Land size measured on Google Earth

[Groo]

not all 40s are 40 acres. they may have been plotted wrong in the beginning, or there are some that have correction factors built in. You can't cover a sphere with perfect squares and have it come out even.

sounds like you need you land surveyed either way. your neighbors might be using your land.

 

[dmccarty]

The assessor's office here has an online parcel map system that shows the boundaries on satellite images. Might be worth a look at their website.

Along with what charlz said, our county has a GIS office which as a website for viewing land. Very useful. It has overlays with topo maps as well as aerial photos. Property lines are shown on the maps and you can measure distance/area on the website. They have even better aerial photos in the office.

How much land we own differs how much we are taxed. Since the property lines go to the middle of the road, the land in the right of way is NOT calculated as part of our tax bill.

Later,
Dan

 

[tractchores]

If your land is adjacent to a public road or stream, your property boundary may actually be in the middle of the road or stream, not the fence line. A boundary line survey is always a good idea if the acreage amount is important to you.

Very true, I own a couple waterfront properties and several acres that are UNDER water. I don't know why they originally surveyed the properties like that (these are lakes / ponds where the level has historically been the same for 100's of years).

 

[charlz]

Very true, I own a couple waterfront properties and several acres that are UNDER water. I don't know why they originally surveyed the properties like that (these are lakes / ponds where the level has historically been the same for 100's of years).

Maybe it has/had to do with state laws. I know in Montana 'navigable' waters are state/public property up to the high water mark so property lines only go as far as the high water mark. If the river moves one way you could lose some useable land... if it moves the other way you could gain some.

 

[Groo]

It has to do with dividing land up into sections (1 square mile), quarters and quarters of quarters, better known as 40s

 

[tractchores]

Maybe it has/had to do with state laws. I know in Montana 'navigable' waters are state/public property up to the high water mark so property lines only go as far as the high water mark. If the river moves one way you could lose some useable land... if it moves the other way you could gain some.

Yeah its strange. In my case the waters surface are state property (they're over a certain size) and anyone in the state has the 'right' to use them (i.e. boat etc), however I guess I own the bottom

 

[IronHog]

Hi, I wanted to estimate the size of one of my fields, which has an irregular shape so I figured out how to do that using Google Earth. More to the point, someone else figured it out, and I watched it on Youtube and got it to work.

I bought the land as 40 acres (as advertized), and I always thought it odd that the tax statement had it divided into three parts (20, 12, and 8ac) according to land use. There are two Property Identification (PID) numbers for the land, which do not match any of the numbers on the tax forms, although the tax form doesn't have PID numbers listed.

Anyways, it seems like the "40 acres" is actually only 32ac according to my measurements on Google Earth, and that matches two of the divisions on the taxes... I'm going to go into the tax office and get to the bottom of this!!!

I wonder how common it is for land to be bought and sold, and taxed, without really being the correct size?

You can see how to do the area measurement on Google Earth on this video:

Using Polygons to Calculate Area in Google Earth - YouTube

The Earthpoint site wants you to pay to sign up, but it does allow you to export to excel, which allows you to see the area without signing up.

Bye for now,

Thanks for the link.

I just did a property of known area to check how well it did..... got within .5 acre when I finally got the landlines right.

Missed the first time by 8 acres on a 80 because I had the lines off that much.

 

[foreman Etexas]

I like using freemaptools.com to find out how big a place is really when im mow or spraying for someone...

 

[MasseyWV]

Google Earth is about as accurate as the perception most men have about the size of their... equipment. :laughing:

 

[greasemonkeyok]

I just used Google Earth planimeter on an 80-acre tract where the boundaries are easily identified, and it was about as accurate as any of us would need short of a certified survey.