Field notes
Guides and honest answers about buying raw land, living on it, and making the most of your acreage. No jargon, no pressure, just what we would tell a friend.
Articles tagged owner financing. 11 articles.
What actually leaves your account to reserve a parcel, how low the down payment really goes, and what it does to the monthly.
State by state, what the deer country actually looks like where we sell, and what a hunting base camp costs when the bank won't finance it.
The bank's no wasn't about you, it was about the dirt. Federal guidance caps raw land at 65 percent loan-to-value, so banks want roughly 35 percent down. Here's who actually lends on land, and the simpler door most buyers use.
Land is one of the few big purchases you can verify yourself from a kitchen table. Six free county checks, about twenty minutes, and nearly every way an online land deal goes wrong is off the table. Access, not fraud, is what actually bites people.
100 days from your down payment to take your principal back or swap parcels, no reason owed. Here's exactly what it covers, the one rule that keeps it alive, and the calls that actually come in.
Most banks are not built to lend on small rural vacant land, and the handful that are want terms that defeat the purpose. Here is why, when a bank actually is the right call, and what owner financing costs by comparison.
Yes, from the day you sign. Here is the framework: what needs no permission, what needs a quick call first, and what waits for the deed. Plus the two rules that catch people, your county clock on camping and the line on commercial use.
No credit check, because we own the land and carry the note ourselves. Three documents, a down payment and a doc fee, and you're using the parcel that week. Here's exactly how it runs.
The last payment clears and then what? The six steps from paid-in-full to a recorded deed in your name, how long your county will actually take, and what to check on the draft before anyone signs it.
Every land site tells you the same three things and most of them are selling something. Here is what USDA, the FDIC and four Federal Reserve banks actually publish about rural land values, including the year one region went negative and the decade values fell by a third.
Two numbers decide whether a land purchase works, and neither is the price. Here is the honest version of both, including a correction to what this article used to say about using owner-financed land before it is paid off.
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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