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 zoning. 10 articles.
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.
The county rewrote its entire Land Development Code in December 2023, so most of what is written about buying land here describes rules that no longer exist. This is the current version: the 120-day RV rule, the septic ban in the floodplain, and why you cannot get an address until you cut the driveway.
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.
Legal access, addressing, septic and groundwater are the four things that decide whether a cheap Klamath County parcel is a bargain or a problem. Here is what the county actually requires.
Twenty-one days of camping per six months, and the structure under that number is the part people get wrong. What Klamath County actually allows for tents, RVs and tiny homes, and the hunting-season provision almost nobody knows about.
Six reasons the price is what it is, from 2.9 people per square mile to Colorado's 35-acre well rule and a county code that caps camping at 14 days a quarter. All of it verifiable before you buy.
On a lot of rural ground there is no zoning at all, and that is not the same as no rules. What actually governs your parcel, how to find it in an afternoon, and the four traps we have walked into ourselves.
A tiny home is not a legal category. It is an RV, a manufactured home or a site-built dwelling, and which one it is decides where it can go, how it is financed, how it is taxed and whether it holds value. Same house, three completely different outcomes.
Almost every county separates recreational RV use from living in one, and the line is a number of days. That number runs from 21 in six months to 180 a year depending on where you are. Here are the actual ordinances, including the one county that bans generators and the one whose widely repeated limit is wrong.
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.
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.
The Buyers List
New parcels come in all the time, and the good ones move fast. Join the Buyers List and we will send you a note when land that fits hits the site. A short welcome series, then new land as it comes in. Unsubscribe anytime.
One email at a time. Unsubscribe whenever you like, and we never share your address.
What you get
