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The questions worth asking before you sign, and the ones most people find out about afterward. Deeds and easements, access and surveys, what a zoning designation actually permits. This is the homework, written by people who do it on every parcel they buy.
Most easement articles hand you a taxonomy. The question that actually decides whether a parcel works is whether you can legally reach it, and what somebody else is allowed to do on it once it is yours.
The parcels that work for a cabin and the parcels that do not usually look identical in photographs. Here is what separates them, including why the 200 square foot permit exemption does not do what people think it does.
The house is the part you can change your mind about. The county, the soil and the property line are not. Ten things to settle before you buy the ground, in roughly the order they bite.
Land left in a dead person's name does not sit still. It fractionates, it accrues unpaid taxes, and it can end up sold at auction or split among cousins who have never met. Every one of those is preventable, and all of the prevention happens early.
There is no legal definition of unrestricted land in any state we sell in. The word usually means no zoning or no HOA, which are two different claims, and six or seven other layers of restriction survive either way. Here is how to find out what really binds a parcel.
An earlier version of this article told readers they were protected if somebody else owned the minerals under their land. The state regulators say close to the opposite. Here is what the mineral estate actually entitles its owner to do, and the free afternoon at the county that settles the question.
The parcel price is the part everybody checks and the part that almost never decides anything. What decides it is the soil, the water, how far you are from a hospital that admits patients, and when the title actually lands in your name. Three of those four you can answer before you spend a dollar.
While you are here
Pima County, AZOcotillo, cholla and prickly pear crowd a raised, flat pad across the middle of this acre, the natural spot for a home with a view of the Tucson Mountains. It sits in Diamond Bell Ranch about 33 miles west of Tucson, at 3,297 feet where summers run a little milder. Cell service is strong, and the zoning lets you build when you're ready.
Putnam County, FLArea photosHoot Owl Road is paved and power runs right past the lot, which is more than most of this old Satsuma subdivision can say. It's a quarter acre in St. Johns River country, twelve minutes from Palatka and a short run to Dunn's Creek and Crescent Lake. The lot is mapped wetland and most of it sits in a FEMA flood zone, so it's priced for what it is today.
Hudspeth County, TXArea photosGuadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, sits about a half hour east of this ground, and the salt flats that set off a war in 1877 are closer than that. It's open desert outside Salt Flat, Texas, with no zoning and no HOA, so you can pitch a tent this weekend and build off-grid whenever you get around to it.
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