Comparing Two Vacant Parcels in Southeast Arizona Without Visiting Either

Two listings, both around the same price, both "vacant land with mountain views," both a long drive or a flight away from where you live. The listing photos are a fence, some creosote and a ridge in the distance. You cannot fly out to walk both, and you would like to rule one out before you spend money on either.

You can get further than you might expect without leaving home. Three layers of information exist for any parcel in Cochise County, and each answers different questions: the public record, satellite imagery, and a current aerial flyover. None replaces the people at the end of this article, but used in order they will usually tell you which parcel deserves the title search, the survey and the trip.

Start with the parcel numbers

Get the Assessor parcel number for each listing first. Rural addresses are often missing or unreliable; the parcel number is what county and state databases are keyed to. Then work through the same list for each parcel, writing the answers side by side.

• Assessor record and parcel map. The Cochise County Assessor maintains ownership records and assessment maps, and its online Property Records Search is where to confirm the owner of record and what the county has on file for each parcel. The county's GIS site shows the parcel shape. Treat those lines as approximate: county GIS is a mapping product, not a survey, and it can sit several feet or more off the actual corners.
• Zoning. Unincorporated land is zoned by the county Planning & Zoning Division, which publishes an interactive zoning map and the zoning regulations. Each district sets allowed uses, minimum lot sizes and setbacks. If the two parcels sit in different districts, that can matter more than any difference you will see from the air. A Zoning Verification Letter, requested by application, gives the district, applicable standards and zoning history in writing.
• FEMA flood zone. Enter each parcel's address or coordinates in the FEMA Flood Map Service Center. A parcel partly in a mapped flood hazard area is not necessarily unbuildable, but you want to know which part, and whether that is where you planned to build.
• Wells and groundwater management. Search ADWR's Wells55 database by parcel number. Wells are registered to the parcel where they are physically located, so a hit on the parcel itself is meaningful. Wells on neighboring parcels are a rough sign that people have found water nearby, not a promise you will. Also check whether the parcel falls inside one of ADWR's Active Management Areas; in Cochise County that means the Willcox AMA or the Douglas AMA (older material may still refer to the Douglas Irrigation Non-Expansion Area). What that means in practice is covered in what a drone can't tell you about a well.
• Recorded easements and access. The County Recorder's online document search and its survey and plat map search are where recorded easements, plats and prior surveys live. Whether a parcel has legal access is a title question, not a mapping one, and the Arizona Department of Real Estate's buyer checklist puts "permanent legal access" near the top of its raw-land questions.
• Tax status. The County Treasurer's parcel inquiry shows amounts billed and paid. The Treasurer also publishes a list of available tax liens. Unpaid taxes, or a lien already sold on them, are something to know about before you make an offer rather than at closing.
• Distance to power. The ADRE checklist tells land buyers to "pay particular attention to the source of utility services." Find the nearest line on the imagery, then ask the electric utility what an extension to that parcel would involve. On rural land the gap between a pole at the corner and a pole a half mile away can be a large part of the budget.

What satellite imagery shows, and where it stops

Free satellite and aerial basemaps are the next step, and they are genuinely useful: the road network, roughly where washes run, vegetation density, whether neighbors have built, where the nearest power line runs. Three limits are worth keeping in mind.

• Age. The imagery you are looking at may be several years old, and different tiles on the same screen can come from different dates. Check the capture date before you trust anything that could have changed: a new house next door, a road that has since washed out, a fence line.
• Resolution. Basemap imagery resolves roads, roofs and large tanks. It does not resolve a locked gate, the condition of a cattle guard, a washed-out crossing or the difference between a graded road and a two-track that a sedan cannot drive.
• Season. A frame captured in the dry months and one captured after the monsoon can make the same ground look like two different places. Dry-season imagery hides where water runs; post-monsoon imagery shows the vegetation lines along every drainage. If your two parcels were captured in different seasons, you are not comparing like with like.

What a current flyover adds

A flyover is the same parcel, photographed now, from low enough to see surface detail, from several angles rather than straight down. It answers the questions the satellite frame raised. We cover the general case in what a drone flyover shows before you drive out; for a side-by-side comparison, these are the parts that tend to separate two parcels:

• The approach road today. Where the pavement ends, what the surface is after that, every gate, cattle guard and wash crossing between the public road and the parcel. A flyover shows the physical route; it does not show whether you have a legal right to use it. That distinction is the subject of can a drone show legal access to a parcel.
• Washes after the monsoon. Fresh sediment, cut banks and debris lines show where water actually went this season. If drainage is the deciding question, an elevation model of the parcel answers it more precisely than photographs can.
• Vegetation. How much clearing a building site and driveway would take, and whether the open ground on the satellite frame is open in fact.
• Neighbors. What is on the parcels around each one right now: finished homes, trailers, salvage, livestock, a new structure that was not there when the basemap was captured.
• Improvements. Fencing and its condition, pads, tanks, sheds, any visible well head or water infrastructure, and how far the nearest pole is from where you would build.

The advantage for a comparison is consistency. Both parcels flown in the same week, at similar heights and in similar light, give you two sets of images you can actually set next to each other, rather than one recent listing photo and one five-year-old satellite tile.

Side by side: what each layer can tell you

Question	Public records	Satellite imagery	Current flyover
Parcel shape and acreage	Yes (Assessor, GIS; approximate)	With an overlay	With an overlay (approximate)
Zoning and allowed uses	Yes (Planning & Zoning)	No	No
FEMA flood zone	Yes (FEMA MSC)	No	No
Where water runs on the ground	Partly (flood maps)	Partly, season-dependent	Yes, as of this season
Registered wells	Yes (ADWR Wells55)	No	Visible hardware only
AMA status	Yes (ADWR)	No	No
Recorded easements	Yes (Recorder, title report)	No	No
Physical road condition	No	Route only	Yes, current
Taxes owed	Yes (Treasurer)	No	No
Distance to power	Ask the utility	Often visible	Yes, poles and lines
Neighbors and recent changes	Ownership only	As of capture date	Yes, current

Records answer the legal questions, satellite imagery is a free first look, and a flyover answers the physical questions as they stand now.

What the flyover costs

Land is priced by flight legs, not acreage. A parcel up to 40 acres is $375. For a buyer comparing parcels, three add-ons do most of the work: access route documentation (+$150), the drive in from the nearest public road shot in sequence; a boundary overlay (+$95), county GIS parcel lines composited onto the aerial, labeled as approximate; and a water and improvements inventory (+$125), each tank, well head, pond and structure located and photographed close enough to judge its visible condition. Full rates are on the pricing page and the deliverables are described on the real estate aerial media page. If the two parcels are in the same part of the county, ask for both on the same trip.

If you are still at the stage of building a shortlist, AZ Land List (azlandlist.com), a related company, publishes Arizona vacant-parcel data and guides to each county's parcel search.

The questions only someone else can answer

Once one parcel is clearly ahead, these are the questions that remain, and none of them can be answered from the air or from a screen:

• A site visit. What it sounds like, whether the ground is firm or sandy where you would build, whether your phone works, how the road feels at the speed you would drive it.
• A title company. Whether there is insurable legal access, what easements and restrictions are recorded against the parcel, and whether there are liens or other clouds on title.
• An Arizona Registered Land Surveyor. Where the corners actually are, whether fences and roads sit where the plat says, and whether anything encroaches. County GIS lines and an aerial overlay do not answer this.
• A well driller. What depth to water is likely here, what a well would cost, and what nearby well logs suggest about yield. If there is an existing well, whether it can be tested before closing.
• The utility and the county. What a line extension would cost, and what permits apply to what you want to build.

The point of doing the remote work first is to spend those fees on one parcel instead of two. When you have the parcel numbers, send them through the contact page and we will tell you how many flight legs each one takes.