your welcome and I hope the appraisal district can help. I agree with statement about landman, they will use whatever they can to get minerals as cheap as they can. I hope you get a good amount for your lease. Good luck with lease and property location.
Last year, my husband and I went down to see a piece of property that has been on my family for over 90 years and I think I am the only person in my family who has ever been down there! I had had an offer from someone down there to buy the surface and I decided I wanted to at least see the property before I did anything. I also had it appraised. The appraiser and the man who made the offer drove us around the property. It was very interesting to actually see what I owned! I ended not selling, but at least got an appraisal.
I actually called 911 planning commission last fall when we were researching our land. It took awhile, but they helped us find it! They were extremely nice and helpful in the process! Good luck to all striving to locate your land!
Thanks all for the leads. It sounds like there are several like my family who has been paying taxes for decades on land down there. My sister will be visiting from CA later this year and we may take a trip down and add to the local economy! I’m glad we found this forum so if anything ever comes of the exploration we will have some clue about prices, etc.
Just had a call from Cheaspeake offering $1,250 per acre and 25% royalty for a 3 year lease with a 2 year option. Has anyone else gotten an offer in the last few days?
Not an expert but what I know and have seen everything looks good except the 2 year option in my opinion. The $ amount per acre I guess depends on what the surrounding area is getting - some got more and some less around us.
I just had someone tell me that he got offered $3800 for 3000acres in La Salle County but not from Chesapeake, from a company called Za Za Energy. I have had an offer of $1850 to $2000 for 411 acres through another family member but do not have company name yet. I just went to Dilley and saw a lot more drilling rigs set up from Carrizo to 30 miles out.
I asked Chesapeake representative today if the rancher that ownes the property around mine (McRcory ?) has signed a lease. I was advised yes, and so has other (named several) large ranchers that hold the majority of the land in that area. My small piece is very near an area called Dimento (?) which may have some structures in that area. Is anyone familiar with this rancher McRcory (?) or the area? Sure would like to know if I am getting the same offer as the big land owners.
Has anyone ran into land dispute issues with more than one landowner holding deed to land? We have found out that another person/company has acquired a large plot of land that for some reason includes our 10 acres. We both have deed to the land and have both paid taxes. Our land was inherited and has been in the family for years. Long story short, we have lost out on a SWD lease based on a "surface rights" issue and we have been told by the lawyer that we were working with that it doesn't look good for us in retaining the surface rights. Dimmit County tax office and appraisal office both had our family as owners until I had them dig a little more when they found the "duplicate" owner.
We are at a loss and don't really know how to proceed. We are seeking any information as to Texas laws about this kind of thing and how we would go about fighting for our right to the land we "own" and have paid taxes on... Good news is that we have been told our mineral rights are not affected. However, we have ended up losing a very lucrative SWD lease from what we can tell... Any advice would be so helpful before we sink thousands of $$$ into an attorney, especially if we have no guarantee we would win...
THank you!
Jeff, I have experiended this land ownership situtation a lot over the years. I'm not a landman, but I have been in real estate and appraising for 50 years and I have done much right-of-way work for highways. Do you have any idea how this happened? It might be a simple surveying error issue, either in the actual survey on the ground or in the prepartion of the legal description and/or how is was written. It might be as simple as asking a surveyor to review the survey and the competing legal descriptions. Maybe there is just an error that will be easily corrected. A suveyor shouldn't change much to do a desk review. That being said, the most likely scenario is that you will have to have the deed issue resoved in court. If your mineral rights are good, then weigh the cost of legal proceedings against the value of the ownership of land. The cost to cure may be higher than the value of the land.
MIke,
We really aren't sure how this happened. When we reviewed a copy of our deed and legal descriptions last Fall (that is when we started out really investigating our ownership down there) we noticed another companies name that had a larger interest of land which included our land. Different ones mentioned that it shouldn't be a problem.
After we signed a lease for SWD facility in January, we were made aware that their permitting process had been halted because of this. The company stopped communicating with us, told us we wouldn't fare well in a legal fight to try to prove ownership, and ultimately we believe they have negotiated another deal with the "other" landowner. The Lawyer we had worked with told us it wasn't worth the fight, but gave little to no explanation and was extremely high priced even if we were to want to investigate it could be costly.
I spoke with tax office and surveyor's offices in Dimmit County on Thursday of last week. Everyone that I talked to assured us of our 100% ownership until I spoke with the appraisal office who had access to abstracts... I gave her the # we had on our documents and she finally found the info. She began to give me a basic idea of what could have happened, but stopped short to tell me it would have to be worked through an attorney... I am not sure of what type of deed the other owner has or how it was acquired and I am not sure why our family was never notified of this change in 2005 and again in 2007 when land changed hands... but, this land has been in family since 1920's?
I am very novice (although learning something new weekly) in this process, but we are exactly where you said to determine the amount of cost in the fight versus the eventual pay off. We signed a very nice SWD in January that was supposed to begin paying off in August/September with a fixed monthly rate that would pay out $30,000/year with an increase after 5 yrs... But, we surely don't want to pay 4-5 figures lawyers fees to fight a battle that we don't stand a very good chance.
I hope to get if nothing else some more info from Dimmit County, our original title company, and at least a basic consultation from a local lawyer this time... Hoping to find one that could give us some time for a decent price to see if that is a possibility.
Thank you Mike for your help and any further info from you or anyone else is much appreciated!
On the up side, we have been able to finalize a mineral rights lease that should be signed and bonus payment made before end of June... so all is not lost!
Thanks again!
Jeff, I'm having a problem with land we own since 2005 and have been paying taxes on since. I'm selling some of my 94.14 acres but when the buying company did a survey, only 47 acres were found; our land was surveyed by two separate companies and both found only 47 acres within our property fences. So where are the missing acres Dimmit County has been taxing us on? Have already filed Protest with Appraisal District but any other ideas are welcomed.
Actually live in Kingsville but do have relatives that will be at the ranch during Thanksgiving holiday - off of what is marked as Hearne Road - well being drilled right next to our property recently - currently negotiating a pipeline on our place. Good luck!
Interesting read Koonce - so far things have been pretty general dealing with Chesapeake in South Texas Eagle Ford Shale. Very slow in processing it seems thought or at least to me - into our 3rd year of our lease agreement and no wells as of to date but definately drilling all around us and even on neighboring land owners - expecting something this year for sure - time will tell! Oh yea - the land man that set up the lease of our property was with a company out of Dallas - Joint Resourses or something like that - kinda felt like we were taken since shortly after the lease was purchased by Chesapeake!
I have mineral rights in the Winter Garden Area. Have received an offer to lease 20 acres at $200. per. Anyone know of activity in that area?
I don't know but 200 per acre seems low if the area is proven for sure! Good luck!
Hi everyone, I am still trying to get information to lease mineral rights on a small piece of property (20 acres), between Asherton and Carrizo, located on Hwy 83, and have not been able to make contact with any oil companies. Would even consider leasing surface rights for companies interested in establishing a business to support oil related activities. If anyone has any leads on this, please let me know, I have not contacted any landman or lawyers since my land is not a large parcel of land, but any leads would certainly help. Thanks!
Does anyone have information regarding leases or drilling in Bermuda Colony area of Dimmit?
How can i find out if there are leases around my property and if there has been any activity surrounding it?