Bought the 5 acres next door because I was the only person it was worth anything to

I've had 15 acres on a county road since 2016. Taxes are $310 a year, I do nothing to it, I drive out twice a year to walk the lines.

The 5 acres behind me is landlocked. No road frontage at all, the only way in is across my piece or across a cattle operation on the far side that has never let anybody through. It sat listed at $34,000 for about two years and then came off the market.

I wrote the owner a letter. Nothing clever, just that I owned the piece in front of hers, I'd buy it, and here's my number. She called nine days later. We closed at $19,500.

For anyone new, landlocked means no legal access to a public road. Sometimes there's a recorded easement that solves it and sometimes there isn't, and whether a court would grant access where none was recorded depends on your state's law, so that's an attorney question and not a thing to assume. In this case there was nothing recorded. That's why it sat at $34,000 for two years. Every buyer who looked at it found out they couldn't get to it.

I could get to it. That's the entire deal.

Now it's 20 contiguous acres with road frontage, one tax bill, one legal description after I had the two combined at the county. Taxes went to $415. I have no plans to sell any of it.

What nearly went wrong: my title company found an old fence line that didn't match the deed by about 30 feet. I paid $1,400 for a survey and it turned out the fence was just in the wrong place, the deed was fine. Worth every dollar to know that before signing rather than after.