A third type of landowner is one who finds himself in circumstances where he must sell quickly. A job loss or illness, for example, makes a second-home mortgage payment impossible. Cash is running out; you see the bottom of the empty swimming pool coming fast. What do you do?

Don’t panic.

You have to keep your head now more than ever. Don’t let your fear overwhelm you. You have to stay close to the disaster, inside it, to have a shot at working it out with minimum long-term damage. If you start distancing yourself from it, if you pretend that it’s not happening or happening to someone else, you’re sunk.

Fear can be mastered. If you don’t gain some measure of control over it, you will end up worse off.

Don’t give up.

Most tight spots of this sort have one or more exits. They may not be visible at first, but patient testing usually reveals them. They may not be great exits, but if they work just enough, they’re usable.

If you throw in the towel, don’t expect merciful treatment at the hands of your lender and creditors. They are in the money business, not the mercy business.

Move quickly and decisively.

You need to come up with a plan early. Wait too long…and the plan will be made for you. Don’t procrastinate about figuring out a plan and putting it into play.

Where to start?

Elephants, as the saying goes, are eaten one bite at a time. So take your first step, and then the next, and then the next. Once you start working yourself out of the mess, each next step will present itself. But you must start.

Give options and ask for them, too.

Lenders and creditors are very familiar with the real estate market and borrowers in the soup. Give them ideas that work for you. Ask for their suggestions beyond paying in full, bankruptcy and walking away from the debt. Indicate a willingness to hold up your end in resolving the problems.

Lenders want to minimize their headaches with problems like yours. There are things that you can do to make their lives easier. Do them.

Don’t beg.

Begging doesn’t work. It brings out the self-righteousness in lenders that locks them into being unhelpful.

Get wise counsel.

Talk to anyone who’s been in the same fix. Talk to consumer advocates in public agencies. Talk to lenders who are not yours, somebody at a bank that does not hold your note. Talk with lawyers and professional negotiators. Read negotiating books. Go to www.negotiationskills.com.

Don’t lie.

If you’re heading to the bottom and you can’t prevent it, lay the whole mess out in the open to your lender. Be consistently honest. If you are found to be concealing assets, you will get hammered.

Argue as a negotiator, not for argument’s sake.

If you want a lender to take a deed in lieu of foreclosure, you and your CPA should work up a short memo explaining why these numbers work from the lender’s point of view. That’s arguing as a negotiator. Don’t personalize your situation with a mortgage officer. That won’t help. Sometimes, asking for your case to be taken upstairs to a manager will help. Get to the highest desk you can.

Take responsibility.

Whether or not someone else is to blame, you are the one who’s going to get yourself out of the jam. Don’t let who’s-to-blame screw up your ability to fix it.

Don’t threaten unless you mean it.

Stupid bluffs, phony bluffs and empty threats won’t help. Lenders have heard them all before. Lawsuits are expensive, and often don’t get to justice. Never threaten unless you’re prepared to go through with it and have a very high probability of winning what you want, not just winning something.

Don’t expect help.

Maybe someone you know will step in to help you. But don’t count on it. Everyone’s pinched. Don’t be disappointed if help is not offered. It’s your mess; you own it; you fix it.

Keep the longer run in view.

As much as you hurt right now, time will reduce the pain, whatever the outcome.

Play for your long run interests, not what looks like the lightest hit for the next six months. If you’re talking about some refinancing scheme, check things out at www.mtgprofessor.com.

2. CPA.
A CPA can help you figure out the seller’s numbers—his basis, equity, remaining debt, appreciation and after-tax income from your offer. He can help you determine what the property is worth and whether it’s priced fairly in terms of itself and the current market. He can help you set up your purchase in the most tax-advantaged way. If you’re buying a working farm, he can help you analyze the seller’s financial information.

3. Surveyor.
It’s unlikely that you will need to survey the seller’s property before making an offer. But it may be advisable to have a surveyor walk the boundary lines with the seller’s deed in hand to make sure the lines on the ground match up with the language in the deed. A buyer should have his surveyor draw the deed’s boundary calls on a topographical map. This will determine both acreage and boundary closure.

4. Consulting Forester.
If your seller’s property contains more than five acres of woods, it’s worth asking a consulting forester to do a walk-through to determine its commercial value, if any. The consulting forester will determine the merchantable value of the seller’s timber, i.e., the likely current sales price in light of volumes, species and quality. You can use this number—or not, depending on what it is—in your negotiations with the seller. You can also use it to establish your basis in the timber for tax purposes.

5. Local advisor.
It’s always useful to know someone who is both locally knowledgeable and in your corner. Your local lawyer may be this person; the seller’s real-estate broker is not.

6. Property-specific consultants.
In addition, you may find yourself in need of advice from a soils engineer (if you have to find a septic-system site), physical engineer (if you have to build a bridge or construct a septic system), home inspector, architect, appraiser, environmental consultant (if you’re faced with a problem or liability), excavator, contractor, carpenter, farm consultant (to help evaluate a farming operation), farmer (if you have to evaluate farm buildings, systems and equipment), soils consultant (particularly if you’re going organic), neighbors (who can tell you a lot about your seller’s property and any claims or grievances they have) and environmental specialists (if you’re dealing with asbestos, mold, radon, water pollutants and the like).

Some people decide with their heart or their gut, depending on gender. Love-at-first-sight matches can work out just fine. But many snap decisions are emotional and financial disasters—in both mates and real estate.

Don’t get me wrong. You should fall in love with a country place. I’m as dopey about this romance as anybody.

It’s just that the thunderbolt kind of love — that mysterious mix of emotions, hormones and other stuff — is a bad basis on which to invest money.

Yet, many otherwise smart-enough people buy a place in the country based on whether it sings to them on their first date.

I did.

I heard the song; I sang; I even inhaled.

Using $5,000 from my parents in 1970, I bought what I thought was 100 acres about 30 minutes north of Amherst, Massachusetts. Later, I discovered that I owned only 60 acres.

That rocket ride to the altar taught me not to buy land that lacked an acreage number in the deed. All your “DUHS!” are coming though loud and clear. But I was 25…and in a buying fever.

Three other writers were similarly afflicted.

Michael Korda tells In Country Matters (2001) how he bought a 1785 house on 20 acres in Dutchess County, New York in l980 for $250,000—in less than an hour on his first visit.

Before shaking hands, he writes that he could see almost nothing since sheets of rain were pouring down in a heavy fog. He never walked the fields. He only “glimpsed” two barns. He never inspected the house, just a hurried walk-through on a miserable afternoon.

Consequently, his self-deprecating book tells of an owner throwing tons of cash at numerous problems in the house, outbuildings and land—all of which could have been discovered before he made his offer.

Korda boasts that he became “…pretty good at writing checks….”

Laura Shaine Cunningham, A Place in the Country (2000) and Jeanne Marie Laskas, Fifty Acres and a Poodle (2000) also bought places on impulse.

Cunningham writes: “The love of city people for the country is a mad love; it feeds on impulse and pays no attention to fact. We, the buyers of country places, don’t really want to know too much about them before we take possession. …we never dwell on the nasty mathematics of cost or hear the ‘mort’ in mortgage.”

Cunningham, too, became skilled at writing large checks after closing.

Laskas writes about her purchase price: “If I have learned anything about money in my thirty-seven years of living, it is to ignore it. …never, ever add numbers up.”

Deliberate ignorance helps her buy a “house with an identity crisis…something like a chalet stuck onto a trailer.” She says that “this house needs me.”

The pond is choked with “lilies a la Monet.” The fields are carpeted with multiflora rose, an almost indestructible shrub, making the land unsuitable for crops and even pasture. The barn is a “crooked old thing.”

She finally admits. “We are stupid. And this multiflora is a symbol of our stupidity. We bought fifty acres of thorns.”

Fools learn from their own mistakes; wiser folks learn from the goof ups of others.

No need exists to be a witless buyer of country property. Here’s what to do.

Organize a process. Approach buying country property as a logical process of becoming an increasingly skilled investigative land reporter. The object is to learn before you buy, think through before you spend.

List the information you need to acquire, tasks you need to research and their rough sequence. Revise the list as you acquire more information and new questions. Develop a research routine and go through it on each target property.

Get an agent’s help in unfamiliar territory. Work through a buyer’s broker–a licensed agent who represents your interests, not the seller’s. You might even find an exclusive buyer broker who only works for buyers. Buyer brokers split the seller-paid commission with the seller’s broker, but their loyalty and fiduciary responsibilities are owed to their client, the buyer.

I advise working with an Accredited Land Consultant (ALC). These Realtors have earned a special status in their profession through considerable experience in land sales and extensive education. ALC information can be found through the Realtors Land Institute.

Certain agents also concentrate on horse properties, farms, bed-and-breakfast operations and timberland.

Find an agent with whom you are intellectually comfortable, who shares your nuts-and-bolts approach to evaluating property.

Get specialized help. Line up your team of experts before you get serious about a target. You will need a local lawyer advising you before you make any offer. You may also need a surveyor, consulting forester, farm analyst, minerals consultant, physical engineer, soils scientist, excavator and contractor, among others. Get their thoughts on a target property before you submit your offer; during escrow is often too late.

Visit land with a cop. If you are prone to impulse buying, never visit a target property without a cop to enforce your no-buy-on-the-spot rule. An old friend who thinks like a CPA would be a good choice.

Become your own university. Making yourself smart about what you’re doing will save you money.

Become knowledgeable. Learn how to research land. Research-based knowledge strips risk out of a purchase. Never depend on the kindness of strangers.

Determine what a property is worth to you before you make an offer. Your price is what you can afford given the assets of the target property and what your plan is for it.

Your price has nothing to do with the seller’s asking price, an appraiser’s opinion of market value, tax-assessed value, replacement cost, insurance value, comparable prices of recently sold or currently listed properties or what the guy at the local gas pump thinks is a “good deal.”

Never exceed your price.

Fear ignorance. With country property, what you don’t know before you buy can hurt you down the road. If you buy it, you own it–broken and otherwise. Nothing is more chancy than taking a flying leap into the unknown.

Buying property on the basis of emotion and impulse is gambling in a game where the only money at risk is yours. A few people will luck out, but the odds are always against luck. Take it from four writers who played the game wrong.