anyone familiar with buying an empty lot/land?

[Chiropteran]

I live in Arlington, near where I work. It's a fine place to live, but housing is incredible expensive and having a house on an acre of land, for example, is all but out of the question.

I'd really like to own some real land though. Condo life is great, but there are annoyances associated with knowing that you really don't truly own everything and can't really do whatever you want with your space, you are limited by the condo association, and there are fees and such.

So I have this idea that I can continue to live in Arlington in my condo, while investing and/or building a nice house further out where land is cheaper and it's viable to own a couple acres.

Optimally, I'd like to buy a plot of 2-5 acres for $10,000 or less. I know it's possible, I have seen listings with prices in that ballpark. I could save up and buy a plot of land for that kind of money in a year or two.

Then, step 2 is to build a fairly tiny & cheap house on that land. Just searching google shows numerous cheap house plans or ideas around $10k, which I could afford to do after another couple of years from when I buy the land.


Then, at my leisure, I can save money and eventually build a more conventional 4 bedroom full sized home for $100,000+, and use the original cheap cabin as a guest house or something.

Questions that come to mind though:

How can I get utilities? Do I just need to buy land that is already connected with the "grid" if I want electricity and phone service (or water, though I understand a well can be dug in many areas)? Is there any sort of website database that shows which areas are wired for high speed internet even if they aren't already developed?

I figure this will be my biggest limitation, being that I want a location where fast wired internet is possible. Satellite based internet has too much latency and I need at least 5mb speeds so dsl is probably not good enough.

Are any particular states better for this type of thing? I understand that in Virginia I'd need building permits and forms for every little thing I do, is there any place where you can just buy land and do whatever the hell you want on it without needing extra permits?


Anyway, that is my 5 year plan.

 

[sjwaste]

Pretty broad question. I'd say first figure out where you want to live. From there, you'll find lots for sale with or without all sorts of things. Road access, electrical, water, gas, sewer, telecom may or may not be on site. If they're not, you'll have to pay to get them connected. That will vary by location - some might be free based on proximity to existing utilities, some may be prohibitively expensive because you're 2 miles from the nearest hookup.

The other thing is that financing land only is often expensive - usually a big down payment required and higher interest - since the collateral is less marketable than an existing homesite. If you're looking for cheap land, though, presumably you're going all cash.

You are correct that VA will require permits, but at least in VA, most (all?) is at the local level. You'll have to research town by town to find one that suits you best.

But from my perspective, none of this matters unless the land is in a place where you want to live. I'd suggest starting from there and figuring out what it will cost to do what you want to do. FWIW, I owned the ground under me when I lived in Arlington, and that shit is so expensive we just sold and went to Maine! If high speed telecom is your thing, unfortunately that's mostly in high density areas since they need to recoup the investment in all that fiber. I went from FTTH (Fios) in Ballston to expensive 30/5 cable up here. Fios was cheaper for 30/15 service (and it often ran at closer to 50/30).

 

[T9D]

It costs $50,000 a mile to run electrical lines to a house. I looked it up before. Might as well go solar if it's to far out.

Your best bet is to buy land with some junker mobile home on it already. That way you at least have well and septic. Well and septic can cost you $20,000 each. Plus you might be able to get away with building a cabin on it and not getting questioned. Otherwise you might not be able to build some $10,000 cabin. Certain land is zoned for that though. Most likely you'll have to get approved and inspections and be up to code. I don't think 2 - 5 acres is going to let you get away with a cabin and not well and septic and some other codes take care of.

As far as internet. Maybe you'll get LTE out there. If not it's mobile or satellite. I actually bought a little country mobile home on 3 acres a few years back. Got it for insane low price of 10k. Place looked like it was a garbage dump. Another $10k and it was a beautiful serene place bordering a national forest area with huge pine trees and a river not far away. It was so peaceful. I decided to sell it for a decent profit though lol. Anyway, the internet suuuuucked out there. All I could get was dial up or 3g. Barely 3g. So I ended up just watching directv mostly.

Another maybe better option is to buy a the lot. And park a 5th wheel trailer on it. You won't be living there so it should be fine to "vacation" there. Then some day build a real house.

 

[T9D]

By the way it's an amazing feeling being out in the Country. It's like all the crap in the world has no bearing on you whatsoever. You're in your own peaceful world and life. Not one bit of the politics, crime, garbage of the world matters. It's like it's all a million miles away on another planet.

I'm just a single guy so I got super bored out there alone living full time. I had also bought a place on 25 acres. Got it for $40k. It had a small little home with a mobile home built onto it. Total dump but had tons of potential. Had well and septic. Had some solar power. Electricity was 1/2 mile away. bought it off a little old lady who couldn't afford to fix the solar. Winter was on us and she had to sell. She had no heat, she'd die. I ended up selling it for cost because I didn't want to live full time out there that far by myself fixing it up. Prices went up a lot right after so someone got a killer deal. Probably should have held if for a while.

But recently I just found another property. 40 acres with a well and septic. It has a 5th wheel trailer on it. It's on the main road too. And get this the lady who listed it didn't realize that the property went all the way to the river. So she never listed it as riverfront. Guy was desperate to sell since it sat for so long. So I got him to dump it for 18k. 18k for 40 acres of riverfront property with well and septic lol. That's nuts.

Anyway, you want something on the land. Otherwise it's a huge pain and expensive to start putting stuff on it. And you can't get away with just having bare land and then one day there is a house or something on it. If it's already got stuff no matter how bad of shape then if you don't get caught you can get away with about anything.

 

[clamum]

$20,000 for a well? Jesus christ. I don't know the exact figure, but when my parents had a well put in (probably around 20 years ago) it was nowhere near $20k. This was in Michigan FWIW.

 

[Puppies04]

I really wish I lived somewhere a bit less crowded, land round here is £10,000/acre for a bare field with no power water installed and no chance/low chance of getting planning permission.

 

[T9D]

$20,000 for a well? Jesus christ. I don't know the exact figure, but when my parents had a well put in (probably around 20 years ago) it was nowhere near $20k. This was in Michigan FWIW.

Depends how far and what they have to dig through. If you want a shallow well it's a lot cheaper but the water quality could suffer a lot. And they might have water close to the surface. Even then you want to go farther down for better water. You can be fine with a shallow one though but I'd rather go deeper and not chance it. Then you have to get it all hooked up with electricity, pump house, piping to home, etc. You could get away with $10k or so in certain areas. I'm just saying though, with well's never ever anticipate a low number. It could be easy or super hard and expensive depending on what you hit or don't hit. Could dig a hole and it's totally dry and have to start over. Could hit total rock and take forever. Just depends, it varies wildly.

 

[highland145]

What SJ said on the financing, if you do. I bought 9ac for 27K with a 12 X20 handi house on it...score for me... bank made me put 30% down even though the comps were $5.5K/ac. And it took me a while to find one that would finance raw land.

 

[mkrohn]

Not worth it to build right now... are you an expert plumber and electrician?

 

[DrPizza]

$20,000 for a well? Jesus christ. I don't know the exact figure, but when my parents had a well put in (probably around 20 years ago) it was nowhere near $20k. This was in Michigan FWIW.

Depends a lot, of course, on the depth of the well. But, 20k is at least double the normal price for most areas of the U.S. Huge variation on septic systems; 20k is at the high end.

 

[Chiropteran]

To clear up a couple things-

I'd still live in my condo in Arlington. This is something I'd like to do to have as a vacation home/weekend place/investment/insurance policy sort of thing. It's not my intention to build a house and live there regularly, not anytime soon.

It's like a 1-2 years to save up and buy land.

Another 2-3 years to save up more and build or have built a very basic $10,000 cabin.

15+ years into the future, have a nice house built on the land, after paying off my condo.

There wouldn't be any financing involved for the first 2 phases. Only possibly for the final "nice" house construction, if I ever reach that point.

>Your best bet is to buy land with some junker mobile home on it already.

Seems like that makes things a lot easier, though I'm not afraid of the idea of getting proper building permits and such to build a house. I'm in no rush.


This is kind of a hobby idea more than an "i need a place to live" idea. If it takes a few years longer than I plan because of permits or complexity, that is okay.