The Land Buyer’s Guide
Your guide to buying, owning, and developing rural land. Practical tips, real‑world insights, and simple explanations to help you understand rural land decisions.
The Land Buyer’s Guide
How to Find Buildable Land in Rural Counties Before You Buy
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You ever fall in love with a piece of land only to find out later you can't actually build on it? Yeah, it happens more than you'd think. And today we're going to talk about how to make sure that doesn't happen to you. Hey, welcome back to the Land Buyer's Guide. I'm your host, Scott Thomas, owner of Landparker.com, where we help everyday people get onto land they can actually afford. And today's topic is one I wish more buyers understood before they started shopping. How to find buildable land in rural counties. So let's just jump right in. First thing I want to talk about is what buildable actually means. Because a lot of people assume that if a piece of land is for sale, you can build on it. And that's just not always true. A buildable lot means you can legally put up a permanent structure and get the permits to do it. That's the core definition. And there are really five things that have to line up before you can call a parcel truly buildable. Zoning, access, water, septic, and minimum lot size. All five. Every single one. If even one of those is off, you've got a problem. So let's walk through each one. Zoning first. This is your starting point. Before you get attached to any property, you need to call the county planning and zoning department and find out what that parcel is actually zoned for. Most counties have GIS maps on their websites now where you can look up a parcel by number or address and see the zoning designation. But I'd still recommend calling and talking to a real person. Ask them directly, is a single family home allowed on this parcel? What's the minimum lot size for a building permit? Are there any flood zones or conservation easements affecting it? Can you put a manufactured home or a tiny home on it? The reason you have to ask is that zoning rules are wildly different from county to county. What's totally allowed in one rural area might be completely off the table just one county over. Don't assume. Just ask. It takes maybe 15 minutes and it can save you from a really expensive mistake. Now let's talk about access. This one trips up so many buyers, and honestly, it's one of the most overlooked issues in rural land. Here's what a lot of people don't realize. Just because you can see a dirt road on a map leading to a property doesn't mean you have any legal right to use it. If that road crosses someone else's land and there's no recorded easement in the deed, you could technically be landlocked. No legal way in or out. So what do you do? Pull the deed from the county recorder's office and look for recorded easements. Check the county roadmap to see if any roads touching that parcel are publicly maintained. If the access depends on a private easement, have a real estate attorney take a look at the language to make sure it's valid and that it transfers with the property. And ask the county if a driveway permit would even be issued for that location. Landlocked parcels are out there, they exist, and they're not always obvious. Always verify access before you make an offer. Okay? Water and septic. In rural counties, you're almost always dealing with a private well and a septic system, no municipal water, no sewer line, so you need to find out if both of those are actually feasible on the land you're looking at. For water, contact the county health department or your state's water resources agency and ask about well permit availability in that area. Talk to a local well driller if you can. They'll tell you what typical depths are and whether wells in that region tend to be productive. There are some areas where getting water is easy and cheap, and there are others where you're drilling 500 feet and spending$15,000. You want to know which situation you're walking into. For septic, it comes down to something called a perk test, short for percolation test. That's basically a soil test to find out if the ground can absorb wastewater properly. If the soil fails a perk test, you either can't build at all or you're looking at a much more expensive alternative system. Ask the County Health Department if a PRAC test has already been done on that parcel. If it hasn't, make sure your purchase offer is contingent on getting a passing result. That's just good protection for yourself. Rocky soil, heavy clay, high water tables, all of those can make septic either really expensive or not allowed at all. No before you commit. Now, where do you actually find rural land to buy? A few solid options. County GIS and Assessor websites are free and genuinely useful. Most of them let you search parcels, see zoning, check acreage, look up the owner, all that good stuff. Land-specific listing sites are better than general real estate platforms for this because they have filters built for vacant land. If you want help on the ground, a local real estate agent who actually specializes in land is worth their weight in gold. They know which areas have water problems, which roads aren't publicly maintained, which counties are strict about permits. That local knowledge is hard to replicate on your own. And honestly, don't sleep on just driving through areas you're interested in. Old school, I know. But you'd be surprised how many for sale buy owner signs never make it online. Sometimes the best deals are the ones nobody else is looking at. Let me run through some red flags you want to watch for. First, no perk test on record. If a seller hasn't tested the soil, don't just take their word that it'll pass. Make your offer contingent on it. Flood zones. Pull up the FEMA flood maps for any property you're seriously considering. Land in a high-risk flood zone can be really tough to insure and may come with building restrictions that make it unusable for your plans. Steep terrain. Extreme slopes drive up your costs fast. Site prep, septic, foundation work, all of it gets more complicated and more expensive on steep land. Utility easements. If there are high voltage power lines or a pipeline crossing the property, that can limit where you can actually build on it. Doesn't always kill a deal, but you need to know it's there. And deed restrictions or covenants. Some rural parcels were carved out of larger subdivisions years ago and came with restrictions attached. Things like limits on structure size or what kind of dwelling you can put up. That stuff runs with the land. A title search will usually surface it. Speaking of title searches, always get one before you close. Always. It's how you find liens, ownership disputes, and easement issues before they become your problem. Here's another practical tip I love. Go directly to the county building department and just ask them, can I pull a permit to build a home on this parcel? Straightforward question. And it gets you a real answer fast. No guessing, no interpreting zoning codes. Just ask the person who issues the permits. If a survey hasn't been done recently on a larger parcel, it's worth getting one done. Especially if there's any question about where the boundary lines actually fall. And if you're planning to go off-grid, solar only, rainwater, harvesting, composting, toilet, that kind of setup, verify that the county actually allows those things. Some rural counties are more flexible than you'd expect. Others have rules on the books that would surprise you. Check first. Here's the big takeaway from all of this. Buying rural land takes a little more homework than buying a house in a neighborhood. But it is absolutely worth doing right. The problems that bite people, zoning issues, no legal access, failed perk tests, they're almost always preventable with a few phone calls and a little due diligence up front. Do the work before you fall in love with a piece of land. Your future self will thank you. Alright, that's gonna wrap it up for today. If you're in the market for rural land and you want something that's already been vetted and comes with financing options that actually make sense for real people, we're talking as low as$100 down and$100 a month. Head over to landparker.com. You can browse available properties, learn more about how owner financing works, and reach out to us directly if you have questions. We'd love to help you find something that actually fits what you're looking for. Landparker.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.