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 property access. 8 articles.
BLM land next door is a real feature and one of the few raw-land features buyers search for. It also does not give you a way in, and it is not permanent. What the statutes and BLM own numbers actually say, and the two free maps to check before you buy.
Raw land can be entirely real, entirely titled and entirely taxed current, and still be a parcel you cannot legally drive to or get a septic permit on. Five questions catch almost all of it, four of them are free, and all five are answerable before you send a dollar.
A small parcel is not there to hold a herd. It is there to put you where the animals already are, on your own ground, with your truck parked and your camp set. What to look for, what it costs, and what you can do before the deed is in your name.
Legal access and physical access are two different things, and the gap between them is where buyers get burned. What the three kinds of access actually mean, what the fix really costs when nobody will publish a number, and the five checks to run before you sign.
Land without an address is not land without a record. How to identify any parcel from a map, a coordinate or a neighbor, what the county actually holds on it, and why the unclaimed property database everyone recommends will never find you land.
Your title policy insures that you own the parcel your deed describes. It takes an explicit exception for where that parcel sits, how big it is and what is encroaching on it. Here is which survey answers those questions, when you genuinely need one, and the comma in your deed that is worth 280 acres.
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.
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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