How To Get An Address For Vacant Land

Acquiring a parcel of vacant land comes with a lot of opportunities and a few obstacles - with one of the first being figuring out your address.  

To get an address for your vacant land, you should consult your local city planning office, as they will likely have all of this information in their records.  However, if want to get an address for your vacant land outside of a city, you may need to apply for one through your county.

Buying a vacant plot of land is a great way to pursue your development projects. This approach for acquiring land comes with a lot of potential for having complete creative control of your development ideas, but it does come with its fair share of challenges to overcome.  Since you are starting from scratch, you really need to go through all of the details of your property before you begin developing.  One of the most important things you will want to do is figure out what your address is, which can be quite challenging depending on the circumstances of your vacant land.  Let’s dive into all the ways that you can get an address for your vacant property.

Before purchasing your land, consult the landowner to figure out the actual address prior to committing to the purchase.  Obtaining an address for a vacant plot of land can be challenging and may lead to complications in some circumstances if not on record with your local land authority.

‍Getting Your Address

For the most part, getting an address for your vacant land should not be overly difficult, as most properties have some sort of address associated with them - even if it doesn’t immediately seem clear. With that being said, you should always try to figure out the address of your vacant land before you finalize your land acquisition as this could save you a headache later.  

A good way to approach this is to simply insist that the current landowner try to do some personal research to find out if the vacant land has an address associated with it on their own time.  At the end of the day, if they are hoping to sell someone land, they should be able to provide basic information like this.  

If you have acquired a vacant parcel of land located in an urban environment, you will find that figuring out your address is a whole lot easier.  The reason for this is that most vacant land parcels are generally located in some sort of a neighborhood or urban environment that has surrounding buildings.

Once you’ve located a surrounding home or building, simply narrow down the building numbers and make a logical conclusion as to what your address is.  However, if you have acquired your vacant parcel of land outside of an urbanized environment, you may find that the process is a bit more laborious and maybe even quite challenging.

Let’s take a look at some of the approaches you can take to get an address for your vacant land.

Check The Deed

When you are acquiring any plot of land, there should be a deed associated with the property.  This is a document that gives details about the property and should be held by the rightful owner of the land.

It’s more than often the case that the address for the vacant land will be listed within the deed, which makes the process of locating your address very straightforward.  

However, if your property has not had any sort of development anywhere near it and the vacant lot resembles land that is relatively raw, you may not have your address listed in the deed.

If that is the case, then you are going to need to do a little more footwork to figure out your address.  Make sure you hold on to your deed when hunting down your address, as it can play a crucial role when reviewing it with your local land authority.  More on this later.

Ask A Neighbor

As mentioned above, you can always check for surrounding buildings and try to locate your address by identifying your neighbor’s address.  While this is much easier in an urban area, you will find that it is still possible to figure out your address this way in a rural environment as well.

If you are driving around and finding it challenging to spot an address or a mailbox from one of your neighbors, the best way to overcome this hurdle is simply to walk up to their residence and politely ask for some help.

However, you should be careful when relying on someone else for information that is this important.  If you find that your neighbor is not completely confident in knowing your address, you should not take their word for it.  The reason for this is that addresses in the countryside can be less consistent than in urban areas and may have mismatched numbers.

Check With Public Authority

If you find that you are hitting a  wall when trying to figure out your address, one of your most reliable resources is going to be your local county’s public authority on land.  They will likely have plans of the entire region they are responsible for overseeing and will be able to identify the address of your land with the information you provide them.

With that being said, you are going to want to make sure that you have all the right information with you before you go consult them.  As mentioned above, your deed should have sufficient information in it to provide your local authority with what they need to tell you about your address.

However, if your vacant parcel of land is in a particularly rural and untouched environment, the deed may not have all of the adequate information needed for them to identify your address.  If that’s the case you are going to want to have some additional information on your property that you personally researched prior to reaching out to them.  Here’s what you should try to figure out.

Street Name & Postal Code

If you found that your neighbor was not able to give you adequate information about your specific address, they will likely be able to help you find out some easier info such as your street name and postal code.

You may be living in such a desolate area that you do not have any neighbors anywhere near you.  In this case, when you drive down to either end of your road you should have a marked street name.

If you are still lost, you may find that your navigation app can be your best friend in a situation like this because even if it does not give you your exact address, it may be able to give you clues as to what it may be - or at the very least provide you with information that you can use to dig deeper on your quest.

Try to find your location on your navigation app to try to pinpoint any sort of indication of an address on your screen.  If you are able to locate an address, street name, or postal code near you, that should be sufficient information for your local authority.

However, if your local county authority on land is not able to help you after all of that, it’s likely that you simply do not have an address, which means that you will need to apply for one.

Applying For An Address

Before you apply for an address, try to consult your local post office beforehand, as they may have records of an address that has been backed up.  If they do not have anything on record then you will need to apply for an address with your local county.  

The reason this sort of situation may occur is that the previous property owner may have divided their vacant land into multiple sections, which resulted in numerous uncharted addresses needing to be created.

If that’s the case, you will need to consult your local county’s department that is responsible for city/land planning to establish what your likely address will be.  Each county or state may approach this matter differently, as the specs of each land area can vary significantly.

Once you’ve reached out to them and provided them with all of the necessary details, you should be able to apply for a new address for your vacant land, which you will then register with the post office. After you’ve registered your land with the post office, you will officially have an address for your vacant land.