I’ve been watching several local tracts for a while, because they puzzle me. Each tract is broadly similar—mostly woods, some open.

They range in size from about 100 acres to 1,700. And each is priced at between $3,000 and $4,000 per acre. A few of the larger tracts are priced at the upper end of the range, and a few of the smaller ones are priced closer to $3,000/acre.

None of the big ones, of course, have moved for several years. And the sellers have stuck with their original prices.

The common expectation for a long time among both buyers and sellers of land was that as the size of the tract increased its price-per-acre should decrease. No rule or formula seemed to exist, but small tracts were typically priced at something like five to ten times higher than large tracts on a per-acre basis. (Many exceptions exist to that generalization.)

That pattern held more or less until the last 15-20 years. It still holds in some places and on some tracts, but I’ve seen it increasingly weaken—which I think is a bad development from a market perspective.

The relationship between size and price is not consistent in commercial matters. Larger diamonds — other things being equal — command higher per-carat prices, where carat is a unit of weight that is also expressed as size (mass). In gems, big is rarer than little, so big costs more. In cattle, heavier animals, which are also larger than lighter animals, fetch a lower per-pound price for the same breed and frame quality. Large quantities of common retail products — soap, hamburger, ice cream — are almost always sold for less per ounce in the same brand than small quantities. Packaging expenses may sometimes explain the higher cost for smaller quantities, but my guess is that it’s mostly about manufacturers wanting to move as much product as possible.

Size, as distinct from weight, is also not consistent. Larger suits (for larger men) generally cost more than smaller suits, owing to more material and workmanship. Larger cars may or may not be more expensive per unit of mass. Size alone in cars is not necessarily the definition of value.

In land, large tracts are, with local exceptions, rarer than small tracts. On that dimension alone, larger tracts — like big diamonds — should carry a higher per-unit price.

On the other hand, large tracts usually package in liabilities, uncertainties and costs that small tracts usually don’t. That may explain some of the historic discount in per-acre price for larger tracts. Another historic factor, I think, has been that fewer buyers exist for large tracts, so sellers have to discount to get their large tracts sold. Larger tracts also may have been price-discounted because they are far away from high-priced metropolitan and suburban real estate. Big tracts may be price-discounted owing to the remoteness or inconvenience of their locations.

Finally, it may be that large-tract price discounting came partly out of American historical habit. Until fairly recently, American land was relatively plentiful and cheaply valued. Much of it was originally given away to speculators, Revolutionary war vets, railroads, local and state governments, homesteaders and farmers. Cheap land was the inducement to western settlement.

In recent years, sellers added some portion of the increase in per-acre prices for large tracts onto the backs of their higher-and-better-use hopes.

Some degree of the trend in per-acre price inflation, of course, may be entirely justified by local and market conditions. Two hundred acres of quality corn-growing land should be worth the same amount on a per-acre basis as 2,000, other things being equal, since a bushel of corn earns the same money per unit of production regardless of the size of its field. While I think this particular type of farmland is an ethanol-dependent bubble, I don’t see any reason why large tracts should be bubbled less than small tracts.

My concern is that some, if not many, large tracts have had their per-acre price inflated for not-very-defensible reasons, such as: 1) sellers paid too much for them in 2000-2007; 2) sellers impute HBU value where none, or not much, exists; 3) sellers are over-valuing what they own because they own it; 4) sellers are misreading the market; and 5) sellers are confusing the past with the present.

One reason that the market for large tracts of rural land is largely stuck tight in many places has to do with the resistance of sellers to sufficiently discount per-acre price in light of size. I’m certainly willing to admit that not all such properties should be steeply discounted on a per-acre basis, but I do think the market expects it.

In my small corner of the world, buyers of larger tracts are not valuing 1,500 acres at the same per-acre price as 100 acres. Maybe they’re right, or maybe they’re not. But that’s where they are.

If the market is going to move, per-acre price for big and small will have to be uncoupled.

Reporter M. P. McQueen says that the tough market of the last few years has “…made buyers more wary…” of “fibbing by home sellers.” Despite disclosure laws in more than 30 states, McQueen writes about a “gray area involving the disclosure of problems the seller may not know about….”

McQueen writes that the most common “misrepresentations” problems are: 1) disputes about property dimensions; 2) infestations, mold or radon in the residence; 3) flooding; 4) neighboring nuisances; and 5) planned projects that fail to deliver promised amenities, like a community pool.

I’m not sure that I know the difference between a fib and a lie (in its simplest form of telling a falsehood), or a fib a lie and a failure to disclose a material defect in what a buyer is about to purchase, or a fib and a lie that deliberately distorts a property’s assets or liabilities without exactly saying something that isn’t true. These are not “gray areas,” in my opinion, and I’m not generous enough to call them “fibs.”

Buyers, of course, also have motive, opportunity and means to be equally fibby.

They often provide sellers with false information regarding their financial strength, need for seller financing and intentions for the property. These, too, can be misrepresentations or outright lies. The difference, I think, is that sellers deliver a “good” in the transaction that is not what the buyer thought he was purchasing whereas when, all is said and done, the buyer almost always gives the seller a lump-sum cash payment. The seller is getting 100 percent of what was agreed; the buyer may be getting something less.

The areas of seller “misrepresentations” in country real estate — including lies, distortions, concealments, misdirections, silences, failures to disclose, white lies, crossed fingers andfibby-wibbys  usually involve the following:

Acreage. The buyer needs to know the specific acreage that the seller claims to own and does own. The buyer can start by looking at the acreage number in the seller’s deed. (A title search will have to confirm whether that number is accurate, which is a different story.) The buyer should have a surveyor run the deed’s legal description through a mapper program to determine whether the “calls” generate the deed’s acreage and whether the calls close, which indicates accuracy. Then the buyer should compare the deeded acreage with the boundaries in the field to make sure that all of what is deeded will in fact convey without disputes with neighbors. Tax-map acreages may or may not be accurate. The deeded acreage should be the same as shown on a survey and on a mapper program.

Access. A property that is accessed by a road that crosses the property of one or more parties is often embellished with seller-supplied legal opinions. The buyer should insist that such an easement (or right of way) be in writing, recorded and be of sufficient width that large trucks can use it. If the recorded easement contains restrictions, the buyer must be willing to live with them.

Roads into properties are often legally informal. A permission to use a road does not constitute a legal right, and it can be revoked at any time. If a seller says that he “owns” an access road by “prescriptive easement” or “necessity,” a buyer needs to understand that it will may take a court case to establish these claims and the buyer, now the new owner, may not win. Talk to a lawyer if that’s what a seller says to you.

Nuisance and annoyance. Most sellers do not disclose issues with neighbors, such as unusual levels of noise, odors, behavior and night-time light. A new owner has the option of taking such an issue to court as a nuisance, but success is unlikely. More often, the new owner is dealing with an issue that is an annoyance, but not a nuisance. In either case, buyers need to ask about both.

Value of assets that the buyer cannot immediately and cheaply confirm. Minerals, merchantable timber, rental income from and rental demand for pasture or crop land, water rights and personal property to convey (farm equipment and materials) may be difficult to value, even with expert help. An inexperienced buyer often takes the seller’s word for such values; often not such a good idea.

Problems that may not be manifest but are not seller-concealed. Floodplain, wetlands, navigable waterways and habitat for listed species constrain what a landowner can do with the property and can, in the case of floodplain, present a threat. Sellers should be asked to disclose what they know about such environmental issues.

It’s easy for a buyer not to ask about strong episodic winds, earthquakes, forest-fire threats, diseases/pests in timber, tornados, chemical residues from past use (lead and arsenic ground contamination, for example), buried stuff, karst, ground instability, among others. Don’t take the easy path.

Buyers lose nothing by including language in their purchase contracts that make the purchase contingent on the seller disclosing all material and latent defects in the property and conditions in and around the property that could negatively affect the buyer’s use, possession and enjoyment of the property, including but not limited to, the following:

Make sure that the contract includes a warranties-to-survive-the-contract provision.

Get help with this language from you local lawyer.

Buyers are responsible for doing adequate due diligence. Sellers should be expected to be honest about what they say, don’t say, what they know and what they should reasonably be expected to know. A fibby seller should be made aware that he risks blowing up a deal or a post-deal lawsuit.

If the seller tells you to go jump in his lake, ask him if it’s stocked with killer guppies. Resistance to disclosure reveals a lot.

When a seller lists property with a broker or advertises as a FSBO, he should establish both the nature of his ownership and its extent.

Real-estate law conceptualizes property as a bundle of rights. A seller may be selling all his rights in a property or just some, with or without limitation in either case.

One or more rights can be severed–sold, leased or given away. A common severance involves separating subsurface minerals from the surface. In some states, where surface is owned by one party and subsurface by another the situation is referred to as a “split estate.” I’ve evaluated properties where ownership of timber, water and wind have been separated from the bundle of surface rights being sold.

The sale, lease or donation of rights in property should be recorded. Most mineral sales and leases are, but I’ve found sales of timber rights not recorded and not disclosed.

A complete bundle of rights in property is referred to as “fee simple absolute.” The shorthand is, property “owned in fee.” Where subsurface rights have been severed from surface rights, that property is not being sold in fee.

A buyer may discover that different subsurface rights were sold to different entities. In the worst case, different parties could own the discrete rights to a property’s oil, shallow gas, deep gas, coal, coal-bed methane, hard-rock minerals, clay and water.

States differ in their views of the rights that surface owners retain when the owner of the subsurface rights wants to explore, drill or mine. Some states require some form of surface-owner consent. Other states more or less don’t.

In addition to determining which rights are included in the seller’s bundle, both the seller and buyer must understand what limitations apply, if any, to one or more of the rights to be conveyed from seller to buyer.

The right of exclusive possession, for example, would be limited by a neighbor having a legal right to cross your property to get to his. Life estates and hunting leases are other common limitations. A neighbor also limits the seller’s rights if he owns the right to tap the seller’s spring, pick some of his apples or dig gravel from his pit. Those limitations run with the land.

The purchase-offer contract needs to state whether the property is being purchased and conveyed in fee, subject only to limitations of record. If the seller cannot convey this way, all the exceptions need to be identified and understood by the buyer.

A buyer may need to state that all unrecorded easements, limitations, licenses (permission to use) and similar understandings of any kind end upon the sale of the property.

How much land is being sold?

Most purchase contracts start with an identification of the property the seller is selling and the buyer is buying. That should be simple enough. But it often isn’t.

A common way to describe the seller’s property is to write language in the contract that states the buyer is buying the same property that the seller bought from his immediate predecessor in title. The property is usually not described in detail, but is referred to as that which is described in the seller’s recorded deed, Deedbook __,

Page __ , found in the Clerk’s Office in the County where the property is located. An acreage number may or may not be included. Sometimes that’s good enough.

The first property I ever bought did not include an acreage figure in the deed. The agent told me it had 100 acres. It turned out to have 60. I didn’t know enough to know that a deed should contain an acreage figure. I was 25, which explained many other things at that time as well.

I believe that both parties need an accurate understanding of the dimensions and area of the property over which they’re bargaining.

While property ownership is properly conceptualized in three layers (subsurface, surface and above-surface), the primary concern is the two-dimensional surface area to be sold, expressed in square feet or acres.

An acre is 43,560 square feet. A square acre has almost 209 feet on each side. This area was thought to represent the amount of land one man could plow in one day with one ox.

Acreage is measured as if it were perfectly flat. The hillier the property, the more surface area it actually contains. A surveyed acre should always contain at least one acre, never less, but often more owing to topography.

The seller will say to a buyer directly or through a broker how many acres he is selling. He may express this in one of the following ways:

• 100 acres
• 100 acres, by recorded survey
• 100 acres, by deed
• 100 acres, by tax map
• 100 acres, by remainder
• 100 acres, more or less

The first of these — 100 acres — fails to specify how acreage size was determined. While it may be perfectly accurate, it is essentially not much more than the seller’s opinion. It is, however, specific, and it does not protect the seller by adding more or less, plus or minus, or approximately.

The second — 100 acres, by recorded survey — is almost always the most accurate acreage number that can be obtained, assuming the survey was performed by a licensed surveyor since WW II. The survey should be signed, dated, sealed with the surveyor’s license and recorded. All rural properties were surveyed at some point during the last 400 years, but those surveyed after WW II are likely to be more trustworthy than earlier ones as a general rule.

The third — 100 acres, by deed — reveals the source of the acreage number, but says nothing about the accuracy of that number. Deeds can contain different types of errors that misstate acreage. Deed acreage may or may not be the same amount that a surveyor would find either in the field or if the deed’s measurements were plotted out.

The fourth — 100 acres, by tax map — is an unreliable measurement, though it may be perfectly accurate in any particular case. Tax-map acreage comes from various sources—deeds, owners, surveys and something I call, “adjustments by negotiation and complaint.” Sometimes a seller will run a planimeter over a tax map or other map-like document to come up with an acreage number.

Tax-maps probably err on the side of undercounting acreage, because owners have a financial self-interest in understating the size of their holdings in order to pay less property tax. But I’ve seen tax-maps that overstate acreage. If a seller is selling acreage by tax map, I would suspect that he knows that it overstates actual acreage.

The fifth — 100 acres, by remainder — is an acreage figure that is arrived at by subtraction. An original large tract is divided over the years, and whatever acreage appears to be left numerically in the seller’s possession is the remainder acreage. A remainder tract may incorporate an acreage number in the seller’s deed. Both parties need to confirm a remainder number.

The sixth — 100 acres, more or less — is quite common. “More or less” was originally intended to account for relatively small errors in linear measurements or compass directions that were produced primarily by the relative crudeness of the surveyor’s instruments. My impression is that it has come to be used legally to cover a much wider range of acreage variation, to protect sellers against claims of fraud.

One hundred acres, more or less, could be 100 acres on the dot, or 10 or more acres, plus or minus.

The quickest and cheapest way I know for a seller or buyer to determine acreage is to pay a surveyor to run the seller’s boundary description (metes and bounds or government survey numbers, depending on the system) through the deed-mapper program in his computer.

This program will plot out boundaries on plain paper or a scaled topographical map. It also calculates acreage contained within those boundaries and determines whether “the calls close.” Calls should close, that is, the boundary line starting from a beginning point should end up at the same point after plotting all the calls. Calls that don’t close by a lot indicate a problem, which may be either minor (a transposition or transcription error in a number) or major.

The calls will come from a deed or a survey where the calls are drawn next to the boundary lines.

Once the deed-mapper program has plotted the boundary lines, it’s usually worth paying the surveyor to walk the lines on the ground to make sure of the following:

That the calls in the deed or survey match up with the boundary lines as found in the field;

That the property in the field is located where the property on paper (deed or survey) says its supposed to be located. Sometimes property boundaries can “drift” in one direction or another. The boundary lines are perfectly accurate, but the whole property is lined out in the field say one degree west of where it should be.

That the functional boundaries (fences, roads) in the field line up with the boundaries in the deed and deed-mapper drawing. The seller may have fenced in part of his neighbor’s property, or vice versa. These are called, encroachments. The party who has committed the encroachment may be able to prove that he has met the state’s tests to establish ownership of his neighbor’s property through adverse possession. Both the buyer and seller have reasons to be aware of an “off boundary line,” which indicates an encroachment, before concluding a sale.

In most cases, a surveyor can figure out boundary lines and do his match ups on a walk-through using a topographical map with drawn lines. But occasions will arise when a boundary line must be searched out in the records and shot in the field to establish it.

From a buyer’s perspective, a deed-mapper drawing, which shows acreage and closure, is usually sufficient evidence to make an offer or not make one.

Deed-mapping is inexpensive and fast.

Once a buyer has confirmed acreage to his satisfaction, his purchase-contract should specify that the property to be purchased contains X acres, as determined by

Y method. This can lead a buyer into an ethical dilemma when, for example, the seller’s deed says, and the seller believes, the property contains 100 acres, more or less, and the deed-mapper shows 150 acres. Most buyers don’t have much of a dilemma when the deed-mapper shows only 75 acres contained within the description; they simply tell the seller that he’s short 25 acres and they’re not paying for it.

Acreage discrepancies are not uncommon in rural property. It makes sense for the seller to know exactly what he’s selling and for the buyer to know exactly what he’s buying before a purchase contract lies on the table between them.

My sense of things, however, is that “more or less” has come to be used as a general shield for sellers who convey acreage short of what they’ve advertised and short of what the deed sets forth. Judges, I expect, will use some form of the reasonableness test to determine whether a short-acreage sale reasonably falls with more or less, or, alternatively, exceeds it.

I know of examples where relatively small acreages — under 50 acres — were short by ten acres or more, and the buyer was told he had no legal recourse because of “more or less” in the deed.

Would appreciate hearing incidents/examples from around the country.