Dylan Bennett

Hi again everyone,

Sorry, things came up with my family at the end of the year and I never got a chance to thank you all for your responses. This is some amazing information, thank you all so much! I'm thinking more strongly of purchasing land soon now, so I'll definitely look around in the areas mentioned. And the idea of taking over an old farm is a good one -- I'd never really considered that, to tell you the truth.

If you have any more info or insight on the matter, I'd love to hear it, and thanks again!

-Dylan

Excellent, Kirk, thanks so much for your response!

Yeah, I realize that there are certainly trade-offs to be had. I was recently searching for property and found a real gem: 83 acres for $27,500. However, it's smack in the middle of forested area and doesn't even have a road leading to it! It'd be an experience, certainly, dealing with something like that, but I think I'd have to make sure that I'm down for that kind of commitment before I dive head-first into it.

Thanks so much for the links to the books. I'll have to check them out and do some more reading on the financials of it all. I'm thinking that $50,000 would be a good starting point to get myself set up, especially for what I want to accomplish. And yeah, visiting areas I'm interested in and talking to the locals is a very good idea.

Thanks again for your help!

Hi there everyone!

This is my first post to Permies, but I've been lurking for a while. I'm hoping you all can give me some advice on buying some land, and preferably in the sweet, sweet East Coast!

So I currently live in Toronto, but I grew up in a small town and I have some experience farming/being outdoors. I'm by no means seasoned, but I'm not entirely new to working with the land. What I'm hoping to do is to purchase some land wherein I can build a house and settle down. I'm thinking that something around 10 acres would be the minimum, and more would of course be welcome. I want to be able to do a lot of stuff on the land -- build a house, grow food, practice permaculture, raise animals, preferably harvest wood for lumber. Also, access to water would be a benefit, but of course that's not always possible.

Anyway, all dreaming aside, I suppose I just have a few questions about how to prepare for this big step in my life. Any idea on how much something like this would cost, and how I would best go about buying the land? Should I go through a realtor or would it be best to just talk to people and buy some land off of someone who's selling? What about splitting a property? Is that worth it

Does anyone have any advice on what to look for on the land or what to avoid? I've noticed that there are large pieces of land for super cheap, but they have practically no access and have nothing set up. Realistically, how much work is it to do something like: install a road? Set up a connection to a power grid? Deal with the Internet? Dig a well?

Similarly, if I were to buy something that were riddled with trees, how much work would it be to cut some of them away to make space for a house? What would I do with the trees? How much time would this take, since I'd have to get rid of the stumps too?

I realize this is a lot of questions, but it's something I've been thinking about for a while and it's dawning on me how much I don't know about the whole process. Thanks in advance for all of your help everyone!