Main Content
Land Due Diligence Report · Ten WNC counties · 48-hour turnaround
The listing says twelve acres. It doesn't say how many you can build on.
Before you make an offer on mountain land, know what you are actually buying: the buildable ground, the road, the slide history, the flood exposure, and what the county will let you do with it.
Order a report — $199
You need the parcel PIN or the address. Nothing else.
Why this exists
In these mountains, acreage and usable land are two different numbers
A parcel can be beautiful, priced well, and almost impossible to build on. The flat spot you walked is half an acre of a twelve-acre tract. The road in is private, with no maintenance agreement and nobody obligated to plow it. The upslope neighbor has a debris flow in the state's landslide inventory from September 2024. The zoning district allows a house, but the steep-slope overlay changes what that house can be.
None of that is in the listing, and most of it will not come up in a walkthrough. It surfaces later, at the survey, at the perc test, at the bank, or after closing, when it has become your problem.
This report puts those answers in front of you before you write the offer, drawn from county records, state geological survey data, FEMA mapping, LIDAR elevation, and the county's own ordinance text.
What you get
Ten sections, each traced to its source
Every figure carries the dataset it came from and the date that data was published, so you can check any of it yourself or hand it to your surveyor, engineer, or attorney.
-
01
Buildable ground, measured
How many acres sit under a workable grade, broken into slope bands, with the flattest usable homesite located on the parcel and its elevation given. Calculated from state LIDAR, not estimated from a contour map.
-
02
The road, and who maintains it
Feet of frontage, and whether that road is state maintained, town maintained, or private. If it is private, that is a maintenance bill and a lender question. If there is no frontage at all, we give the distance to the nearest maintained road.
-
03
Landslide history on and near the parcel
Every slide in the North Carolina Geological Survey inventory that sits on the parcel or within a mile of it, with distance, type, and whether it was triggered by Helene. Helene alone produced more mapped slides in these counties than the previous thirty years combined.
-
04
Flood exposure, both kinds
The FEMA regulatory floodplain, and separately the modeled Helene inundation, which reached ground the FEMA maps do not show as flood prone. Lenders care about the first. You should care about both.
-
05
Slope stability rating
The published state stability classification for the parcel, reported at the scale the state publishes it, with the citation, so your geotechnical engineer knows where to start if one is warranted.
-
06
Zoning, quoted from the ordinance
The district the parcel sits in, what that district permits, and the actual ordinance language with a section citation. Not a summary of a summary. Includes the municipal ETJ where the parcel falls inside one.
-
07
Septic and soils screening
A screening read on whether conventional wastewater is plausible, based on slope and published soils. This is where a bad parcel usually reveals itself, and it is the most common reason a mountain lot turns out to be unbuildable.
-
08
Internet service at the parcel
What is available and over what technology, from providers' own filings with the FCC. For anyone planning to work from the property, this is a deal term, not a detail.
-
09
Deferred tax exposure
Whether the seller has the land enrolled in Present Use Value. If they do and you do not continue the qualifying use, deferred taxes for the current year and the three prior years can come due with interest. Buyers find this out at closing more often than they should.
-
10
Tree cover, forest type, and permit history
Canopy coverage and the dominant forest type, useful for timber and for what clearing will actually involve, plus any septic or well permits the county has published for the parcel.
What it costs
$199 per parcel, delivered in 48 hours
Compare that to the alternatives
A civil engineer's site plan for a single residential lot runs $1,000 to $4,000 and takes weeks. A survey costs more. Both are worth doing on the parcel you buy. Neither makes sense on the four parcels you are still deciding between.
And the real comparison is not against a service. It is against the cost of closing on a tract that will not perc, or that turns out to have no legal access, and discovering it afterward.
Order as many as you like. Most buyers run two or three while they narrow a shortlist, then bring in a surveyor and a soil scientist on the one they choose.
$199Per parcel · 48 hours
Order a report
You will be asked for the county and the parcel PIN or address at checkout. If we cannot produce a useful report on your parcel, we refund it.
How it works
Three steps, no phone call required
Step one
Tell us the parcel
County plus the PIN, or just the address, or a link to the listing. If you are not sure of the PIN, send what you have and we will find it.
Step two
We build the report
Every layer is pulled for that specific parcel and reviewed by a licensed North Carolina broker who works this ground. Nothing is auto-generated and sent unread.
Step three
You get a PDF in 48 hours
Yours to keep, share with your agent, send to your lender, or hand to a surveyor. Questions about anything in it are included.
Where we cover
Ten Western North Carolina counties
We build this from parcel data we maintain ourselves for these counties, refreshed against county and state sources. We do not cover land outside them, and we would rather tell you that than sell you a thinner report.
- Buncombe
- Haywood
- Henderson
- Jackson
- Madison
- Polk
- Rutherford
- Swain
- Transylvania
- Yancey
If you already know what you want
The parcel you are describing may not be listed. We can still go find it.
The same data behind these reports covers every parcel in ten counties, not only the ones for sale. So when a buyer comes to us with a real specification, we can search the whole ground rather than the small slice that happens to be on the market this month.
Fifty acres with southern exposure, a year-round stream, under twenty percent average grade, state-maintained frontage, and no slide history within a mile. Contiguous tracts under separate ownership that would assemble into one holding. A conservation-grade property with the canopy and watershed profile to support an easement. These are searches, not listings, and they usually end with a conversation with an owner who was not planning to sell until someone made the case.
That is the work we are best at. A report tells you about one parcel. This finds the parcel.
Off-market land search
Bring us the specification. We identify every parcel in the region that meets it, research ownership and holding history, and approach owners on your behalf.
Engagements are arranged individually depending on scope, and the search fee is credited against commission at closing.
Start a conversation
Being straight with you
What this report is not
A due diligence report is a screening tool. It is built to tell you which parcels deserve the expensive next step and which ones do not. It does not replace that step.
Specifically, this report is not
- A survey. Parcel boundaries come from county GIS and are graphical. They do not establish where your line is. Only a licensed surveyor can do that.
- A flood determination. The hardcopy FIRM and Flood Insurance Study remain the official designation for insurance and lending purposes.
- A soil evaluation or a septic permit. Only your county Environmental Health department can issue an Improvement Permit, and only a soil scientist can evaluate the soil. We tell you whether it is worth ordering one.
- A geotechnical or geologic investigation. We report the state's published hazard mapping at the state's own scale. Site-specific stability is a licensed engineer's call.
- A zoning or permitting determination. We quote the ordinance and cite it. The county planning department is the authority on how it applies.
- An appraisal or an opinion of price. This report is about the physical and regulatory condition of the land, not what it should sell for.
Know the ground before you commit to it
Forty-eight hours and $199 is a small price for finding out that the parcel you loved has half an acre you can use, or for confirming that the one you were unsure about is the right buy.
Order a report — $199Questions first, or a parcel outside our ten counties? Email CONTACT_EMAIL_HERE.
Sources. County parcel, tax and permit records; NC OneMap; NC Geological Survey landslide inventory and slope stability mapping; FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer; NC Emergency Management Helene inundation modeling; NC statewide LIDAR elevation; USGS and USDA Forest Service land cover and forest inventory; NC Department of Transportation and NG911 road centerlines; Federal Communications Commission Broadband Data Collection; county and municipal zoning ordinances. Each field in the report names its own source and publication date.
No warranty. This report is compiled from public records and published datasets and is provided without warranty of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. Public data contains errors and goes out of date. Independent verification is required before you rely on any part of it in a purchase decision. LandCrazy accepts no liability for decisions made in reliance on this report, and the report is licensed to the named purchaser only.
LandCrazy is a land brokerage affiliated with Keller Williams Realty Professionals. Lane Monk, North Carolina Real Estate Broker #354255. Equal Housing Opportunity.