Stephan Schwab

This is another part of the series about the land survey we did on the farm before purchasing it.

A land survey is a physical activity. The surveyer has to walk the limits of the land, mark points on the ground and get their coordinates. With that information he can then create a property map. In Panama these property maps have to show GPS coordinates for all points using the UTM coordinate system.

Our surveyer uses equipment from Trimble. In the backpack he carries batteries to power the handheld computer and the GPS receiver. The white thing on the top of the telescopic pole is the GPS antenna.

Our surveyer is called “grillo”. That’s Spanish for cicada. And look what he has painted on the back of his T-Shirt:

Doing a land survey means walking. Lots of walking. During the survey of the farm “grillo” marked 87 points. It took 3 days and it might have taken longer, if the terrain were more difficult.

With each point step by step a map gets drawn on the display of the handheld computer. After the line gets closed and the full polygon exists the physical part of the survey is done. Then the actual propery map is created in the office and printed on large format paper.

After our three days survey we had to wait for another day and got presented the map in the picture. The farm is actually much larger than what the map shows. Due to the cost of such a survey we did measure only the part where it has pasture. That part turned out to be 128 ha and a few square meters. We estimate the other part which is virgin rainforest to be an additional 200 ha.

The blue line is the river that borders the farm. You can see all the 87 points forming the polygon. To the south our “servidumbre” is shown. That’s an important detail.

You need road access to get to your land. So there is a law that you cannot title land without an access road agreed upon by all parties involved. If your property doesn’t border a public road, you will have to negotiate with your neighbors to get their permission to travel over their land. They have to sign on your property map or the map won’t get accepted by “reforma agria”. This is very important. If you aquire Rights of Possession in Panama and forget to have your neighbors to grant you right of way in writing, you may end up unable to access your land. There is usually more than one neighbor and you can’t force anybody to grant you right of way. If they are reluctant to grant you that right, you will have to negotiate with all of them until one is willing to let you through. That may be a long process and in the end you will have to pay for the right of way.

The best way to solve these issues ahead of time is to become friends with your neighbors. You have to be there, talk to them, maybe employ their services for something and simply be a nice guy.

This is going to be a multi-part blog post about the land survey we had to do before purchasing the farm. I’ll try to tell the story but as well will talk about the different issues one may encounter when buying land in Panama.

In general the more work you put into doing a proper land survey, the less trouble you will have later. Unlike Europe or the U.S. in Panama you have to look after yourself. I should add that I think this is not an issue specific to Panama. Europe and the U.S. have so many rules for almost everything and there is a lot of professionals who truly take care of their client that everyone somehow is checking on everybody else. Panama is part of the developing world where the few rules that exist can be bend easily and professionals mostly care about their own wellbeing – mainly out of necessity. Plus these societies have strong networks formed of people who know eachother and need eachother to survive. As an outsider you might easily get taken for a ride simply because it doesn’t hurt but provide an additional profit.

During all my travels I kept an open eye and learned about the importance of being street smart. Things may look good and perfectly fine on paper but that doesn’t mean they actually are.

I’ll tell more about all this step by step in between the pictures.

The land survey on the farm took three days in total. As I’ve told here before getting to the farm is not that easy. We have to cross two rivers and the only vehicle capable of reaching a point close to the farm over a dirt road, which has recently been carved out of the soil, is a lifted 4WD vehicle. I am more than satisfied with my Jeep and the differential lockers.

Our survey crew counted seven in total. We had the surveyer and his assistant, the former user of the land Raul, Luis, myself and two helpers. We managed to get everybody into and onto the Jeep. Two in the front, three on the backseat and two on the rear bumper. The two on the bumper got their feet wet a bit during the river crossings but it worked just fine. Who said a Jeep Wrangler were a two person vehicle :-)

Above I was saying “the former user of the land” instead of previous owner. I should explain that a bit more. In Panama land can be owned as titled property or used by means of Rights of Possession. Most land in rural Panama is not titled property. The people working and living on it don’t own it. It is owned by the state. The people using it have been granted Rights of Possession by a government entity called “reforma agria”. I am not going into the history of this (you can find a lot using Google) but instead just outline the basics and explain what this all means to someone interested in aquiring land.

In order to get granted Rights of Possession one must work the land. One cannot claim a strip of virgin rainforest. Some agricultural or forestry activity has to happen there. In theory one may find a piece of land that nobody has claimed yet and get to work there. So if there are no signs of any activity, one asks “reforma agraria” for an inspection and confirmation that the land is indeed free. They send someone to document the current state of the land and grant Rights of Possession temporarely, if there are no conflicting claims. Then one starts working and after a few months one asks for another inspection so that they can document one is complying with all the requirements. Then one receives a certificate and is the owner of Rights of Possession on a strip of land described by landmarks and the borders of neighboring claims.

If one wishes, one can then do a land survey and buy the land from the government to turn it into titled property. Once land is titled property it is subject to property tax. As far as I know one has to pay property tax for land worth more than $30,000 or more than $150,000, if it is used for agriculture.

There are vast amounts of land “owned” by wealthy Panamanian families based on Rights of Possession. They are not interested in titled property because the government cannot tax land that is still owned by the government.

The next post will be about how to do a land survey.

This is the second part of the story about the access we are going to build. We’ve made several attempts at finding the best path. Now we’ve settled down on this one:

After the segment through a forest area the path comes out into the clear. It has been well traveled as you can see. This is the trail Didimo our neighbor uses to get to this own farm and old house.

This path isn’t bad at all but we were trying to find more even terrain. We had some hopes that we find a path where the Jeep could travel on without the need to drive a bulldozer through in the beginning. But all we found was rough terrain with just too many ups and downs even worse than what you can see in these pictures.

The current trail crosses two creeks and has some sharp turns.

This is at the entrance to Didimo’s house. Looks like steps – doesn’t it?

Then the trail continues on Didimo’s land towards our farm. The whole trail from where we have to leave the Jeep to the door of our farm is about 2.5 km.

This part doesn’t look that bad. It’s a gentle slope and in the clear.

But then you turn around the corner and once again encounter some challenge.

We are lucky to count with Criollo horses. These are kind of a mix between a horse and a mule. They don’t go fast. They favorite speed is a gentle walk not even trot. Unlike more hot blooded horses they are just perfect for rough terrain. Before they do a step they analyze the terrain in front of them and then move forward one step at a time. They rebalance themselves, make a step to the side or whatever move necessary to stay safe.

Another creek and we are almost there.

This would be easy, if the logs weren’t there.

In zick-zack and avoiding to harm the belly Toby and his rider Luis go uphill.

Finally we’ve reached the door to our farm. The “door” is actually a cut into the barb wire fence. To open it one has to untwist the wires and the twist them together again to close the “door”.

Now that we have found the path for the access road we have to wait for some paperwork and the land survey so that we can actually say “our farm”. Up until now it would have been too much risk to actually invest a significant amount of money. We bought horses so that we can explore on our own, paid a few guys to clear the trail so that we can see what the challenge of building the road would be – but all that isn’t hardly a real investment. I guess we’ve put about $5,000 into this adventure so far. There is still the possibility for the deal to fall through but in this case we can take our horses elsewhere and the only loss would be the expense for the exploration.