has been over-paying. The property has distinct cattle fencing around the whole property so it makes it somewhat easy to estimate areas through the satellite imagery. I know the tools are at least somewhat accurate because the immediate neighbor to this property had their land surveyed and it is exactly the same as what OnX says it is.
Has anyone seen this happen before?
Is our only recourse to have the land professionally surveyed?
If anyone has done this before, does this typically fall on the buyer or seller's responsibility? I would imagine it would fall onto the buyer because in this case the current owner may be over-estimating how many acres they are selling and would be paying twice.
Any tips for navigating this with the current owner?
Thanks in advance.
Has anyone seen this happen before?
Is our only recourse to have the land professionally surveyed?
If anyone has done this before, does this typically fall on the buyer or seller's responsibility? I would imagine it would fall onto the buyer because in this case the current owner may be over-estimating how many acres they are selling and would be paying twice.
Any tips for navigating this with the current owner?
Thanks in advance.