Hi, I’m Tim from Rural Land Watch. The question I'm going to answer today is question is how can I close on land in Oklahoma and close fast.

I’m going to answer that in a little different way than you might think and I’m going to write this and tell you that in Oklahoma, and really anywhere, you can close on land quickly or you can close on land in the right way. Basically these options are mutually exclusive in my opinion. Let me just talk specifically about Oklahoma as I’ve mentioned I’ve done many many personal transactions in Oklahoma so I know a little about it works there. This is the way to sell and buy land in Oklahoma. The first way is what you might call a quit claim deed and I sort of affectionately called this the brother-in-law way. A lot of times it happens in families and a dad if he’s ill or when he passes or before he passes, he will quit claim deed to his children as sons and daughters. They will then own the ownership of the land but that’s the quit claim deed it isn’t a great guarantee legally.

How We Sell

The way we’ve learned buy and sell land is legally called a fee simple title. That’s a fancy word that goes back way way back way way back back to English law. Fee simple title means that there’s title insurance on the policy and we always get a survey. Those things can stretch the process out but I’m going to tell you, it’s what you need to do.

I just did some Googling and this is looks like a good site: oklahoma.gov. Navigate to the abstractor page, this is an FAQ page that will tell you an awful lot about it.The thing in Oklahoma is that it’s called an attorney abstract State and that means that there has to be an attorney’s opinion rendered against an abstract. An abstract is a paper trail history of the land from its very inception from statehood all the way up to present time. Every person who touched that land, legally speaking, is recorded in a deed of some kind in this abstract book many times. They can be very very old records depending you know since 1907, that’s when Oklahoma came to statehood. All of those transactions are added up then and attorney has to go through that and review it and look for clouds on the title and everything that happens within the realm of the human experience — people die, people get married, people get divorced, people have children and then the children they don’t get along with land owner.. and all of those things that happen in our lives… they will impact the legal ownership of this property. Many times, what can happen, is someone can be paying the property taxes on a property but they are not in fact the actual owner or have a legal interest in the property. The only way to confirm ownership of a property in Oklahoma is through the abstract attorney’s opinion process.

We have looked for all kinds of different ways to speed up the process and as far as I know, there just is not one.
Let me just let me move on let me show you what I mean: Let’s take our county map of Oklahoma.

Let’s take a look at Pushmataha County. When I first got started buying and selling land, I did several in Pushmataha County. Let’s just look up a Pushmataha County Abstract Company and, again, if you have a property for sale in Mayes County, we can just do this we can see there it is right there: a Mayes County Abstract & Title Company. They’re pretty much in any County you want to buy and sell your land in. In this case here’s their thing: You would just call them up and the first step is to locate the legal description and parcel number.

Then, I recommend calling any lawyer who deals with transactional legal proceedings. He can obtain a title to real property in Oklahoma. So he goes through it all. Everything in the abstract of title must be located in brought to date by a licensed and bonded abstracter. The first step is to have a letter a real estate contract between buyer and seller. They will not do any work without that contract then secondly you have to have this abstract of title so if you’re the land owner, the first thing to do is to call the local company and find out if a copy of the abstract already exists or if it does not exist. If it does not exist, it will have to be created from scratch

This just takes what it takes: You get in queue, when they draw your number, you move forward in the process. They get you when they can get to you and if they’re working on homes or if you’re in a busy County like Tulsa County, it just will simply take longer for you to sell your land fast.

You will find that in small towns you find in big cities, you find all kinds of levels of confidence and people that work in the Title & Abstract industry. Adjust your land sell process and timeline. It takes what it takes. I can tell you the danger to all this, is if you do not do it in the most correct way, you can end up with all kinds of legal problems. Again you will not own the land you are trying to sell or buy if you don’t go through this process the right way. For example, I bought two acres once thinking it was seven acres because I didn’t bother to pay for a survey. I had to chase down sons and daughters from another man who was listed as the owner and then get their signatures.

Then there was an issue with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was a mess. It took me six months to get through that property and close it and sell it. If I would have done this process the right way with a title company, it would have gone a lot easier.

So this is a very quick answer to the question of how ‘How can I sell my land fast in Oklahoma?’ My answer is, it’s a complicated subject but when done the correct way a property owner can get cash in hand within a few weeks.

– Tim Flood

Here is another video where I demonstrate how to find a property APN:

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Tim Flood

Land Educator at Checklands

Tim has been active in the rural land real estate industry for over five years. Tim has acquired over 25 parcels across the US and is an expert in land deals in Oklahoma. Tim is an educator on other platforms and Checklands is thrilled to have him as a contributor to our land education platform.