(lighthearted drumming)
- [Narrator] Hey there, what's going on?
This is Seth from the REtipster blog
and in this video I wanted to show you
another trick in Google Earth, called the Polygon tool.
And this is particularly helpful if you want
to draw parcel lines over a piece of land anywhere on Earth.
And I'll show you a little bit more of what I mean here.
As you can see right now I've got pulled up
a piece of property that I own,
that is a pretty big piece of land,
it's about 20 acres in size, it's a big triangle.
And this right here is the parcel map
that I got from the county's website,
and I also zoomed in and got another screenshot
you can see that right here, and these are helpful images.
I mean it shows us where the property is
in relation to the road.
So this is certainly better than nothing don't get me wrong,
but this doesn't tell us anything about
the slope of the land, or what the surroundings look like.
All we can see is directly from above, looking down.
We can see very clearly that
it's a triangle-ish shaped parcel.
So something that's really helpful in Google Earth,
and I've actually got this property pulled up right here,
and it's right here,
you obviously can't see any parcel lines around it,
'cause I didn't draw them yet,
but if we zoom in a little bit on this property
we can already kind of see that there is some variation
in the slope of the land here.
And if we kind of pull out a little bit,
and then go to the side, it's actually,
sort of like on a mountain right here,
this is about where the house would be built right here.
Which would give it a really nice view
over this surrounding area.
And we cannot tell that, at all,
simply by looking at this picture.
We have no idea that there is even, like, a hill there.
We just see a flat piece of land
because it's very two-dimensional
coming directly from the top, but obviously in Google Earth,
we can tilt it any which way
and see all kinds of different angles and directions.
We can even see, like, what's off in the distance.
We can see that there's other mountains,
that they would be able to see from here.
And this is all stuff that we can see in Google Earth,
but we cannot see in that parcel map directly above.
So, what we can do is,
change this to go right back directly from the top,
and Google Earth has this little Polygon tool right up here
where we can click on this and then
we can call it whatever we want.
We'll just call this, 20 acres or something like that,
and all we have to do is
start drawing the parcel lines on this land
exactly where it shows us those lines are in the parcel map.
And this is something where we actually
have to be really, really, careful
because we don't want to misrepresent what this property is.
So to the extent possible we want this
to be almost exactly the same as what it shows us
on the parcel map from the county.
So, again, this is our parcel map, and we can see
that this point of the property, the lower left corner,
starts right about here, at this corner right there.
So, we can go ahead and put this point right here.
I think that's about where it is, and if we look back,
it pretty much follows this road
up until this little curve in the road.
So if we do the exact same thing,
and keep in mind this is actually gonna draw,
like a perfectly straight line,
so we kind of have to guide it a little ways up here.
So go up here like this, and do this kind of thing,
over here like that, and then like this.
Okay, so we've got basically the
entire left side of the property drawn.
So if you go back to the parcel map,
now I can see that it comes right down here, on an angle.
So we have to kind of find something on the land
that's going to tell us when we're there.
So if we look at the other parcel map,
it might help give us more perspective as well.
This is kind of hard to do
because there's not any big obvious landmark down here,
but we do see, like in this example,
I can see this little bare spot of land right there,
and it's also coming directly out from the West.
So if I bring a line out right about there,
and then go up just a little bit,
I'll be pretty darn close to that corner.
So let's go back here to Google Earth
and it looks like I can't actually see that
because I zoomed a little bit too far.
So let's go ahead and just cancel this out,
and start over, and we'll zoom out a little bit.
Okay, so now that I'm out here,
I can see that bare spot of land right here.
If we go back and compare it to the other parcel map,
which is right there,
so we can kind of start over from square one,
and start drawing this parcel all over again.
And we'll go ahead and start it right down here,
bring it right out of there,
and go up here like that, right there.
And then, come all the way down here.
Let's check the other map one more time to be sure.
I guess if we go all the way down there,
and it looks like it's pretty much
right in the middle of this spot directly above it.
So we go right to the middle of this spot
and go directly above it,
now we're pretty much directly across
from the starting point,
and if we go up just a little bit more,
I'm thinking that's about where it is.
Then we go down again, and there we go.
Let's go back to the parcel map again,
and just verify one more time that this is pretty darn close
So, looks like it is almost there.
Let's see, any clear differences?
Yeah I think it's just about there.
This line looks curved
because we're looking at it at a slight angle right now,
and we can see the actual curvature of that hill,
but, yeah, I'm thinking maybe this might be a little off,
so I'll go ahead and change that a little bit more.
So this may not be like perfectly accurate,
but it's pretty darn close,
it's a pretty good representation
of where that property lies.
And now that that's drawn I can go ahead
and go back to this little thing right here,
and go here to style and color,
and at this point I can change the color of this
to be whatever I want it to be
and I can also change the opacities,
so I can make it a little bit transparent if I want.
So say if I wanted to go ahead,
and I usually make it about 50% transparent,
and at this point I'm just doing
the actual boundary part down here this is the body of it.
So we can change this as well,
as you can see the transparency is changing,
and it's at the point where you can definitely see
where the boundaries are,
but you can see through it as well.
And if wanted to, see I could bring this back up to 100%,
say if I wanted a really clear boundary line around it.
That actually looks a little bit better,
maybe I'll leave it like that.
But the really cool thing is when I zoom in now,
I can really get a much better perspective
for where this property's boundaries lie
relative to the hill that it's on.
And that right there really helps you understand,
kind of the value behind this property,
because it's got a great view
that a lot of these other properties don't have.
And when you're actually sitting on this little spot,
where a house would go,
you can sort of look off in the distance
and get a pretty good feel for what's out there.
You'd be able to see these mountains
really well in the distance.
You could see this little ground variation over there.
It's something that, obviously,
you wouldn't be able to see any of this stuff
if all you were looking at was just directly from above.
And Google Earth gives us a really good way
to better illustrate where these property boundaries are.
And again, this is not the same thing as a survey,
and if you're gonna just do this for yourself,
that's totally cool, I mean, you can just
be aware of the fact that you don't know exactly
where the boundaries are you're just being approximate,
but if you're ever going to use this
in your marketing materials,
just make sure that you're clear that this is not a survey
and that you came up with these lines
based on the parcel map, and usually what I would do
is I would include some screenshots of both
the county's GIS map and then also my version,
so that people can kind of see,
it's pretty much the same thing,
maybe not exact, but it's pretty darn close.
And what I would do is just zoom in,
again I'm just using my right mouse button
and then the shift key on the keyboard
and the control or command key on the keyboard
just to sort of move around, and I might get a screenshot,
like this, and then I might get over here
and get another screenshot like, I don't know,
maybe like this, something like that.
Just so that you can see these mountains in the background
and maybe you might like zoom in like this,
just to kind of show what the property looks like
up at it's highest point, sort of look down from above.
You can look out and see these mountains over here.
Just a really useful feature that you can use
to draw out property lines on
whatever point on Earth you're looking at.
This kind of thing, I think, is particularly helpful
if you're working with a property
that has mountains around it or even valleys,
or really any kind of variation,
because that obviously makes the property
a little bit more interesting
and just gives you something to look at.
If you're in a state like Michigan where I live,
it's probably not quite as cool,
but it's still pretty darn helpful,
because you can zoom out and just see,
"oh okay, this parcel has a little town up here,
"and it's about this distance from the property itself."
And you can zoom out further
and take another screenshot out here,
and you see, "okay, here's a major road right there."
And you can zoom even further out,
and just kind of get more perspectives
for what is in the nearby vicinity.
You kind of get the idea.
Anyway, that is the Polygon tool in Google Earth.
I make use of it pretty regularly with a lot
of the properties that I'm selling,
because not only is it a really helpful way
to help other people understand where the property is
and what the topography looks like around the property,
but it's also just helpful to keep me informed
about any potential issues that I'd want to be aware of.
Like, is this property on a cliff?
Is the incline really, really, steep
so that nothing could even be built on it?
There's just lots of different issues
where it's really helpful to understand
what the elevations of the land look like
relative to where those parcel lines actually are.
So, hopefully that's something you can put to work
with the next property you're looking at.
Thanks for watching, and I will see ya next time.