5 questions to ask before you buy vacant land

Nobody warns you about the questions.

You find a piece of land you like. The price makes sense. The photos look right. You start imagining what you'd do with the place, and somewhere in that daydream, you forward the listing to your spouse or your brother or the group chat.

Then someone asks you something you don't know the answer to.

These are the five things worth knowing before you get to that part.

1. Can you actually get to it?

Road access sounds like a given. It isn't always.

Some parcels have direct road frontage — simple, documented, nothing to think about. Some have a deeded easement, a legal right of way across another property to reach yours. And some are what people call landlocked, meaning there's no recorded easement yet.

That last one sounds worse than it is.

Nobody can legally prevent you from accessing property that belongs to you. Courts recognize something called an easement by necessity — if your land has no other way in, you have a legal right to establish access across adjacent property. It takes some work to formalize, but it's not a dead end.

For some buyers, landlocked is the whole appeal. Harder to reach, more private, lower price. If seclusion is what you're after, the extra step is a reasonable trade.

What you want going in is to know which situation you're dealing with. Pull up the county GIS map with the parcel number. Takes five minutes.

2. What are the property taxes?

Probably less than you think.

Rural vacant land is taxed at a fraction of what improved property costs. Most of what we sell runs somewhere between $50 and $300 a year. Some people spend more than that on a month of streaming subscriptions.

Still, know the number before you commit. County tax records are public and searchable by parcel number. Five minutes, one less unknown.

3. What does the zoning actually allow?

The listing says "rural residential" or "agricultural" and most people move on from there.

Worth not moving on from there.

Zoning tells you what you can and can't do on the property. Rural and agricultural designations are the most flexible — camping, RV parking, gardening, livestock in many counties. But some zones have restrictions that don't make it into the listing. Minimum build sizes. Limits on temporary structures. Agricultural-only designations that affect other uses.

County planning departments are public resources. A call or a quick search by parcel number gets you the designation and what it actually means. Ten minutes, no surprises later.

4. Is there water?

Depends entirely on what you're planning to do.

If you're camping on the property, you bring water. Same as any camping trip. Not a factor.

If you're thinking about building someday or living off-grid, the question matters more. Options are: municipal hookup (rare for rural land), a drilled well (typically $5,000 to $15,000 or more, which is a number worth knowing before you're committed to finding out), rainwater catchment (legal in some states, not others), or haul-in.

Look up nearby parcels and whether they have wells, and how deep. Public record in most counties. Tells you what groundwater looks like in the area before it becomes your problem to figure out.

5. What are the full financing terms?

If you're buying with owner financing, all of this matters: down payment, monthly payment, interest rate, total payback amount, length of the contract, and what happens if you miss a payment — how many days before default, and what the cure period looks like.

A seller who gets vague when you ask about any of those things is a seller worth being cautious about. The terms should be explainable in plain English in about two minutes.

We'll walk through every line of our contracts before anyone signs anything. Not because we're required to. Because a buyer who knows exactly what they're agreeing to doesn't have regrets six months in.

One more thing

If a deal feels rushed, ask why.

Good land doesn't expire. A seller creating urgency without a clear reason is worth slowing down with. Run through these five things first — it takes about an hour — and if everything checks out, you've got your answer.

We have properties in Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, and Arizona right now. Down payments start in the hundreds. We'll answer every question on this list before you commit to anything, and probably a few you haven't thought of yet.