(upbeat drum music)
- [Instructor] Hey guys, what's going on?
This is Seth, REtipster Blog.
Wanted to take a few minutes to show you a
super helpful and totally free tool that you can use,
if and whenever you're trying to research
the topography of a property you're looking to buy.
And just to be clear, what I'm about to show you
is actually not my original idea.
I found out about this from E.B. Farmer's
Land Flipping Course over at landflippers.com.
I'll have a link in the description
if you wanna check that out.
So, say if you're looking to purchase a vacant lot,
one of the things that can be really helpful to know
is what the elevations of that property are
and then how steep that property is.
So, one way you can research this is to go
to this website right here called earthpoint.us,
and this is actually a subscription service,
where you can pay for a number of different benefits
and KML files that you can integrate with Google Earth
to help show you, like, the lines that coordinate with
legal descriptions and things like that.
However, they do have a free Topo Map.
You can find it right here, if you go down to the Topo Map
area and then go ahead and just click, View On Google Earth.
Just download this file for free.
Once it's downloaded, you can open it up and then go ahead
and just drag the file right on to the Google Earth window.
And it will quickly populate this kinda thing.
And what I'm gonna show you here is a property
that I used to own in Alabama a few years back.
This is just a really good example to illustrate
how this kinda information can be helpful.
And something else you'll notice is these parcel lines
showing up all over the place.
This is actually a different product called PARLAY 2.0.
I don't have an affiliate
relationship with them or anything.
It's just a really nice resource to know about
if you're into this kinda land investing thing.
But PARLAY 2.0 is what's putting these
parcel lines on there.
But the other information you see in the background,
these squiggly lines going all over the place.
This information is telling us what
the elevations and slope of the land is.
And something else that's really helpful with Google Earth
is that, even without this map, if you go ahead
and hold down the Shift key on your keyboard
and then take your mouse, you can sorta,
like, rotate the earth and see sort of
three-dimensional view of the land.
So even without this topographic overlay,
you can still kinda see where the hills and valleys are,
but when that information is on there,
what this is showing us is right here
where you see this line with a 500 in it.
Along this line, the elevation above sea level
is approximately 500 feet.
And you can actually cross-check this,
because with a Google Earth, if you go ahead
and look down in this lower right-hand corner,
it'll show you the elevation there as well.
And generally what you're looking for
is that you want to have high ground.
You don't necessarily wanna have low ground,
and it's not necessarily, like,
a deal-breaker, one way or the other.
But just generally speaking, high land is typically
preferable to low land, because the lower the land is,
the more susceptible you are to flooding
and wetlands and things like that.
Now, I'm not sure if every map is like this,
but on this particular map, the green areas you see here
is sort of indicate that those are the lower elevations,
and then, this whitish, grayish area
is like the higher elevation.
So if you scroll down to here, where you see
this kinda thing, this appears to be sorta like a hilltop,
because this lighter-colored area represents high elevation
and this green part is lower elevation,
which then kinda leads to this tiny body of water.
So, you kinda get the idea.
And one other thing that can be pretty helpful,
when you're looking at these maps, is to just make a note
of how close these elevation lines are together.
Because the closer they are, that indicates
that there is a steeper slope to the land.
As you can see just looking at this,
these lines are not very close together at all.
In fact, you could even take this
measurement tool and measure the exact distance.
And I don't wanna say this is, like, 100% per slice,
but it's usually just a pretty good indicator
of what the approximate elevations and distances are.
But when you do this, you can kinda see, okay,
these two lines are about 400 feet across,
and this is a change of about 10-20 feet in elevation.
That's a fairly gradual slope.
It's not like a cliff or anything like that.
Whereas if you were to look at this area,
I wouldn't say this is a cliff either,
but it's definitely steeper than these are.
So, just make a note of how close these lines are together,
because I can tell you I absolutely had many instances,
where I've come across properties that were, like,
on a cliff or in a ravine, and basically not buildable,
because there's nothing you can do
with property that is that steep.
And this is a really good way to sort of
identify those red flags, if they're gonna be coming up
on a particular property that you're looking at.
And you can do it without even leaving your computer.
If you need to investigate the topography
of any property out there, this is a great way to do it.
It's free, and it's really easy.
I think PARLAY 2.0 can certainly be helpful if you want to
pay for that, but it's not a necessity to just getting
a basic idea of what the slope of the land is
at or near the properties that you're looking at.
So, that's it. Thanks a lot for watching.
Hopefully, it was helpful,
and hopefully, I'll talk to you again later.