Anyone have a good Home/Land acquisition story?

So let’s hear all those stories about how you got your land!  Does anyone out there have a good story or advice for how to go about acquiring land/homestead?

My journey started in 2003.  My wife and I were living in a brand-new spec home which we bought after being married about 10 days.  That  first home was great for the two of us, but when we became the three of us, suddenly that first house was far too small.

We were both established in our careers and we were looking for our forever home.  I had several priorities, but among the very top was acreage.  We worked with a realtor who I trusted and she tried to show us properties that had acreage, but mostly she fell short—though I am not criticizing her.  We looked at one home that sat on about 1.25 acres—barely meeting the definition of acreage—that was over a hundred years old, had low ceilings and a terribly uneven floor.  There were virtually no windows and the wooden walls had aged to a very dark shade of brown.  It was barely larger than our previous home and we were still planning on expanding our family.  I was wondering how I could even fit a Christmas Tree in the main room.  Obviously we passed.

We looked at another house with 3000 sq. Ft.  This was a very nice house with modern construction, a nice, open floor plan, and lots of natural light from the ample windows.  But the 1.1 acre lot was located on a golf course!  I don’t even play golf and there were strict rules about having things outside (equipment, vehicles, etc.). This felt like an intrusion on my privacy.  This is to say nothing of all the stray golf balls and all the people that would be casually walking right next to my backyard with no privacy—and by local covenants I could not put in a fence or a privacy hedge!  Obviously we passed.

One day we were out running errands and I just suggested that we drive down a local road to see if anything was potentially for sale.  Sure enough, about a mile down the road we saw a sign that read “10 acres for sale.  2.5 miles.”  The sign pointed down an intersecting road.  We turned down the road—a beautiful, winding country road—and we found the lot for sale.  I called the owner and asked if we could walk the property lines.  It turned out this was one of my former students!  I had only been teaching for 6 years at this point and somehow I had a former student who had land for sale.

We eventually made an offer and after a bit of back-and-fourth, we were new land owners!  It turns out that the land is just about perfect!  For me, it is a 5 minute drive school, but from appearances, we are located far from town.  We had a pond.  And we had a place that absolutely screamed “build a house here!”

So what are your stories?


Eric

The story how we bought our land isn't exciting.

We were bored one Saturday when we still lived in town and the wife messaged the person who had an ad out for an acreage for sale. At first I didn't even want to go as we hadn't even talked about moving/ didn't think we would be able to afford it.

We looked at it to basically waste an afternoons time and we both fell in love with the place and decided right there to make it happen.

The worst part is that the property was just surveyed and the owner was waiting on the land office to subdivide it so he could sell us 12 acres out of the original 160 acre property. This was just a waiting period that took 5 months.

My wife and I became...disillusioned... with the urban life we were living between wilderness adventures.

We decided to build an ocean going catamaran and moved to Oregon to do so.

When we saw the lockdowns, boat impoundments, enhanced marina regulations, and other losses of freedom in the ocean cruising life we decided to change tack.  

We were looking for raw land in this area, which is both of our favorite area in the world, when the very troubled owner of the RV park we were living in decided to surprise the residents with a trucks spraying herbicide everywhere. Along a world class fishing river.

I was able to whip up a mob, throw up some legal chaff, and convince the truck sprayers that they had more productive appointments elsewhere. We stopped the poison that day, and backed down the owners, but it was time to move.

We expanded our search to include land with a house, and our family stepped in to help.

Two months later, we had this wonderful 8 acres and a fantastic house.
Like us finding each other, us in this place was just meant to be.
We've never been happier, more grateful, and more fulfilled.

We bought a property near our daughter which it turned out that dear hubby hated.

I liked the property and still do.

My story begins with me hearing dear hubby saying how much he hated it and me getting tired of hearing the same old thing.

I got on the internet, and picked a city that was near where our daughter had a hunting lease and half way to our West Texas Property.

I picked out several properties, discussed the pros and cons of each then we ended up with two that we planned to look at.

We looked at one then dear hubby said we didn't need to look at the other one.

Ten years later, we are still very happy with that choice.

Jeff Lindsey wrote:My wife and I became...disillusioned... with the urban life we were living between wilderness adventures.

We decided to build an ocean going catamaran and moved to Oregon to do so. ......

That was the starting point for the adventure for my wife and I.  We weren't married yet, but finishing school in Oregon led to talks of getting land.  In the late 1980s, real-estate was already skyrocketing there and we both landed jobs around the North Dakota/Minnesota border.  My wife already had a raging animal addiction going on so while I got my feet under me at work, we camped in a 19 ft Aladdin trailer at the local KOA campground.....along with 5 rabbits, one pot-bellied pig, one dog, one cat and one pigeon (who flew to the shower stall with me each morning).  My wife would line up properties to visit after work and the one we found was closest to our work sites and had the greatest potential...19 acres with river running through it, outbuildings, old farm house with root cellar, mature tree lines, but also much of the acreage rented for crop production.  At $59K it seemed like a lot at that age and time, but my wife saw the opportunity for animal heaven!  I still recall the real estate agent pulling up to our trailer at the KOA in his Cadillac and pin-stripe suite to sign the papers as he surveyed clothes drying on the line and Oregon moss still clinging to the bumper of the Jeep. lol.....

I gave several realtors the specs for the property I wanted.  I made it clear to all that I was in no hurry AND that even if only one point was missing from the property they showed me, I would never look at another piece of property with them again.  I got two calls with a week. One was nothing like what I asked for … I told the realtor to never call me again.   The second realtor was spot on, and all the boxes were checked.

My son and I we're staying with a friend helping him clear some of his new land for his cabin to be built and ordering a few things he was going to need when i stumbled across a website selling land all over the place. we looked around the site and found our own piece of heaven nearby and they made it so ez to buy that i was able to take possession that same day with a small down payment. I've been tinkering with it ever since.      if anyone wants to check them out the address is,


https://www.classiccountryland.com/

This is fun!

We had a family of 5 living in a cute 800sf bungalow. We needed more room and wanted to escape the annoyances of neighbors, cities and people that was making us a little crazy. We had one realtor for two years and we looked at A LOT of properties. We wanted about 5 acres and close enough proximity to work downtown. Most places in our price range were tiny lots that had been separated from the 135 "tillable" acres, low and flood-prone, so horribly designed to be nearly unlivable, smelly (animals, smoke)... We kept oscillating on our list to try to find the sweet spot and it just wasn't materializing.

There was an asparagus farm I'd seen listed many times that was WAY out of our price range- almost double! After a year plus on the market the seller had reduced the price quite a lot (she didn't want to go through another asparagus season there). Her low ball selling price and our highest possible offer and a handwritten letter about how much we loved all the established fruits and how we could see our family living there for generations worked! We got it! There was another buyer offering more but she chose us. It's 12 miles to the state capital but you'd only know that if you climbed the tallest tree on the highest point.

After removing a closet, opening doorways and putting in a big window over the kitchen sink, our first morning in the house was April 1, 2012. I woke up  and said something like, "I don't know babe, maybe we took on too much this time." He agreed! But I was only joking because it was April Fool's Day! We've done alright and LOVE our spot. It feels like home.  We're happy hearing tractors rather than sirens.

I am super fortunate, please understand that it was the right place at the right time.

I grew up poor. I have two siblings and my parents worked between two-three jobs a piece to give us the best upbringing that they could.

My earliest memories were living at my grandfather's house in town while my parents and extended family worked on a cheap rundown house literally next to a railroad, a fuel oil company, an abandoned factory, and kiddy cornered to a car spray shop. It was industrial light zoned with five or six houses in a row nearby. The house was 'renovated' by a clergyman who had no business with a hammer but hey, who could fault the guy?

I grew up in that house, all through grade school, and then I left during college. My siblings left as well, my parents split leaving my mom the house, and then my grandparents started to get sick.

My mother moved in with my grandparents and tried to sell the house but there was a lot going against it. An old lien from my father, a very dated interior, and it was a quarter acre lot littered with invasive and debris.

I just got out of college, my brother didn't want the house and passed on it, and my mother was going to let the bank take it at that point and crush her credit. I offered to take on the property as I just left college and I needed a place to crash (Who wants to live with their parents again!?). I had a girlfriend at the time (My fiance now) and her best friend as a roommate so we could swing the cost while we got our feet underneath us.

I barely made bills while my fiancé went to law school but I ended up getting into the mil manufacturing life and the money started coming in as I get better with my work.

With this folding money, I have been starting to transform my little piece of property into my sanctuary. 7 Rough Cut Pine raised beds fenced off to grow my vegetables! I have built a chicken coop and attached run that I am incredibly proud of for someone who has never worked a chop saw before. I'm currently rehabbing a spot where an old barn burnt down back in the day and establishing some native gardens for pollinators. Life has a strange way of working out!

I’ve bought land twice.

I bought my first house in 2009, and even though it was half an acre I managed to fill it up with fruit trees within about year. Through the MLS, via Zillow, I found five acres within about a 15-minute drive from the house in 2010. Half the property was in a floodplain and the other half was a really steep hill. In hindsight, I probably should have waited for something better, but the price was something I could afford, and I was anxious to get land.

Although the steep part ended up being too steep to be very useful, and the floods wiped out thousands of dollars’ worth of trees, I had a great time working on those 5-acres until 2016 when I moved to the Chicago suburbs for my day job. As with the first house, the second house was filled with fruit trees in about a year, and the search for nearby land began again. I still have the old acreage, but at a 2-hour drive to get there it’s not feasible for most things and has generally fallen into neglect and needs to be sold (anyone want to buy some land near Lafayette, Indiana?). Like before I started monitoring Zillow for acreages nearby but being in a more developed/expensive area I wasn’t finding anything within my price range. In a few years of monitoring Zillow the most promising thing was 15-acres nearby, but they were looking for close to $20k an acre (yikes!).

In 2020 I tried bidding on some nearby farmland at the county’s tax lien sale, but the prices again were sky high. Due to covid craziness, all the sales were online and competition was fierce. The lien on the property I really wanted ended up going to someone in Florida for nearly the same price per acre as the one I found on Zillow. The original owner ended up eventually paying the back taxes, so I wouldn’t have gotten that property anyway.

Fast forward to 2021 and the covid craziness had gone away so the county tax lien sale was back to being in person. Mainly just local people were bidding. With less competition, I managed to get a lien on an eleven-acre property I was interested in for about $1,500 an acre. In Indiana, owners have a year from the tax sale to pay the back taxes so from October 2021 through October of  2022 I was trying to learn as much about the property as I could without actually owning it. Some trespassing may have occurred, but in April 2023 the trespassing stopped when a court order was finally entered transferring ownership to me.

I just bought land for the first time in my life. my income is pretty lean, as an artist i make a very very humble income...but several decades of working towards it i have a somewhat stabilized solid trickle coming in...in the arts it feels like quite an accomplishment, though not when compared to just about anything else! of course - being an artist is my right path and liveilihood, i have always known, if only it wasnt so freaking hard!!!
just to say - saving up and trying to outright purchase a solid rock bottom cheap home has been a huge struggle, and what i have been working to manifest for quite a few years.

i've been looking for several years -- in new england. specifically i wanted to buy a cheap fixer, like falling apart really a fixer...in western mass, or southern vermont. with some land.
that or raw land, but with some development, a driveway and a well was my bottom line, and ideally a barn/ shed/ structure/ power lines, and some clearing. an old farmstead with or without a house, or if a house one that was so far gone it didnt count in price.

a few years ago when i started looking, and was saving...although ooooo so slowly saving...was saving...i've been saving up for like 7 years. and back when - there were a lot of attractive deals in western mass, and southern vermont -- but soon after whatever weirdness of the last few years a lot of that disappeared...just as i finally got more ready. i even manifested some potential for a land share, trying to buy land with a friend (or 3) of mine...but one that was very serious, and looking for side by side plots ideally, or something big enough for two parcels, subdividable.

so yeah after many near misses over the last year and a half, where i got close to several deals i really wanted to make happen....i finally did buy something although....well its definitely a compromise, a for now deal. we will see how i feel in a few years and just whatever happened by then, if i do fix it up and what i can make happen.

its also not quite in my original target area, its much further west and north than i was originally looking, in the old mohawk stomping grounds of mohawk valley, upstate new york . i suppose i am just looking at it mostly as a stepping stone, to get myself in the general area and see whats what from there. its also extremely rural and woodsy farmy, a plus and a minus, but not too too far remote to still be within a 15 minute drive of a couple of small towns.

the good part of it - it was super cheap. under 10k total with all the fees to stamp the paper and all that.
i still have some of my savings, enough of a chunk to keep the momentum of continue to save- even after all the setting up and stocking up on everything money i have had to spend getting started. and will have to spend, just getting it into even my super low standards of habitable. so hopefully I will have enough to do some low budget fixing up AND still save up for whatever the next thing is, maybe finally manifest a land share side by side parcels in southern vermont or western mass with my friend.

actually mostly to start off is removing half of whats there!  that will be  a major costs, as well as getting everything functional again. a lot of this first work is sweat equity though, removing huge huge loads of trash, piles of tires, trash on the land scattered, its a lot of garbage and stuff that needs to go.
it has an older mobile on it thats like...tilted over! its bad! and a mess. then someone built a roof over it and then added on some side rooms. the immediate thought i have is to get rid of the mobile, leave the additions and rooms that were built off to the side and leave the roof. see if i can maybe do light clay straw and wrangle the building codes enough to just wall that off. this alone - would be a huge improvement.

i bought a trailer and packed most of my stuff, still moving my stuff, moving sucks! but going to camp out in the trailer while i clean and fix stuff... this winter in upstate new york, which maybe sounds more hardcore than it will be, we will see! worse case scenerio - i bail once real winter takes hold, time for a visit to my old west coast friends who live in a warmer place, and visit in siskiyou moutains where i still have a smattering of things left behind to ship or grab.

as above poster - i got it at a tax lien auction. we dont have that wait a year thing, and my place the guy passed away a few years ago and relatives didnt want it.

i was interested in several other properties, there were about 70 properties in the auction i participated in. actually i was interested in like most of the others and hardly paid much attention to the one i ended up with! which is kinda funny because i only had a super quick look around the one i ended up with. i did like the area though, and there were three others in that area that i was going to go for. by the time of the auction the ones i most wanted all went much much higher than i could do - even added onto the half my friend was willing to pony up if we could find something big enough to split/share, except for a few raw land deals that were totally raw land, no clearing nothing ...and badly in need of clearing. there were a few others we couldve done, but in suburbana ish....areas...in the towns on tiny postage stamps...old houses in more populated areas of montgomery county. quite a few of those houses went for 25-40k...which was about all of our budget, but like ALL of our budget.

so i went around and checked them all out, and toured also around vermont a lot late summer and into fall to try to look around vermont. spent so much time looking at other places. but ah sigh. it is possible that i got the best deal i could for the now, like maybe it fits, it rhymes somehow....
and theres a bunch of plus sides that are still settling in to me. i can see the beauty behind the trash! and the ....potential. it is 1 acre with a well and septic and was all hooked up and even legal, registered and established and built with permits. i has an old small shed that i definitely have taken a liking to, and plan to run my small art biz out of....
once i get it cleared and ready.

the views are great, very few close by neighbors, eyeing my neighbors across the street baling up his hay/straw =) for later usefullness....farms nearby, super quiet. some nice trees i have already befriended, and a lot of wild grape and native raspberries well established.
the major plus, no rent, landlords, or mortgage, and enough money left over to fix it up at least some....and enough time and energy to take on this project. my expenses will be well below my income, and thats actually saying something, since again i am a full time professional artist, living on a shoestring. i can swing it fairly easily, with minimal bills and even minimal taxes. i think once i get over the initial outlay, i can inch along and even go back to saving up, while doing the slow improvements and landscaping and fixing on the cheap.

i'm fairly hardy, or hearty? well i'm both =) i've lived in raw sheds and cabins and off grid super minimalist style...without indoor plumbing and what not, so i am currently glamping out until i get some of the ground work done here.
in a lot of ways i am even looking forward to winter. after the whirlwind of the last few months - i want some solid hibernation down time....laying flat time, like all the chinese gen z kids are wisely talking about. inward curling.
i think i will spend most of the winter living really tiny, in more ways than one and just hibernate for a while. next spring will definitely be a get to work time.