I'll be straight with you — I used to think if the survey pins were in the ground and the acreage checked out, I was good to go. Bought a 40-acre parcel in the foothills thinking I had clean, clear title and room to build a trail system for my crew. Closed, shook hands, felt great about it.
Six months later I find out there's an old family heir — a distant cousin nobody mentioned — who had a fractional interest in that same ground going back two generations. Never showed up in anything the agent walked me through. Title insurance saved me from a full disaster, but the legal back-and-forth cost me a year of headaches and kept me off that land the whole time.
Everybody focuses on the physical property during due diligence. Walk the boundary, check the creek, test the well. Fine. But chain of title issues are invisible until they explode on you.
I'd argue a thorough title search matters more than any site visit. Fight me on that — or tell me if you've had the survey save you when the title search didn't.