Land Due Diligence: Easements, Mineral Rights, and Perc Tests You Need to Check Before Assigning

Why Land Due Diligence Is a Different Checklist Than a House

Wholesaling a single-family house and wholesaling a raw parcel of land run on different risk checklists. A house deal lives or dies on condition, title, and an ARV comp. A land deal skips the condition question entirely and replaces it with three checks a house rarely requires: whether the soil can support a septic system, whether the parcel actually has legal road access, and whether whoever owns the surface also owns what is underneath it.

None of these show up on a standard property search the way a lien or a code violation does. Skipping them does not kill every deal, but it turns a percentage of otherwise clean-looking land contracts into ones that collapse at the title company instead of at the negotiating table, which is a far more expensive place for a deal to die.

Percolation Tests: What a Septic Soil Test Actually Costs

Any parcel without access to a municipal sewer line needs a septic system before it can support a home, and no county issues a septic permit without a percolation test first. The perc test measures how quickly water drains through the soil on the specific parcel, which determines whether, and what kind of, septic system the land can legally support.

Pricing is set at the county level, not nationally. Genesee County, Michigan’s health department charges $220 for a residential percolation test application and $280 for a commercial application, both due before any septic permit can be issued. Charles County, Maryland’s fee schedule ranges more widely by system type: $100 for a repair evaluation up to $720 for an alternative sandmound system, with a standard conventional trench test priced at $325.

These are two county-level examples, not a national rate. Perc test cost, process, and required system type vary by county health department; confirm current fees directly with the county before budgeting a land deal.

Easements: When a Landlocked Parcel Is Still Sellable

A parcel with no direct frontage on a public road looks unsellable at a glance, and sometimes it is. But when a landlocked parcel and the neighboring parcel it needs to cross were once under common ownership, and the landlocked parcel had no other reasonable access to a public road at the time the two parcels were severed, courts can recognize an implied easement by necessity across that neighboring parcel.

This is not automatic and it is not universal. It depends on proving the shared-ownership history and the lack of alternate access at the moment of severance, which is a title and deed-history question, not a driving-by-the-property one. Before writing off a landlocked lot as dead inventory, check the deed history for a common-ownership split. Before promising a buyer clear access, confirm the easement actually exists rather than assuming one will be found.

Mineral Rights: Why a Split Estate Can Complicate a Land Deal

Owning the surface of a parcel does not always mean owning what is underneath it. In a "split estate," ownership of the mineral rights beneath a parcel has been severed from ownership of the surface, sometimes generations earlier, and sold or retained separately from every surface transfer since.

The mineral rights owner, not the surface owner, controls development of those minerals. In many states, that owner can use roads, bring in heavy equipment, and create surface disturbance to access the minerals even without the surface owner’s consent. A buyer who plans to build on land with severed mineral rights is taking on real, disclosable risk, and a wholesaler who does not flag it before assigning the contract is the one who hears about it after the buyer’s attorney finds it in title.

Building the Actual Due Diligence Checklist

1. Pull the deed history for the parcel and any parcel it borders that lacks direct road access, looking specifically for a prior common-ownership split.
2. Contact the county health department directly for current percolation test requirements and pricing before assuming any figure from another county applies locally.
3. Run a mineral rights search as part of the title search, not as an afterthought, especially in states and regions where split estates are common.
4. Disclose whatever the checklist finds to the end buyer in writing, even when a fact seems unlikely to matter. An easement or mineral rights issue that surfaces after assignment is a liability problem, not just a lost deal.
5. Loop in a title company or real estate attorney before marketing a land contract with any unresolved item on this list, not after a buyer has already signed.

Sources

The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• Genesee County, Michigan Health Department, Septic: Environmental Health Program
• Charles County, Maryland Department of Health, Perc Test Application
• Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute, "Landlocked"
• Rocket Mortgage, "How to Understand Your Mineral Rights"

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