I’m purchasing a property in Wise County Texas and trying to determine if there are mineral rights available for the property and if so how to obtain those. I close on the house and property on the 19th of June.
Can anyone help me with that?
I’ve already searched records with Wise County and it does not appear that the current owner has mineral rights at least on the record search and the title company can’t tell me for sure either so my next thought was looking into hiring a landman but I am completely unknowledgeable on any of this.
Yes, you would need to hire a Landman to run the title on the property for you. I’m an Independent Landman and could help you out, if you would like to message me.
The trick is, your typical residential title search does not always show mineral search and even if it has some entries it may not be complete. While not always 100% true, I would ask where you are buying. If in a master planned, production builder neighborhood, normally my 1st thought is the farmer kept them, and if for some reason they didn’t the developer kept them, and if that didn’t happen, some owner between the developer and you kept them.
If someone reserved them somewhere along the way, then for you to obtain them, you would need to attempt to buy them from whoever owns them. They are under no obligation to sell to you.
Landman to do your deed search might be somewhere $400-$1200 to #1 probably tell you that you don’t own them. #2 Tell you who does. If you find that out, then you perhaps get that landman to help you make an offer or go to an attorney to do that.
My first thought is WHY do that?
How much acreage are we talking about? Have you spoken with the current owner or any of the neighbors to see what kind of production they’re getting if any?
Small residential lot maybe .1-.2 acres might be getting gas at $2/month, so $25 year, but you just spent $1000 to find that out, so would take 40 years at current prices and production to get your money back. Most of the wells in Wise were heavy gas with peak production 1st and 2nd year maybe, with steep declines after that. I like minerals, but not sure this is even worth spending much time on it. Now if you’re buying house with 100 acres, that has had the same owner for 100 years, might be interesting to find out where things stand.
1 Like
A lot of times in residential areas I first check to see if the property is included in a producing lease on the RRC. Then I will check the tax records to see if the seller is on the tax roll for the producing well I found associated to that property. If not, then they may be a good indicator the seller doesn’t own the minerals. This is a quick way to determine if you want to spend a bunch of time or hire someone to figure it out.
1 Like