I have enough cash to purchase a home and property I'm interested in.

I am not experienced in real estate as I bought my current home 30 years ago and no other properties since.

I want to put together a checklist of things to validate for the purchase.  Things like water source and easements.


What sort of wisdom can you share?

HOA

Trash, internet, sewer, water, electric. By whom, how much, and how good is it.

Well, old well, septic, old septic. Regulations for them.

Anybody who has had permission to hunt that was not the seller.

EMS/Sheriff access, time to ER.

Snow, tree removal from road, repair of road.

Distance to stuff.

Flood, fire, and other insurance oddities.

Mineral rights, wetland, endangered species.

PIA neighbors. Look for skid marks and burn out marks on the road.

That's a nice start. Title search. Attorney. Pray.

When one of my grandparents farms was to be sold we learned that someone had been fraudulently collecting money for oil/mineral rights leases on many properties which he did not own, including this one.  Was quite a hassle to get resolved so the farm could be sold.

What state?
State laws can be weird sometimes.
Off the top of my head title search and I can’t stress enough title insurance. Perk test, survey, who owns the mineral rights, any back taxes or mechanics liens.

Short version depending on the state close with a Attorney or appropriate title company.  
In the last few years I’ve seen all of the above bite people in the ass.  A 24 acre tract sold and only ended up being 21. The GIS and old tax records were wrong.
Claims by family members against old land tracts and others in probate but still put to market. I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff.


   People tend to hate Realtors and Attorneys which I understand. However the good ones can be a asset if they know what they are doing.

Do realtors coordinate all that stuff?

Have the home inspected by a professional.

Generally the title company searches for any easements, liens and back taxes, but they don't tell you where the easements are.  Sometimes it's fairly obvious, but it is good to request copies of the easements beforehand to review so you know what they are.  Just because there is a 60' wide open spot through a patch of timber doesn't mean it isn't a 100' wide R/W that's just a month away from being recleared back to 100'.

A guy I know found a house he and his wife loved.  After seeing some easements on the title search, he hired a surveyor to make him up a plat that showed property lines, easement lines and the footprint of the house.  He came to find out that the house had been built on an electrical transmission line easement, which it should not have been.  So now the title company won't sign off on it because it is a (IIRC) "queered" (not making that up) title.  The electric company says they have no plans to do anything about it, but they are not going to release that piece of their easement either.  Now with the queered title, no bank will loan on it.  So the home owner is left with either A) cutting a corner of their house off, B) hoping to find someone that can pay cash for it AND who doesn't care about the queered title or C) wait a while, relist and act like they don't know anything about it which I think would probably include lying on an affidavit.  So the potential buyer had a provision in his contract that he could back out if something like this happened, and he did, but he also ate the cost of a survey and maybe the title work.  So 97% of folks would not have gone through the step of paying to have the plat done, and would have bought the house without knowing it was on the easement.  

State to state laws are weird so I can only answer for what I know .
Here in SC you would be set up with a attorney that would do all the title work/insurance and advised on options for extra inspections etc by the realtor.  
New construction, subdivision, farmland all have different needs.

This is perfect example.
A little money up front can protect you from a financial disaster.
I wonder if title insurance would cover the original home purchaser in the case posted.

In my experience realtors are only good for helping to guide you through the process. They don't coordinate much of anything, they just tell you what needs done, who to call and can give suggestions on things you should also consider doing.

I bought my current house with no realtor involved. It saved us both a ton of money and the process was still very easy. The title company did most of the legwork.

I will say that there was one thing a realtor could have possibly helped with. We agreed to allow seller an extra month of possession after closing (closing on his new house got delayed). However, we were having some work done on the house so that was occurring toward the end of that extra month of possession, when previous owner was moving out. At some point a permanent fixture of approximately $400 value was removed. We aren't certain who it was because there were both contractors and previous owner that had keys to the house. Both denied taking it. I initially doubted the contractor but over time he has proven himself honest and trustworthy (I've used him on several projects) and he had less motive than the previous owner. I believe, had we had a realtor we could have used our realtor to put pressure on his realtor that the fixture needed to be returned. In the end we just wrote it off.

In MO, generally, no.  In this case, the Title Co. noted there was an easement, and noted that they did not conduct a survey, so they did not take any responsibility for where that easement, or any others they ID'ed, were located.  If there were a legit easement on the property and the Title Co. missed it altogether, that's obviously a different story.

This is important to emphasize. Generally the title company will find those things but it's your responsibility to figure out if it is ok with you.

Case in point (I forgot about this now). I was working in AFG when we closed on our current house. My wife had POA to do the closing w/o me. She has a tendency to sign whatever she is told to sign w/o reviewing documents. Title search found an undisclosed oil & gas lease on our property. I was quite upset it wasn't disclosed or revealed to my wife (a close friend of ours works for the title company). When I got home from AFG I didn't waste any time going to the courthouse. The title search said "oil & gas lease recorded in book x, page y of volume z of ABC County public records." I gave that info to the clerk and she pulled it up on the computer and I read through it and discovered it was a lease with a sunset clause that returned full mineral rights back to the owners if it wasn't renewed. It had expired just before the seller bought the place so he probably forgot all about it.

Good ones will, and have a list of reliable specialists. It's state dependent, though.

Last year we moved into a forest area of AZ, we put in an offer on one place, our realtor's inspector
found gobs of problems and provable lies on the seller's disclosure statement. It was literally the realtor's
first deal in five years that fell through in the inspection stage.

In our case the major issues were significant foundation issues (house was built into the side of a ridge,
so this was huge.) The realtor's well inspector (separate dude) found a non-functioning well that they
covered up by hauling in water to a large cistern that was used for storage from the well. It was never
intended to be filled externally, so they created a fill port with a sawz all, inspector found evidence of
rats living inside the cistern(!)

On other big checklist item is hazardous materials. Old paint is a hazardous material. One property
I purchased had a shed with 30 5-gallon containers of old alkalyd oil paint inside, the hassle of
getting that gone was immense and time consuming -- easily a couple thousand and days of work.

I've dealt with that twice now, hopefully I never but another property but if I do the contract is going
to call out hazmat and paint, pesticides, fertilizers, pool chemicals and such by name to be removed
from the property.

I admit I am a real estate broker but I don’t practice general real estate I am in the new construction side .
The problem I see these days is people don’t know who they are hiring nor how to really to find the right realtor.
It’s not a surprise to me why people think poorly of my profession. What most people don’t like to admit after a bad experience is how much due diligence they did finding that realtor.  Zillow and all the sites like them are for lead generation. Buyers forget the rule of no free lunches.  People pay to be that “ great” prefered agent.  Just because they have a flashy website and paid for great reviews doesn’t mean shit. I really hate the online aspect of this business for that reason.
It’s like any industry there are professionals and there are hacks.  
Lots and lots of hacks unfortunately

Thanks for that info.
In SC the one that gets me is land locked property and historic easements.   Here you can’t deny someone access to their land.  That said you just can’t go walking through anyone’s property either.   Great way to get shot.
 All property that land locked by ownership at one time was not.  Whoever was the last to be subdivided that was attached will not like the outcome when they have to grant a easement through their land.
Now all that said I’m not a attorney and I haven’t been involved in a deal that had to go to court.  I did have a deal that almost did but the owners came to a agreement.
The landlocked owner gave 9.8 acres in trade for 4 acres that had a narrow road access.
Value wise it was good for both.

 The lesson there is if you find a piece of dirt cheap land locked property it may be a good buy in the end. At least one neighbor will hate your guts though.

OP I hope we aren’t scaring you to death.  Most deals are on the up and up.  I think your most vulnerable when buying vacant land and or paying cash. Many times farm land goes up for sale via inheritance.  That’s when making sure you are buying from the true owner with no other claims of ownership.
 Paying cash there is no banker doing checks and balances on their investment so there is no one to care about chain of title etc.

 
If you want to warp your mind read up on quit claim deeds.  
They do have a legitimate use, but there is no title covenant nor warranty of the title.
IE I’m signing this land over to you, but you have no guarantee that I actually own it.  
It’s used for family to family transfer in some states but the wording always trips me up.

i.e. I ain't saying this ground is mine, but if it is, you can have my rights to it.

No, it's all good.  I'm here to learn.  I've just always been one to pay cash for things and since I have the cash to purchase the properties I'm looking at - I want to understand if that is smart - or not.

A lot of these rural/remote places are on wells.  Either single or communal.  How do you determine the year round adequacy of water supply?  Any other details?

I'm no help there, but wanted to add on last thing.  I sold my last house to a 60 something year old widow for cash.  My place was in very good shape, it was pretty obvious that things were taken care of and we had a mutual acquaintance that told her it was for sale, and I assume vouched for me.  She did not opt to have an inspection, perc test, title search, survey or any of the other things that have been mentioned above.  Everything was in good shape, I told her it was in good shape, and she probably saved several thousand dollars.  I'm not advocating for this approach, but with all the horror stories above (including the ones I shared), I thought it would be good to offer an opinion from the flip side of the coin.

You sure you want to do an all-cash offer on the house, especially when interest rates are close to an all time low?  You have enough cash leftover to do any maintenance? emergency repairs?  etc.  Just food for thought.

No, not sure.  I was kind of shocked at the closing costs associated with the loan though.  I'm working on the financial end as well.  If the loan/no-loan balance sheet is even close, I'd rather just pay cash and be done with it.

How is the process going?

I'm afraid I haven't done my spreadsheet yet.  I'm in my sixties and thinking maybe the rural cabin on a well is not the best choice.  I'm looking at a lot of listings.  I found my dream shop-home but it's in the wrong place.

Find land and build a barndominium.  That's what I’d do