Rural land provides special challenges when you start your quest for buying land. Most people are not aware of the steps required to find acreage for sale and to successfully acquire it.
You should know how to find land before it goes on the market, to investigate it properly, to negotiate the terms and conditions you need, to establish a plan on what to do with it once you have it, and how to accomplish an effective marketing program.
Today we will start a discussion on investigating a particular tract of land.
In my opinion, the parcel should have road frontage on a paved county road, however the road does not have to be paved as long as it is a county maintained road. (This can be determined at the county engineer's office.)
And the piece of land should be pleasing to the eye when you walk up to it. As you are looking it over, it should have healthy looking pines and oaks, (if it has trees). If the pines seem to be unhealthy or perhaps dwarfed, that could alert you to possible septic system problems.
Also if you see a large area of the acreage where there are no trees, yet the area is surrounded by trees, and there are only small ferns growing in that open area, that could tell you right off that the property probably would have to have elaborate septic systems.
This is important information for yourself as a buyer, or for the resells, if you are planning on dividing the tract. It could mean the difference between average cost systems or very expensive septic systems.
Another thing to look for is the presence of fire hydrants as they indicate the presence of a waterline. The color that the hydrants are painted normally indicates the size of the line. A six inch or larger waterline is always good news!
Also look for manhole covers in the street as they typically indicate the presence of a sewer line. This could be very important information because your county might tell you that you have to connect to it! That could get very expensive depending on the distance a line would have to be installed.
It would not be fun to get a great piece of land and then realize that you have to install an expensive water or sewer line!