jesse markowitz wrote:Hi there!
My girlfriend and I are looking to take the jump and finally buy land within the next year or so. I wanted to ask what factors you personally would consider when purchasing land. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head-
total price
price per acre
total acreage
seclusion
distance from nearest town
population of area
slope
what property was previously used for
any water source
taxes
Am I missing anything important that you would consider?
Also- how would you rank these in importance? Would the lack of south facing slope be an absolute deal breaker? Would you only buy land where you are completely secluded? I personally think my list is arranged from most to least important, simply because I wrote down what came to mind first.
Thanks for your help!
Our requirements were as follows:
- at least 20 acres in a mountainous region
- primarily south facing (we live on a north-facing mountain now, and deep, dark winters suck)
- total privacy from neighbors
- low property tax rate
- no restrictions
- extremely rural
- end of road location
- a dependable water source (creek, well, river, etc)
- something that we could afford to buy while still owning our current house and move onto at a later time
- a habitable structure (a tiny trailer would have been fine as long as it wasn't super trashed)
- hot summers and warm spring and fall
- financeable if not cheap
enough to pay cash for
- few social services (= lower taxes)
- friendly people (not a deal breaker and hard to judge anyway)
- somewhat of a blank slate, meaning not a bunch of junked cars or oodles of trash to remove (not a deal breaker)
- four seasons but not buckets of snow (not a deal breaker)
Factors that we did not deem important:
- poverty rate
- employment rate
- crime rate
- quality of schools
- existing fencing, ponds, barns or other farm infrastructure
- proximity to friends and family (we are close with our family and will miss seeing them regularly but are also very independent and can thrive on just occasional visits)
We looked at desert land (NV and AZ), the Ozarks (NW Arkansas and southern Missouri), western North Carolina, West Virginia, SW Virginia, northern Georgia, SE Kentucky, and eastern TN. While I love the peace of the desert, building a homestead in an arid climate seemed like an exceedingly daunting task. The Ozarks were pretty but not quite mountainous enough. NC was too expensive per acre. Couldn't find anything we really loved in WV or GA. We needed to be able to research property assessments and boundary lines online, and some counties in VA and most of KY do not have this data available. We also needed to be able to see any potential property in aerial views from Google or Bing maps. We needed to be able to do 95% of our research of a listing from a computer and then spend the money to fly out and see it ourselves if had serious potential (foregoing traditional "vacations" for several years and utilizing FF miles).
We closed on the second of two properties we looked at in person in eastern Tennessee. It is in an extremely impoverished county (2nd poorest in TN) that has a lot of pill use and meth problems. There's a junkyard a half mile down the road. And another one two miles away. It is a dining desert to say the least. It is most definitely the Bible Belt, and we might have to start going to a real church (as opposed to my backyard "church"). We will need to drive at least 30 minutes for a decent meal out. An hour for home/farm supplies. These things don't matter to us. There are no jobs, so we plan to engage in a variety of self-employment endeavors and find the best ones that work for us coupled with and extreme take on frugality. Everyone we have met has been incredibly friendly. Our neighbor watches out for our place. People have randomly invited us into their homes for a home-cooked meal not knowing any more than our names. We've been asked if we need financial help from folks much, much poorer than us. Our land was tended to as a hunting spot (was farmed more than 20 years ago) and is a blank slate waiting for our future gardens and animals. Our tiny cabin is water tight and cozy with a
wood stove but plenty big enough for just us two. While our land may not be perfect for everyone, it is lush and beautiful and just perfect for us, waiting to be sculpted into our shangri-la. We can't wait to move to our homestead this summer.
I sincerely hope you find what you're looking for!
~ Mitsy