Land is hard to find....

[momof3boys3cats]

Ok here is the drift-- I am a mother of 3 boys and my husband is disabled w/ MD. We have been looking for land in Ohio on land contract. SOmething like 2-5 acres. Around 1-2,000 down 300 a month. We have found some leads, but I just recently was talking to my sister and we are being drawn more towards Ky. I have a lot of family there that is looking for land for us. Not many of them have land just 2 but not much land that is " livable". So, if anyone knows of any places to look or call about land on land contract in KY let me know. Northern Ky prefered. We want to find a place before August. We want a place we can place a trailer that has road access to water and electric. We found a few leads through my sister that she is driving by for us but anyone else that may know of anything just let me know.

[MisFitFarm]

I have advertised in the ShowNTell for a place on land contract before and got good responses. But I found my new farm on Craigslist by accident, and he wasn't even advertising it for sale on contract. I took a chance and emailed him to ask if he would consider it, and I got lucky.

Try placing an ad in one of the free trade papers in the area you are interested in. I don't know if they have a ShowNTell in that area or not, but there is also the ThriftyNickel, which I think is the American Classifieds now. Advertise for Wanted to buy on land contract XXX amount down, xxx per month. Good luck!

[Michael Kawalek]

Hi Mom
Before we bought our land I first typed out a cover letter outlining all the things I was interested in a potential property. I then mailed this off to retails local to the areas I was interested in.

Who you want to look for is an agricultural realtor rather than a regular urban/suburban realtor. Most likely you can get a referal from a standard realtor in whatever area you're interested in.

That's how we hooked up with the realtor that located our property. He was actually a referal of a refleral of a referal that specialized in only farm and ranch properties.

The areas I chose to search in were first based on getting a copy of the "Atlas of California" which had maps of every demographic detail you can think of. Rainfall, population density, vegetation, ect. We picked three areas based on adequate rainfall (priority here in California) low people density, and forest cover. The whole process took the good part of a year, but the actual evaulation of properties down on the ground only took 2 weeks.
Michael

[wyld thang]

You might consider bumping up your search to include places with 10-15 or so acres. 2-5 acres is real popular with city people, and there is a sweet spot where more acreage is cheap or cheaper because it's "too much" land for them to handle, but not enough to farm profitably.

For instance our 10 acres plus dumpy house was the same price as a 5 acre lot with nothing in the same area(and we have more usable land)

[hunter63]

Originally Posted by wyld thang

You might consider bumping up your search to include places with 10-15 or so acres. 2-5 acres is real popular with city people, and there is a sweet spot where more acreage is cheap or cheaper because it's "too much" land for them to handle, but not enough to farm profitably.

For instance our 10 acres plus dumpy house was the same price as a 5 acre lot with nothing in the same area(and we have more usable land)

Very good advice, and if there is a "dumpy" house, chances are there is also well, septic, road, elect., etc.
This is ofter over looked, but each is a major deal, with costs, permits, codes etc. and these can be "grandfathered in" in a lot of cases.

Buy the land, rear down the "dump" and build what you want.

[Use Less]

If you have the names of some towns, talking to the local postmaster, mayor, pastors, & police could give you some leads of places that may be coming up for sale, or were for sale & haven't sold, but aren't being advertised anywhere. Sue

[GoatsRus]

Check out www.unitedcountry.com. They found us a nice piece of land in TN.