Finding country property is like finding a mate. The more you look, the more possibilities turn up. Love at first sight happens, but hot-pepper passion may not survive the practicalities of making a life together.

DIRT-SMART is designed to help you find, research and buy property that you like better over time, a property that fits you financially and emotionally, one where love has to conquer as little as possiblea good match.

Impulsive, emotional buying puts at risk not only thousands of dollars but the hard work and love you will inevitably invest in your purchase. To curb first-impression buying, you must learn to judge a propertys book cover enough to know whether it merits more research. This initial process, called screening, requires that a buyer have a general idea of both what he seeks and what he doesnt. Screening involves knowing how to screen out properties that are overpriced or have unfixable negatives and screen in those that can be bought at a reasonable price in light of their value.

Screening uses the same questions found in scoping, which is the property-specific research you do on a target before making an offer. The difference between them lies in the depth and breadth of the investigation. Screening should take minutes; scoping several days or, at most, a few weeks.

You might screen out 25 properties to find one worth a look, visit five before you scope one and scope three before you buy.

As with any other large purchase, large mistakes can be made on country real estate. The most common are under-scoping, overpaying and poor-fitting. Under-scoping can lead to unexpected, aggravating and expensive surprises that erode your pocketbook. Overpaying makes it harder for you to acquire the property, carry a mortgage and profit from its sale. Under-scoping leads to overpaying. Poor fitting refers to a buyer discovering that his property is ill-suited to his evolving needs. This often results from an initial purchase of too much house and too little land, or land that is all one type. I advise buyers to purchase more land than house if a choice has to be made between the two, and properties that contain a diversity of soils and land typesopen, wooded, pasture, agricultural fields, flat, hilly, dry and wet.

Buying rural land is not risky as long as you do your research. You strip risk from a land purchase by acquiring detailed information about the propertys values, liabilities and uncertainties. DIRT-SMART shows you what you need to know and how to get what you need. This research-based approach to buying and the knowledge it produces will save you money upfront and make you money down the road.

Here are a few basic ideas to keep in mind when scoping country property:

1. Ask questions.
Do your research. Know the right questions to ask; then ask them until you get answers. Do not assume that your seller will disclose material defects, regardless of what state law requires. Much of what you want to know is in the Courthouse records. Some answers must come directly from the seller. Dont be bashful about asking, but do it politely. You must fill in what you dont know, what the seller doesnt know, what the seller knows but isnt telling and what you dont know you dont know. When a seller refuses to respond to a reasonable inquiry, its a good bet that you need to find that answer.

2. If something looks funny, figure it out before you submit a purchase offer.
If a fence line doesnt coincide with a surveyed boundary line, find out which is wrong.
If the sellers property does not have either public-road frontage or a recorded right-of-way easement, find out the legal basis for his entrance road. If the sellers 4WD tractor gets stuck in the sellers barnyard during an August drought, determine whether the problem lies in the sellers beat-to-death tractor or an underground spring that creates a perpetual bog in front of the barn door.

3. If you cant see how something works, ask about it.
Ask about liquid house waste. If you are told it is piped into an approved septic system, ask where the holding tank and drainfield are. Then get a copy of the county permit to determine its capacity, design and age. You may need to upgrade this system if you want to add a bathroom or a bedroom. Find out when the tank was last cleaned; call the tank-cleaning service to learn about the systems history. Does the well run dry in August: you wont know unless you ask. If the barn has a silo, ask how it is unloadedthe old ones are shoveled out by hand, from the top down, which isnt much fun after a few winters.

4. Talk to the neighbors before you make an offer.
Ask them about themselves, and then the target property. What do they do with their land that would affect you? Does the sellers property have a history of flooding? How is fence ownership and maintenance apportioned? Do they have any boundary disputes or grievances with the seller? Look and listen for activities that might disturb you, such as barking hounds, extra-bright security lights or teenagers with jacked-up trucks whose sound systems keep Martians from landing.

5. Get expert advice when you dont know something.
You may need a surveyor to check boundary lines, forester to determine the value of the sellers woods, lawyer to help negotiate a purchase and a civil engineer to give you a cost estimate to replace the entrance bridge. This is knowledge that you need to have as youre preparing your offer.

6. Dont swing at the first pitch.
When youre out on a pretty fall Saturday afternoon and you happen upon a place that jellies your knees, STOP! Keep your pen in your pocket along with your wallet. If you happen to be with a real-estate agent, mumble something about, Its nice, but it sure is a long drive from home. This indicates cautious interest, which is all you want to indicate to both the agent and yourself. Lets take a better look here before we go to the next place. A little caginess should be part of your property-hunting repertoire.

DIRT-SMART shows you how to take that deeper and better look. With the information you assemble, you can submit a written offer within a week. Contingencies--with results acceptable to the buyer--will protect your security deposit. Scoping combines speed with security. Dirt-smart buying allows you to move fast by understanding costs and removing risk.

Your job as a dirt-smart buyer is not to rig your analysis to confirm what you want. Dont argue yourself into a deal. Your decision to buy is the product of work that you do after your heart flutters.

Your scoping--the information gathering, analysis and evaluation--begins the moment you say, I like this place.

For more excerpts, go to www.curtis-seltzer.com.