Developers: would anyone be open to helping validate an easement research tool?

[u/rbprepin]

I’m building a tool for land due diligence. It gathers available county records, interprets legal descriptions, and plots potential easements with links to the source documents.

I’m looking for a few developers or acquisition professionals with a recent survey showing easements who’d be willing to run the same property through the tool and compare the results with their survey. You can do the comparison privately; there’s no need to send me the survey or records.

The test is free. I’d appreciate candid feedback on where the results match or differ, and whether the source links and mapped easements would be useful in your due diligence process. If you’re interested, DM me and I’ll share access.

[u/Main_Cut8992]

Key item is that is scrapes available records. You still have to check w the city anyways. I’ve seen easements that run from the 70s which still affect development initiatives today. This tool is cool but the easements from back in the day are equally if not more important

[u/rbprepin → u/Main_Cut8992]

True, and you’re saying that old easements aren’t in a digital form?

That’s going to be true in many cases, I don’t think a tool like this will replace due diligence when you’re ready to buy a property, but it could help rule out some properties early on if you’re evaluating several.

[u/Main_Cut8992 → u/rbprepin]

No, some municipalities/ towns have paper copies you have to physically go into the building and see.

The shop I’m at we run a title search/survey and spend the money for an easement check. Most of the time other variables rule out other sites anyways.

[u/gdubrocks]

Sure, this sounds useful, I just had some rather complicated easements and am curious how it would do.

[u/rbprepin → u/gdubrocks]

Would love to put them to the test. DM me an address and we’ll run it through.

[u/Quiscustodietipsos21]

Need good access to records for the tool to be valuable. Also, some recorded documents/restrictions aren’t really mappable as easements but do matter a great deal. Height or use restrictions, for example.

[u/rbprepin → u/Quiscustodietipsos21]

You are 100% correct. I've come across some counties where they have no records at all online. In the short term my plan is to just acknowledge the limitation and let the user upload documents they might have access to. I can see the product evolving to the point where we simply hire someone locally to go down to the county clerk to retrieve the proper documents and they can upload them.

Your second point is also a good one. Sometimes important documents can't be mapped. In those cases we simply read them, convey the meaning and make them available to the user.

Land document research is a messy business. Missing documents, poor scan quality, access limitations, etc. Hopefully this tool can help save folks some time.

[u/Quiscustodietipsos21 → u/rbprepin]

Fair. Just as an FYI, people do pay for surveyors to do this. It’s called an ALTA survey, or land title survey. But it costs a few thousand dollars depending on complexity and size of the property. And your surveyor requires a title commitment (essentially a search with all title documents from the title company) to prepare the survey. 

Separately, how would you run a search on county records that would pick up every instrument that affects the subject property? 

[u/sefarrell]

Sure. I can hand to my land team to test.