How Do I Buy Land In The Country?
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Looking to get out of the big city, get a little land, and just learn to relax in the country? Maybe have some cattle, or a horse or donkey or two? If so, this is a column that will interest you.
Maybe you’ve always dreamed of your own place in the country. Here’s how to buy rural land.
Determine how you intend to use the property and what features you desire, such as ponds, trees, or easy accessibility to main roads. Consider area amenities such as grocery shopping, banks, and hospitals. Narrow your search for the perfect spot by driving through rural areas, searching classified ads in newspapers or on the Internet, or contacting real estate agents about rural properties for sale. Walk over the property and obtain topographical maps of the site from the U.S. Geological Survey to learn about the terrain and features of the land.
Contact local government offices to find out about rights and restrictions that could affect your use of the desired property, such as zoning ordinances, historical restrictions or environmental regulations. Obtain prices of other, comparable land sales in the area from a local real estate agent. Ask the current owner for a professional survey of the property to determine boundary lines. Arrange to finance the land purchase through a private lender or the current property owner. Consult a real estate attorney or agent about contract terms before making your offer on the rural land.
To make full use of the property in the future, find out about all government restrictions or regulations on the land before you make an offer to buy the property. Obtaining financing on undeveloped land through conventional lenders can be difficult; your best bet for financing may be a private lender or the current property owner. Most lenders will require a subordination clause that requires you to pay off the balance of the loan on the land before taking out another loan to build a home or other structure.
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2 Comments
Brian W. Humbrecht
August 19th, 2007
at 12:57pm
Chris, having purchased rural [undeveloped] property a couple of times in my life, I believe you missed a critical area - UTILITIES! One critical item before you can build a house, is a ‘perk’ test to check the ground for drain field for a septic tank/field; unless, public sewage is available. You should ask the owner/seller of the property if a ‘perk’ test has every been run & what the results where. Next is drinking water. If their is not public drinking water available, has a well been drilled or what is depth of local wells? You will problably have to drill a well & install a drain field before you can get a construction loan [or at least before the first ‘draw’] for a house. Is there any ‘warranty’ such as a ‘buy back’ claues, within a period of time, if you can not pass a ‘perk’ test or get adequate drinking water from a well? Next, is Electricity - who is the local public electrical utility & how much will it cost you to connect? [You might have to pay for cost of installing a line from the nearest ‘main’?]. You might also want to check on availability of Natural Gas or more likely Propane availablity. There are some alternatives to conventional septic field & well [e.g. dry ‘closed’ septic system or water cistern filled by rain or tank truck, spring, electrical generator run by solar, wind, diesel or propane, etc.] But altternatives are not necessarily cheap & may need approval/persmission of local government and/or finance company for construction. BWH
Fes
August 29th, 2007
at 9:41pm
when buying land from a private seller and not through an agent what has to be done to close the deal? how do i go about doing a deed search or property bouderies and all the other important things that a realtor would normaly do?