Property reports come from many places: a listing packet, an agent’s research, a paid data service, an engineer, or software like ours. They vary from a single page of map screenshots to a binder. Length is not the measure. What matters is whether the questions that decide a land purchase were asked, and whether the answers can be trusted.
The questions it should answer
- Flood. Which flood zones touch the parcel, how much of it each covers, and where — near the road, across the building site, or along the back line. Where a base flood elevation exists, what it is.
- Wetlands and water. Mapped wetlands, streams, and ponds on or next to the land, with a plain statement that a map is not a jurisdictional determination.
- Soils. The soil map units, what they mean for septic and foundations, and whether any are hydric.
- Access. Whether the parcel touches a road, what kind, and what still needs confirming about legal access.
- Terrain. How the land slopes and where the flat, buildable ground is.
- Utilities. How far power is, and whether a large transmission corridor crosses or borders the land.
- County record. Ownership, assessed value, taxes, recorded sales, and permits.
- Zoning. The district and what it allows. Where there is no zoning, a statement to that effect.
- Surroundings. Regulated facilities, contamination records, protected species and habitat, protected lands next door.
A good report also does the part you cannot get from any single source: it reads these together. A flood zone, a wetland, and a poorly drained soil on the same corner of a parcel tell one story, and a report should say so.
Three tests for any report
Whoever produced it, these separate a report you can lean on from one you cannot.
1. Does it name its sources?
Every finding should say where it came from: FEMA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USDA soil survey, the county assessor. Ideally you can follow it there. “Our data shows” is not a source. If you cannot check a claim, you are taking it on trust, and the claims you most need to check are the ones that change the price.
2. Does it tell you what it could not find?
Public data services go down, counties publish different things, and some places have never been mapped for some hazards. A trustworthy report says when a check could not be completed. The dangerous report is the one where a missing answer quietly turns into “no issues found”. Silence should never be read as a clean result.
3. Does it say when?
Records change. A report should state when it was produced, and ideally the date of the underlying data where that matters — a flood map’s effective date, the year of the imagery. A report from last spring on a parcel that has since been logged or rezoned is a historical document.
And what it should not claim
No report built from public records is a survey, a title search, a wetland delineation, or a professional opinion. A good one is clear about that and tells you which of those the findings suggest you need. One that implies it replaces them is overselling.
The next article shows how we built Terranown around these tests: analyzing a property with Terranown.