Buying first piece of land? What should I know?

OK, since I went to school in Pullman and spent about 15 years in the Palouse, I can give you some tips on eastern Washington living. First question, does this cabin have a woodstove? You'll need to prepare yourself for COLD -20F winters, and wood will drive away the chill more cheaply than anything else. It's good that you have trees on the property, but you can get inexpensive firewood cutting permits from the US Forest Service in next-door Idaho. Plan on driving a big pickup pulling trailer to harvest enough wood for a winter there. You'll need something with 4 wheel drive and good snow tires. Expect to have chains just to get out of the driveway.

When we first bought our land, the very first thing I did was plant trees. It's been 6 years now and the trees are just starting to produce. Much, much slower than in my surburban back yard. If you buy your land I'd recommend the same. One of my favorate mail-order Washington nurseries is Burnt Ridge, which I've ordered from repeatedly. Plan on buying trees/plants that survive at least a zone 5 winter.
http://www.burntridgenursery.com/default.asp
They specialize in the kinds of trees that a homesteader wants.

Another good Washington nursey is Van Well. http://www.vanwell.net/ They specialize more towards large-purchase commercial growers, but sell individual trees at good prices.

Both of these have sold me high quality disease-free trees.

If you're producing your own food, then irrigation water is going to be a priority for you. Check the well and how much water it produces. How will you irrigate the trees in summer when there's no rain for 4 months straight? At our homestead, we pump water out of the well into a 5000 gallon holding tank, then water the trees from that. I've plumbed PVC pipe to about 100 trees in our orchard to water them weekly.

Protecting what you grow from animals will be a top priority too. There are LOTS of ground squirrels in eastern Washington and they are a plague on anyone trying to grow things. I plant all my trees in the ground inside a pot made of 1/2" hardware cloth, and wrap each tree seedling with a 6' high cylinder of chicken wire. The wire pots protect the tree from the bottum up from moles and ground squirrels. Any tree not protected by chicken wire will be stripped to the ground by the deer.

In any case, whatever property you're interested in, walk over to the neighbors and introduce yourself. Ask them what they think. Showing them that you think what they think is important will go a long way to establishing new friendships. In our own case, I've found almost all our neighbors very welcoming and take a lot of interest in how we are coping and are almost always ready to lend a hand. I think good neighbors are as important as good land, so check on that.

MichaelK
Thanks for the huge wealth of information. The land I looking at is in the republic area. You pointed out a lot of ideas and helpful information to consider. Everyone has given some things to ponder. We are heading over next weekend to the eastern side of the state. Hopefully the spring thaw will over a little more. We have a couple of additional Properties to look at if this one does not hit us
just right. We have a lawyer all ready for drawing up contracts if need be, also to go over any legal questions we come up with. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will come across that one piece that we will want to live on the rest of our lives.ish us luck.

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First make a list of everything you know you want to do on/with/to the property and a lower priority list of things you might one day want to do. Then make a list of must and would like to have items like:

1. a home: ready to move in, a fixer upper, or a nice site to build from the ground up
2. location issues: distance to neighbors, distance to the nearest amenities that are important to you like restaurants, Walmart, your in-laws, movie theatres, an airport, a feed store, animal sale barn, what ever is important to you and what you want to accomplish, do you need to be adjacent to public lands like my wife wanted so that she could ride her horse off property into the forest.
3. budget: how much can you spend on each item, you can't spend all your money on the perfect home on the perfect piece of land and then still expect to buy a tractor or build a barn
4. timing: not only when you want to make a purchase, but move in time if the house needs built or improved, and what ever needs done with the land. If you plan on making a living off an apple harvest and have to clear forest, plant tress, and wait for a few years for your first apples, then your budget and living expenses need to tale all the pains that will cause
5. acreage required: based on whatever activities or crops you plan, how many acres is the bare minimum, your budget will determine the max acreage. Raising cattle? you might need hundreds of acres / head if you live in the New Mexico desert or as little as one acre / head on well developed pastures in the southeast US
6. water issues: do you need streams, ponds, or more water than you can drill for? Any legal issues with creating a pond if you want to? Is well water available or are expensive permits required?
7. Do you need existing assets in the form of a productive orchard, sugar maples, or pastures? Or do you plan to heat and cook with wood so you need some acreage in hardwoods? What about merchantable trees for income from a sawmill?
8. legal issues: does the property and activities you desire have legal complications like maybe you want to have a permaculture free range meat chix operation on an acre in the suburbs but roosters are illegal. Any construction permits like septic (will the land perc?), wells, barns? Is the proerty zoned for what you want to accomplish? Zoning can be changed, but it will take time and money and you might never get the changes you need. Want to raise pigs? Some places outlaw pigs within a certain distance of neighbors.

After you have refined your budget, needs, and desires, you will have made some progress in understanding what kind of property is right for you. Your Realtor can take a list like that and improve the chances of finding you something good but make sure you tell him that under no circumstances may he share that list with a seller or selling broker.

You'll still make changes to that list after you see a few places and if you have seriously defined all the parameters you'll probably never find the perfect property. Some criteria may end up being contradictory, like if you want to be at least an hour outside the nearest town but only 30 minutes from a Home Depot, and that's OK. There will always be give and take when it comes to weighing the merits of each interesting property.

The one most important thing to know before you make the leap, is where the money is coming from to make the payments.

To expand on what Uncle Will said......If borrowing, talk to your lender about the type of loan they're willing to give. Some lenders don't want to lend money on more than a five acre "building site" or established home site. Or at least that's what I ran into. I finally talked to the business dept. of my credit union and had my loan set up as a business loan/account.

You would be wise to buy the book "RyanTN" mentioned. It will be the best 10-50 bucks you ever spent. I am also wanting to buy my own little chunk of heaven. While trying to learn as much as possible about buying land, I came across so many people that recommended that book. The copy i bought was printed some 30+ years ago and all the information is still relevant today aside from having the internet available to help in the land search. BUY that book, read it and read it again. You won't regret this book purchase, it talks about all the things everyone on this thread has mentioned.

Well its been a long road, but I finally arrived. I finally purchased a beautifully piece of land of all places, just fifteen minutes from my current home. My wife and I have been makings several trips back and forth across the mountains looking. We came across the listing locally and on a whim check it out. We set up the day to look at it and after spending several hours wondering we fell in love with it. We could not be happier. The land fit every requirement we made for ourselves. It was a perfect match. The land was a little bit more then we plan to spend but being close to our current location we could keep our jobs and the kids would not have to relocate schools either. We will be moving in july after we doing some renovations to the house and upgrades. The property is surrounded by BLM land and is forested. We took all the information you provided to heart and were pleased with results. The current home owner took care of the legal portions of making sure there will be no easements through the property. The land and surrounding area will be safe. I appreciate all the information, it made purchasing land a little easier know what to ask and look for. Thanks again.

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Congrats and keep us posted on your progress

[QUOTE=MichaelK!;5756844]Since your monicer is "onthewater", I'm guessing that you're on the west side of the state? Is that correct?

If you were on the east side of the state the first priority above all else would be the availability of water and your water rights. On the west side though I'd suggest your legal access to the property comes first. Zoning I think is a lot more important on the west side than the east side.

When we purchased our land, we hired a local lawyer to write and evaluate the contracts we negociated. I recommend you do the same. Find one that has experience with property law.

Note that Washington I think is one of the states that tries to control rainwater collection. Look into that if you have ideas of collecting supplemental water off your cabin roof. I believe there may be exemptions for small-scale personal use, but you don't want to find out the hard way.[/QUOTE]

The Laws changed on that, so no problem, anymore They probably caved due to rain collection barrels being sold at most Dept Stores despite the Law, lots of conservationists here, too... I wondered about this being a big deal, since the water is primarily being used to water gardens, thereby it is going right back into the soil...

I think there are more restrictions, but it is allowed now in CO, too

__________________

Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Congratulations! I hope you and your family are very happy there

__________________

Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Yes its true I live on the west side of the state. I was very close to living on the eastern side of Washington state. My father lives in riverside and was always adamant about water, and was right . The new property has its own aquafir and has a seasonal creek that runs along side the property. We are fortunate to have such a large amount that water, that we should never have an issue. If I was going to live on the eastside (almost did), I am sure water would be on of the first issues. I will keep you all posted with updates as the family moves along.


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Lots of important issues to consider.

Much depends on your intended current & future use of the land. Much is said about the evils of zoning. But remember, zoning works both ways. If you take pride in yourself and wish to build a good house, you'll likely want to do so in a zoned area, as it will prevent some lazy white trash moron from opening a trailer park, hog rendering works, junkyard, rifle range, etc in proximity to your property, thus massively devaluing your investment.
And remember that even in zoned areas, there still are trashy places. If you're comfortable living in an area with lots of run down/dilapitated houses, old grubby trailers, or areas where junk is prevalent remember that it will likely forever be that way. Listen for hordes of nonstop barking dogs.
If an area is scuzzy, expect it to stay scuzzy.

Shared roads should generally be avoided if possible.

Other things are surveys, approx cost of drilling a well, septic system costs, electricity costs, employment prospects, internet access, timber & mineral rights, etc.

Congratulations to you!!! Tell us about the land? How many acres, forest, pasture, road access, ect?

Get new batteries for your camera because we all are going to demand lots of pictures!

It might be a good idea for you to contact your local BLM office and ask what it's going to be like having them for a neighbor. Find out what kinds of land management activities they have planned for their nearby land that will happen in the near future. You can also ask about getting a firewood cutting permit for BLM land. I used to get a Forest Service permit to cut almost free wood.

July might be too late to start planting trees, but maybe a fall planting might work for you. My advice is to get trees in the ground the moment the roof over your head is dry.

Ok here is the information about the land I just purchased. Its on 11.5 acres surrounded by BLM land on three sides. They logged the backside along the mountain two years ago. I don't plan on seeing them back in the next sixty years until the trees mature. We have on the property a seasonal small creek that only runs four months of the year. We inherited ducks with the property and one rooster with no internal alarm clock. We planted the garden on the first day and have existing cherry and apple trees. Of the eleven acres eight ,of it has old growth timber on it. We have started remodeling the three bedroom house and added an additional bedroom. The house is smaller then my old home but we have more land. You can always up grade a home but hardly can you upgrade the size of the land. Eventually we will build a new home on the property when we sell our old home. For now we will rent it out until the market increases where I live. The remodel is moving along good. The faster I get it done and moved in I will be able to enjoy the new homestead. I will keep you posted as we move along even more.

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that trespassers often use "insulated" wire cutters.....


No such thing as a "secure" property.

I actually don't mind that part of my property is swamp. The back part has a creek bordering it and swamp land on both sides. We have a litte swamp on our property, but the property on the other side of the line has LOTS of swamp. The good thing about this is that no one can develop it, ever. It's protected wetlands. So we have a permanent buffer that we don't have to pay tax on. The tax on our swamp land is really low since it's unusable land. My honey bees use it all the time though...there are tulip poplar and blackberry thickets in the swamp and no pesticides. See? Swamp land is not always a bad thing.

Good work. Enjoy it everyday...even when it spanks you. There will be those moments. Always balance by making time for family and friends. Having a place takes a lot of time. When you think you just have to do certain things and that it is out of control, that may be a reminder to walk away from it for a day or two and make others your priority. You will come back with renewed energy, fun and focus.