Advice on Land Purchase

Hello....

First non-introduction post,

I have an oppourtunity to buy 30 acres of land with a house on it.....I am fine with the condition of the house, and think the land is very reasonably priced....my offer is prepared to go to the current owner, but I am having some second thoughts.



The land slopes to the NE.....I have included a rough image of the layout...the legend is as follows
Blue: Water
Green: Trees
Tan: Cleared
Star House Locations

I have included the dimensions and elevations in the image for those willing to give me some advice.

Here's the juicy detail, I have never seen it, I am half a country away...

This property is in hardiness zone 4 and I don't know if the slope is going to be a big deal.....

any advice would be welcome......thanks.

The elevation drop from side/side, and front/back indicates a nice, gentle slope. The actual contour lines may tell another story.

Without seeing the land, it looks nice to me from the general layout. Again, without seeing the land, it seems (to me) that the house is in the wrong place.

Good luck.

I appreciate the input...thanks. I have ha contour map of the area attached here.....if that helps with your assessment.
I seems to be quite gentle indeed.

what in your estimation is the best spot for the house? Southwest Corner?

We do plan to build a new house and leave the existing structure as a workshop/ guest house....


Thanks again

Zone 4 can get mighty cold in the winter time, especially if there is an Arctic wind blowing from the north.
If I were to build on a site like that, I would want to maximize the winter sun falling on the house, and to block the Arctic winds.
Therefore, I would seriously look to the south side of those clumps of trees.
Although it would certainly be nice to have a good view of the lake! The lake looks big enough to offer some 'lake effect' moderation of climate.

Are those trees all evergreens? Some deciduous trees on the south side of the house would give you some nice summer shade once they grow tall enough.

I'm new here and this is my first post (hello all) ...that aside, the first thing that I noticed looking at this was that the pond/lake is situated to the north of the bulk of the property - this could lead to some pretty harsh winter winds considering you'd be in zone 4 where the lake will most assuredly ice over. The steep-ish hill on the north side of the lake will help to buffer the wind somewhat, but the winds will definitely whip through from the northwest - the worst. Also, I noticed that there appear to be a lot of marshy looking sections from the topographic map combined with the satellite view... I spent many months studying these types of maps while looking for property myself in a zone 5 region of the northeast US so can tell you, when you see anything like that on those maps, you MUST see the property in person. Many of the properties I thought looked pretty good from above, just maybe a little wet, were actually saturated and often even inundated swamp land.

One more type of map you should get your hands on is a soil map. In the US we have the NRCS soil survey data available online - not sure what the equivalent is in canada or other countries, but sure the data's available. Often times you can get a better perspective of where the water table is (if it's really high, for example), how often an area floods, whether the soil will support some/any of the planting you plan, etc.

Looks like the majority of trees on and surrounding the property are, in fact, conifers, so the soil is likely to be quite acidic to start - not a deal breaker, but definitely something to consider. I'm curious when the land was cleared. The satellite image shows it looking not too badly scarred up, but hard to really tell and there's no way to know when the shot was taken. That's another thing I'd be concerned with if you don't have a good number of photos taken on site and have no way to see it yourself before purchasing.

Overall, I would NEVER buy land that I couldn't see myself, in person, but that's just me I guess

Let us know how it goes

We have at this point decided against this piece of land...thanks for your input, and we are going to keep hunting. We'll keep you updated