A severed mineral half and a pipeline easement took 11 acres from $74,500 to $61k

Separate the three things, because they behave differently over a hold.

The severed mineral half. In most states the mineral estate is dominant over the surface, meaning the mineral owner has an implied right to use as much of the surface as reasonably necessary to get at the minerals, and that right exists whether you like it or not. How far that goes, and whether your state has an accommodation doctrine limiting it where the surface owner has an existing use, varies by state and is a question for a local attorney. What it means for a land bank is that a future buyer's title company will show the same exception you saw, and a builder or an end user will discount for it or ask for a surface waiver from the mineral owners. Getting a waiver signed by nine heirs across three states is a project. Price that into your exit, not your entry.

The unreleased 1981 lease. Usually a paperwork problem, sometimes not. Habendum clauses typically terminate the lease at the end of the primary term unless production or operations continue, so a lease with no production is likely expired by its own terms. Likely is doing work in that sentence. The record is what a title company reacts to, and an expired lease with no recorded release stays an exception until someone gets a release or the company is satisfied by affidavit. Some states have statutory procedures for clearing stale oil and gas leases from the record, some don't. Start that process now, in year one, while you have years of runway. Doing it under a 45 day closing deadline in year nine is how price concessions happen.

The pipeline easement. Read the grant for width, depth, count of lines permitted, and whether the grantee can add a second line within the same corridor. Blanket ingress language over the remainder is common in that era and it's the part that annoys future buyers most. A recorded amendment fixing the corridor to the surveyed location, if the pipeline company will sign one, is worth real money at exit. They sometimes will, for free, because it also limits their liability. Ask.

The $13,500 you saved is smaller than the survey you got them to pay for, long term. Now you know where the line is.

The other side of a transmission easement is that the pipeline company maintains an access route and keeps the corridor cleared. On two properties my crews have worked near, that meant a mowed strip and a gravel turnout that nobody had to pay for. It's not usable as legal access and it doesn't help your value directly. It does mean the vegetation on 1.9 acres is somebody else's job. Small consolation.

You found the two things that scare buyers and you found them before wiring. That's the whole job at this stage. My version of this was renovation, where the equivalent is opening one wall before you sign instead of after, and I've paid for the after version more than once.

Who normally does the work you did? I've been trying to figure out where I fit in this business and reading recorded documents at a county office is the first task described here that I'd genuinely enjoy. Is that a title examiner, a paralegal, a service you hire, or is it just something buyers are supposed to do themselves and mostly don't?

@plumb title examiners and abstractors do it for a living, and in some states abstracting is a licensed or heavily conventional role while in others anyone can pull records. Buyers are supposed to read the commitment and almost none read the underlying documents. There is a real service business in doing this for land buyers who don't want to, and the people who do it well get repeat work from land brokers.