- [Seth] Hey everybody, this is Seth
from the RE Tipster blog.
I wanted to take just a few minutes here
and show you a little trick that I have been using
for the past few years.
Whenever I'm trying to buy a vacant parcel of land,
and it's something that I think a lot of people
don't even really think about
when they're doing their research process
but it's really, really important.
And that is to find out
what the topography of the property is.
And, basically, what that means is the actual elevations
and hills, valleys, ravines, anything like that,
or if it's just a flat piece of property.
And the reason this is important is because
if you want to build or really do anything on the property
you're really going to want to know, is it buildable?
Is going to be too steep?
Is it going to be on a cliff?
What exactly does the lay of the land look like
if you're actually standing on the property
or even if you're trying
to do something substantial with it.
So, just to give you a little idea
of how I use Google Earth to do this.
It's actually pretty awesome.
I'm going to start just by showing you
what Grand Rapids, Michigan looks like,
because that's where I'm from.
So let's just put that in here
and I will give you just an illustration
of just how flat Michigan is.
In my particular city and county,
and really anywhere in my state,
I don't really have to worry about this
because there's not a lot of hills around here.
But all you do, and right now I'm using a PC,
all I'm doing is using my mouse button
and hitting the control key.
It allows me to really do this kind of thing,
look at the horizion, and I can even go downtown,
I can get more detail on it,
and really as you can see as far as I can possibly go
it's just flat everywhere.
In my particular state, things like hills and valleys
are not usually something I have to worry about
because there's not a lot of that going on.
But what if you live out west?
What if you're in Alaska?
What if you're in Colorado or Texas or California
or really any of these states that do have mountains
and have a lot more topography to them.
I'm just going to give you a quick example here.
We're going to go to the Grand Canyon
and we'll see just how different it is
and how Google Earth can help you with that.
Okay, now, obviously from up top here,
it doesn't look like much, but if we again,
and just do you know I'm using my right mouse button
and all I'm doing is clicking and dragging
and it's bringing me in here,
and when we go in here, it's like "woah!".
Wow, this is a lot more detail that most of us are used to
with seeing just satellite maps.
We can actually get into the canyon
and really, you can pick any pinpoint on the globe
and zoom in on that
and see exactly what the elevations look like.
So, obviously this is pretty helpful
if you're trying to figure out what the lay of the land is.
Now, I'm just going to give you a quick example
using AgentPro.
And, again, I've got a few other videos on AgentPro
and how you can use this.
But AgentPro is the software that I use
when I'm trying to research properties
and as you can see, I just picked this random property
not far from Colorado Springs.
And as you can see from the satellite picture here,
this doesn't give us a lot detail
and it shows us the parcel shape, which is helpful,
and we can even zoom in
and you can see some helpful detail
but, still, it just kind of looks flat
because there's no dimension and you can't see anything.
But what happens when you pull a profile report,
actually dig into the details a little bit more,
and I'll show you in just a second.
Now what happens is it gives us
this profile report of the property which tells us
not everything there is to know,
but a lot of things that are helpful.
We've got the Legal Description,
we've got the size of the property, this one is 75 acres.
Particularly what I'm looking for here
is the latitute and longitude numbers.
So what I'm going to do is highlight these numbers here,
and paste them into Google Earth.
Put this one first, and then separate it by a comma.
Let's get the longitude
and paste that in here.
And this is going to take us all the way to that property.
And we're going to be really able to zoom in here
and see just how flat or not flat it actually is.
Again, using my right mouse button
and you can just zoom in here.
By the way, if you're using a Mac,
you can do all the same stuff
using your control and shift keys.
And here, if I hit the shift key I can tilt it, zoom in,
and really as you can see, this property is not flat at all.
In fact it's actually pretty doubtful
as to whether or not this this thing is even buildable
because of how crazy the, you know.
Look at that, it's almost a 45 degree angle.
I don't want to say it's impossible to build there
but, if I just had that parcel map over here
and if this was all I saw,
I would be clueless as to whether or not this thing was
on a mountainside or out in a field somewhere.
So, as you can see,
this just really gives us some helpful information
and just perspective as far as
is the property flat or is it not?
And not to mention, if you're just trying to get an idea
for the property's surroundings,
you can pull up these pictures that other people have posted
really just right there,
and you can also, though it's probably not available here,
Google Street View, if you're in a more populated area
can be really helpful
because you can actually see the property right up close.
Just so you know, at the time of this recording,
Google Earth has done a lot of innovative stuff
that has really given us a lot of options
as far as what we can see for properties.
And they're releasing new stuff all the time.
So, as you're watching this video,
Google Earth software could be even more sophisticated
than it is in the video that I'm showing you right now.
Really, all you've got to do is just go to Google,
type in the word "earth"
and it's probably going to be the first thing that pops up.
Again, I encourage you to check this out,
and as you can see, it's pretty darn cool,
you can go just about anywhere
and see a lot of helpful info.
For example, one of my favorite places
is Glacier National Park in Montana.
This is just awesome.
The detail that you can see,
you just couldn't do this kind of thing a couple years ago.
So, obviously it takes a few minutes to load
but this is the kind of thing that you have
at your disposal.
Especially when you're buying vacant land,
and especially if you're buying vacant land out of state
that you can't just drive and see yourself,
this is probably the best way I know of
to really just find out the details that you need to know
for any property that you are buying.
So, yeah, just thought I'd share that with you guys
and hopefully it's helpful.
If you've got any questions, let me know.