On a first rural land purchase, is cheap and remote or dearer with a road the better use of the same money

Question

The goal on a first parcel is usually the option that sells without drama, and a buyer with $12,000 to spend tends to land between two ways of spending it. Option one is cheap and remote. Something like 40 acres for $11,000 where access is a two track across a neighbor's land under an easement that has to be read carefully, and cell service is nothing. The price per acre is a fraction of anything with a road. Recreational buyers do buy this kind of land, and remote is part of the appeal for some of them. If it does not sell it costs almost nothing to hold, because taxes on land like that are tiny. Option two is dearer with a road. Maybe 10 acres for $12,500 fronting a county maintained gravel road, power at the edge, nothing exotic. Higher price per acre, smaller discount going in because more people looked at it. But it can be described in a listing without a paragraph of caveats, and a buyer can drive to it in a normal car. The harder question is which failure a first-time buyer would rather have. The remote parcel's failure is that it sits for a year and teaches nothing except that it sits. The road parcel's failure is that the buyer paid too close to retail and makes $3,000 for six months of work. There is a real case for learning the process on a deal that moves, even for thin money, and an equally real case for refusing to pay for the privilege of a lesson. What did people's first land purchase actually look like, and did the cheap one teach more or just cost time?

omar_haddad · Answer

Renovation answer applies here. The cheap one with the caveat paragraph is scope creep waiting to happen. You'll end up paying a surveyor, then an attorney to read the easement, then someone with a tractor to cut a path so people can actually see what they're buying, and your $11,000 parcel is $14,500 before a single showing.

paulgrant17 · Answer

@omar_haddad's list is the argument for option two on its own. @tylerbrooks9, does the easement in option one even name the parcel as a benefited property, or is it an easement to a person who's dead? That distinction has ruined deals for people and it's an attorney read in that state, not a guess.

brandonlee36 · Answer

The first purchase is usually better kept boring. Learn the paperwork, the closing, the marketing, and getting paid, all on a parcel where none of those has an asterisk. Save the access puzzles for later, once normal has a baseline.

tashaford30 · Answer

$3,000 spread over six months is not the disaster it can feel like on a first purchase, provided the buyer learns the whole process and doesn't lose money outright. A small, well understood loss on a first parcel is a reasonable price for the education.

laurenkim53 · Answer

Going to push back on the room. Cheap remote acreage still attracts buyers, they just take longer to show up and they mostly want terms rather than cash. For an owner willing to hold and sell on payments, a remote parcel priced near $11,000 is where the real markup lives, because nobody competes for it. A road parcel is priced by everyone who mailed the same list. The catch is @omar_haddad is right about the path and the sight lines. Land nobody can walk sells slowly no matter how cheap.

renee_dubois · Answer

@laurenkim53 and @brandonlee36 are both right, and they're answering different questions. If @tylerbrooks9's goal is one completed transaction to learn from, the road parcel does it. If the goal is the best return on that $12,000, the remote parcel probably wins on a long enough hold. For a first deal, the education is worth buying.

On a first rural land purchase, is cheap and remote or dearer with a road the better use of the same money

6 replies