Questions About Raw Land?

Are you sitting on top of a parcel of land that is a gold mine waiting to happen? Is this land just perfect-except the land is contaminated!

Contaminated-what happened to your gold? Let’s look at this kind of situation, because it happens regularly enough and should be talked about. Say you own a piece of property that had been an apple orchard. The land is beautiful and ready for you to start building your dream condos. The problem is that the arsenic from all of the chemicals sprayed over the years throughout the orchard has affected the soil (it was before the EPA had such strict regulations), so in order to build anything on this land you will have to remove three inches from the top of the soil.

Don’t be alarmed! Anytime you are dealing with raw land there can be obstacles. Always go out and do a phase-1 environmental audit to determine the presence of any environmental issues (like arsenic or other chemicals within the soil). And you also need to think not only about the removal of the soil, but the deposit of the contaminated soil once is has been removed. It is not a matter of bulldozing the top layer and selling the dirt to a landscape business. Most likely, you will have to work with the EPA to ensure the situation has been handled correctly and that no other contaminated soil remains.

Feeling defeated? This should not really be a deterrent for purchasing the land. What you need to do is think of it as a mathematical equation. You have an issue you have to deal with, and then you will have the costs associated with that issue. The costs associated with the removal, or clean up of the land may far outweigh the actual worth of the land (after your plans). However, the cost could only be a fraction of a percentage of the profit you could turn from the land…clean land.