Raw land does not come with an inspection report. Nobody walks it with a clipboard and hands you a list of what is wrong. Whatever you do not check, you find out about later, usually at the worst possible moment — which for rural land tends to be the day you show up with a trailer.
These are the same five we run on every parcel before we buy it ourselves. We do not move on one until all five are answered. A parcel can still be a good buy with a problem on it — as long as the problem is known and priced in rather than discovered afterwards.
Do them in this order. It is cheapest first on purpose.
1. Legal access — can you get there, and are you allowed to?
This is the one that costs people the most money, because it is the one that sounds like it has an obvious answer and does not.
Physical access is whether a road exists. Legal access is whether you have a recorded right to use it. A parcel can have a beautiful graded road running right to it and still have no recorded right for you to drive on it, because that road crosses three neighbours' property and always has.
What to do: pull the parcel up on satellite and trace the route from the nearest maintained public road. Then pull the plat map — our plat map guide covers reading one — and look at whether the lot touches a mapped road, or reaches one only through an easement, or shows no clear connection at all. Then ask the seller directly, in writing, how the parcel is legally accessed. A title company can pull the full recorded picture for the specific parcel.
The question to actually ask: not "is there a road?" but "what gives me the recorded right to use it, and can I see that document?"
2. Zoning and allowed use — what can you actually put on it?
Land is not just land. What the county lets you do with a parcel varies enormously, and the difference between two lots that look identical on satellite can be that one allows a residence and the other does not.
What to do: call or email the planning and zoning department for the county the parcel sits in. Give them the parcel number and describe plainly what you want to do — put a cabin on it, park an RV, run a few animals, build a shop, hold it and do nothing. Ask them what the zoning designation permits and whether what you want needs a permit.
This takes one phone call or one email. Get the answer in writing if you can, and get it before you buy. Rezoning a parcel after the fact is a project, not a formality, and it is not a project you want to discover you have signed up for.
3. Utilities — power, water and waste
Out here the honest answer is often "none of the above," and that is completely normal. Off-grid is how a lot of rural Arizona actually lives. The problem is never that a parcel is off-grid; the problem is finding out it is off-grid after you budgeted as though it was not.
- Power. How far away is the nearest line? Ask the utility that serves the area what it would cost to run service to the parcel. The number is sometimes small and sometimes larger than the price of the land. Solar plus a generator is a normal answer out here.
- Water. Is there a water district serving the area, a shared well, or nothing? Hauling water is ordinary for a lot of rural Arizona property. Drilling is possible in many areas and the depth drives the cost, so ask what neighbouring parcels had to drill.
- Waste. Septic is the usual answer where there is no sewer. The county environmental or health department handles permits and can tell you what is involved for that area.
We have a fuller walkthrough of all three in our guide on water, power and roads.
4. Flood zone
Desert land floods. Arizona washes run hard and fast when they run at all, and a parcel that is bone dry three hundred and sixty days a year can still sit in a mapped flood area.
What to do: search the address or coordinates on FEMA's public flood map service. It is free and takes a minute. What you learn affects where on the parcel you would want to build, whether insuring a structure is straightforward, and in some cases whether you can build at all without additional steps.
A parcel in a flood zone is not automatically a bad buy. It is a parcel that should be priced as one.
5. Title — who owns it and what is attached to it
Everything above is about the dirt. This one is about the paperwork, and it is the check most likely to turn up something the seller genuinely did not know.
Start free: look up the current owner of record with the county assessor or recorder and confirm it matches the person selling it to you. Then check the county treasurer for unpaid property taxes on the parcel — back taxes follow the land, so this is a number you want before you agree a price, not after.
Then pay for the real thing. A title company searches what is recorded against the parcel — liens, easements, judgments, anything a previous owner attached to it — and handles the closing and the recording. On a parcel you intend to keep, this is the cheapest protection in the whole transaction.
Our guide on checking out a land seller goes further into what to ask for and which payment arrangements to walk away from.
The order matters more than the list
Every item above is on everyone's checklist. What actually saves money is doing them cheapest-first, so that a parcel gets eliminated by a two-minute free lookup rather than by a survey you already paid for.
- Assessor record and plat map — free, online, two minutes.
- Access and zoning — free, one email or call each.
- Flood zone — free, one lookup.
- Utilities — a couple of calls, still free.
- Title search — costs money, and now it is worth spending.
- Survey — only if you are building near a boundary or the records and the ground disagree.
How we use the same five
We are Tyson and Jennifer, a family company working with vacant rural parcels across Arizona. We run these same five on every parcel before we buy it. Each one has to come back clear, or we write down why we are buying it anyway — and we do not let ourselves skip that part. A parcel with a known problem can still be a good buy at the right price. A problem nobody wrote down is a different thing entirely.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between legal access and physical access?
Physical access is whether a road exists that gets you there. Legal access is whether you have a recorded right to use it. They are not the same, and a parcel can easily have one without the other. A dirt track crossing three neighbours' land is physical access with no legal access, and that is the most common expensive surprise in rural land.
Does a parcel with no utilities mean I can't build on it?
Not usually. Plenty of rural Arizona property is developed off-grid with hauled or well water, solar or a generator, and a septic system. The point of checking is so that going off-grid is a decision you made on purpose with a budget attached, rather than something you discover after closing.
How do I find out what I'm allowed to build on a parcel?
Call or email the planning and zoning department for the county the parcel sits in, give them the parcel number, and describe what you want to do with it — a cabin, an RV, a shop, livestock. They will tell you what the zoning designation permits. Do this before you buy rather than after, and get the answer in writing if you can.
Do I need a survey to buy vacant land?
Not to evaluate a parcel. The plat map and the assessor's parcel map are usually enough to decide whether you are interested. A licensed survey becomes worth the cost when you are about to build near a boundary, when the corners genuinely matter, or when the recorded records and what you see on the ground do not agree.
In what order should I do these checks?
Cheapest and fastest first. Look up the assessor record and the plat, then access, then zoning, then flood zone — all free and all online. Only once a parcel survives those do you spend money on a title search, and only after that on a survey. Doing it in that order means you never pay for a professional opinion on a parcel a two-minute check would have eliminated.
