Land to Buy

Well, one of the first things that you have to do in the how to build house process is to find some land to buy and acquire it. It helps if you have a rich uncle to bequeath you some, but it doesn't work out that way for most of us. We did, however, get some help from my (Tonya's) family during our search process. I'll get to that in a bit.

We have pretty much always known that we were going to go back to my hometown and buy some land. I always wanted a plot of land similar to what my parents own, out in the hills, surrounded by trees, and where you can't see your neighbor. When we decided that the time was right, that is what we began to search for. I began to look on the internet first to see what you could get and how much it might cost. We had a budget in mind and a desired acreage. I wanted at least five acres, but wanted to live less that 20 minutes from the city. We have three young children, and I don't want to live too far from a decent grocery store or hockey practice. Of course schools are a consideration with kids, also.

In my hometown, there are about seven directions that you can go out of town to get to undeveloped acreages of land to buy. I'm not sure if Ed has mentioned yet that I am a bit picky, but there were only five directions that I was willing to look into, and only two that I really wanted and one didn't have any good building land for sale. So, we focused on this "sweet spot." We ended up looking at properties in three of the other directions, but they were all eliminated for various reasons: too dry, too exposed to harsh weather, not enough bang for the buck, or too far away from free babysitting (read parents).

Buying land, a car, a house, or anything major is all about being patient. I write this, but am definitely not great at staying patient through the process. That's my husband's job.

I searched internet listings through various realtor and MLS websites. I also found listings on eBay and Craigslist. Our biggest obstacle was that we didn't, and still don't, live in the town we were searching. It was hard, because we couldn't just drive to see a site if something caught my eye.

Finally, when we thought that we had found a property worth driving the better part of a day to see, we contacted a realtor. After I mentioned all that about patience, it's a bit funny, because I only looked for about two weeks when I found what I wanted.

My parents live in the town, so I gave them the job of scouting out the property and giving me their first impressions. My mom fell in love immediately. It is on a canyon and I think that she was ready to move there the next day. Of course, she was probably imagining her grandchildren living nearby, and I'm sure that influenced her opinion.

My dad is a bit more practical. He saw potential, but also noticed drawbacks. The land was less acreage than we had wanted. It was only 3.81 acres, and we were looking for 5-10 acres. Probably two thirds of those acres were part of the canyon, which means that they weren't usable for building on. Also, it happened to be one of the smallest lots in the neighborhood, so we wouldn't be very far from our neighbors.

Another small drawback was that the land was a mess. A few blizzards combined with many years of neglect left a lot of downed trees to be removed. Of course, when you're buying something, a minus like this is actually a plus. Since my family is pretty good with chainsaws and stacking wood, we were able to get a bit of a gem that happened to be hidden under a pile of junk. I'll post about all that some other time.

My parents took lots of pictures and extensively discussed the land with us over the phone. Because we couldn't leave town immediately, we actually made an offer on the land without seeing it. The offer was about 20% less that the asking price, was contingent upon us liking it when we saw, and had a contingency for it passing a land survey. It all seems pretty crazy to me now as I retell it.

At the same time we bid, someone else also made an offer on it, so our first offer was rejected. We didn't really want to get into a bidding war for a piece of land that we had never seen, so we increased our offer by only 5% to keep it in play. To our surprise, it was accepted with the contingencies still in place! We drove out the following weekend to look at the land as well as properties in a few other areas nearby. It was by far the best property we saw, and we thought it could be really stunning when cleaned up.

So, now we own what we think is a great piece of land. You always wonder if you got a good deal when you are making a purchase like this. There weren't any similar properties to compare it to, so it's really tough to tell if it was priced right.

Since buying our land, there have been a couple of things that have made us feel good about our decision. The first one is that on the day that we closed on our land, we were offered 125% of our purchase price. We declined the offer, and they then offered 155% of our purchase price just days later. We also turned that down. We didn't think that we could find a better replacement, even with the extra income from the sale. Whether or not we made the right decision business wise is debatable, but we felt like we got a good deal on the purchase.

The other big thing that we feel good about the timing of our purchase. I think that, had we invested money in the stock market instead of buying land, we wouldn't have the funds to make a purchase now! It seems to have worked out thus far.

Well, I think that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this story of our site selection for project how to build house and how we found land to buy.