Much Mountain Land Can be Great Farm Land and Found Using A Property Finder
Although it would sound much cooler if I was to try to bill myself as an expert here, the truth is we are learning this together. I come from a computer programming background. Everything in programming is about solving some kind of problem. But right now, our current problem is that we want and need to acquire some mountain land. So, we will suppose we would like to find a particular kind of mountain land. I will assume that we are not looking for the mansions of Dynasty here, so lets just go with trying to find some land in the mountains that would be good farm land, a secluded place that would lend itself to my hermit ways, some place that would have good acreage (at least five acres), and it would be good for solar power or wind turbine power. Off-grid acreage is generally cheaper, and we remember that we did not want to spend a fortune, right?
I will start off with the most basic methods we can use to find land. Understand that if you go to a major search engine like Google and just type in "Mountain Land," you are going to get everything but the kitchen sink. We want to qualify that a little bit, so instead lets type in this phrase: mountain acreage off-grid
Using this search, we will find about 143,000 results, but even this may not be all we want, but we can start with this search. Some of these properties will come up with cabins and sheds and the whole bit for a hefty chunk of change because they are all of the above. They are off-grid. They are on acreage. They are on a mountain. Our problem is that some of these listings qualify for all these search terms, but because they are fully developed, they are more expensive.
I am not saying this is bad. If you want to save yourself a lot of work and you have the money to pay for most everything already being done, be my guest. There are a million ways to do this, and that is one of them. Yet, most of us will want to save that money and spend it in sweat equity instead. Many of us will use the land for camping just starting off. Maybe we will also try to get the ground ready to use for farm land, or we may find that we have to bring in river bed soil in order to grow crops. This is to say that not all of us will be wanting to build a dwelling right away. Many of us will also want this land to be unrestricted. This also saves in fees and taxes.
Off-grid land is almost perfect for this because they are usually so remote that nobody has gotten around to restricting the property.
There are many great Guides To Buying Land, and before I spent thousands of my dollars on something I will have to put up with forever, I would certainly invest the money in a book or two to read about those pitfalls of land buying that I may not know about. There is plenty I do not know, and it will save you and me plenty of money to admit this fact up front and always be willing to learn about things that we were not educated enough to ask the right questions about.
The first site I see listed on Google, I visit. I see off grid land there, however, it is listing 1.25 acres. It is somewhat cheap. ,995 for 1.25 acres that is in the middle of nowhere is not bad. It probably does not fill the bill though. We want enough land that we may be able to keep poultry, some animals, and do some agriculture on our farm land. There are several items this property does fit the bill for, like the seclusion to be a hermit if I want, mountains, or even a great place for camping.
The next phrase I use in Google is: raw mountain acreage off-grid
Now we are getting somewhere. The very first web site result is a property finder that lists 10 acres in the high desert in Nevada at the top of the page.
They want ,900 for it. This is a remarkable price at ,490 an acre! Ten acres is enough to get great wind for a wind turbine or sun for solar panels to live off grid. You can grow great crops on this parcel because the land looks like good farm land and does not look like it has a lot of water runoff. We cannot know everything we need to know about this parcel until we contact them. But this result would be a great place to start our inquiries if we have cash in hand and are ready to buy.
The next place I found was, get this, 40 acres for ,900! Wow! I can get 40 acres of land in Arizona, with vegetation and nice trees cheaper than I can buy most vehicles. Remember, this is only the second search in. We have not even started digging yet. You may not need 40 acres. But when I think about sitting in a cabin with a 20 acre margin on all sides, that sounds incredibly sweet to me.
Just using the search terms above, I am finding land situated in the mountains like crazy. This can be for camping, residential land, an agriculture property, and while it is not free, it almost is. This was just a simple search using the first property finder that came up in Google.
Mountains can be a wonderful place for the modern hermit.
As I used an online mortgage calculator for the parcel we listed above. I found that with 6 percent interest for 20 years, I could expect to have payments of 4 a month. If I added another 0 to that monthly payment, increasing the payment to 4 a month, I could expect to pay the land off in just 10 years. Of course, you could, if you have it, just pay cash. The total yearly taxes are 8. I would almost say you cannot beat that, but I would be incorrect, because you probably could.
This land would be fantastic for camping and becoming a hermit full time. All I would need would be a small stipend that could easily be done with part time work, or a nice little web business. If you are a hunter and you find a good spot in the mountains, you may find yourself with an appetite for big game, which can stock a freezer for a couple of winters.
What we are trying to escape here is the daily grind of a city bound job where you go into cubicle nation which is really just a prison with cheaper bars around you. Mountains lend themselves to the seclusion that a hermit needs and wants.
Do not let society sell you on the bad connotations that the word hermit brings. Some of the greatest people I have ever known were hermits. They were full of wisdom and really had a life rhythm that was relaxing to simply be around.
Although television likes to seed your mind with imagery of the hermit who sits outside on the porch with his shotgun to get after them revenuers, most just want to mind their own business. They do not want to mind anyone else's business, and they do not want anyone to mind theirs.
They are hard workers who have farm land to develop. They live everywhere. They live in the mountains. They live in the hill country. They like camping. And, a hermit who has not found his land yet, may live next door to you. If you and I are neighbors, then yes, you live next door to a hermit.
If you have ever had enough of the noise, if the kid's screaming ever got on your last nerve, and if you have ever gotten claustrophobic in a public place like a concert or a shopping mall at Christmas, then you, too, are a hermit at times. I am constantly amazed by the city dwellers I meet who intrinsically believe that they are somehow better than the hermit. To them, the reasons are so obvious as to why they are superior beings, that when pressed closely for the explanation to this superiority complex they have, they stare at you blankly, and are unable to answer. To them, you must have come from another planet if you do not understand why being a recluse is such a horrible thing.
But that's ok, because you understand what a horrible thing it is to have to live like a bee in a beehive, always having to listen to someone else's buzzing in close proximity.
Nope. There isn't a thing wrong with being a hermit. Currently, I am a hermit without a place to be isolated. But it will happen. This will strike a resonant chord with most of you. Some of you will never feel that way. That is really OK, because I do believe it is an attribute which you either have or do not have. I do not think becoming a hermit is an acquired taste. I could be wrong. Maybe it comes with age. But for me, the feeling of being miles from the nearest human being is a feeling of sublime freedom.
Your Property in the Mountains, whether for Residential Property or Camping, can be Cheaper.
As I said before, when you are looking for land that is off the beaten path, miles away from the nearest on-grid power source, you can find land on the cheap. Again, at first you may only use this land for camping while you still live in the city. Everything does not have to happen at once. It rarely does, anyway.
Of course, that is not to say you will not use it as residential property to start with. However, you may find that you do not quite have to be right up to code with your dwelling because in many cases, depending upon your square footage, you will not have to comply with many of the building restrictions that accompany larger houses with on-grid property. It is here, in the wilderness of these mountains that you will need to be well versed in The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It. No worries there though. All you need is a little grit, a little study, a little determination, a little practice, a few financial resources, and a lot of time.
You have seen how much cheaper the land can get. It really all depends on how nice you need the property to be as well. There is land in West Texas and other desert property where the prices plummet even further. You may have a hard time with acidic soil (not good for growing food), or you may find water at a very deep depth (if at all). But if you can get these items in some other way, there are literally thousands of acres for sale in places that are priced in the mid-range hundreds of dollars per acre.
While there are tons of parcels of land out there available as cheap property, we should be aware that whatever it is we buy, we will be with it for a very long time, for the rest of our lives in most cases. That is why it is so important to have a list of criteria that you have in mind for your land in the mountains. Your prospective land must meet at least most of these criteria, or you will never be happy with your purchase. And the one horrible thing about that is that if you are not happy with it, nobody else will probably want to buy it either. So do not get stuck with a property you do not want.
I wrote a land calculator in a spreadsheet that had a list of criteria I liked about my ideal land, and then I grade other properties I am looking at. I compare the two scores and see where the deficiencies are. We have mentioned the land calculator in another article, but the main idea here is that we have to have a list of these criteria. Otherwise, we will let our emotions make the purchase for us, and most of the time, that will not be good, or logical.
Looks like I need to find a way to make more and save more money. It helps if you are not rooted to any particular geographical area, because then you can move to where the great prices are, and not have to wait for some bargain to pop up locally. Thing is, if you are in an area where land prices are somewhat inflated, you can just about forget finding a property at a bargain basement price. So my advice is to be flexible enough to move to where the good prices are.
Mountain Land can be your Farm Land, a Hermit Getaway, Good for Camping, Cheap, and Full of Solitude.
Whether you want your land in the mountains to go camping, for agriculture and farm land, to become a hermit, or just to say you own some property in the mountains, we must always remember that this is something of a spiritual quest.
Your land in the mountains is a place that you will always think about when you need respite, a refuge from the storms of life, a place to get away from it all, and yes, a place, if you want, to become a hermit. Certainly you do not have to give an arm and a leg for it. Really, your price of land depends largely on how accessible to civilization you want it to be. Most of those who read my articles are those who are trying to get as far away from civilization as they possibly can.
Whole treatises and books have been written on the merits of Peace and Solitude, so I will not attempt to adequately cover them here. But, it would seem to me that if you have gotten this far, then we are kindred spirits. We are ready for this adventure. We must have a bit of wisdom and not just a wispy dream.
It stands to reason that we should know as much as we can about our subject and what we are getting ready to spend our hard-earned, and often unreplaceable money on. So be careful. There are always as many people willing to unscrupulously receive your money as there are places to spend it. It behooves us to know what we are doing for this reason, if for no other.
I know some of my most peaceful times in life have been after I hiked up the back side of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee for a 4 day camping trip. It would take me about an hour and a half to summit on the back side, and I would be standing on an old Civil War railroad trestle. I could see 7 states from where I stood. The vistas were amazing. I wanted to stay there forever. Then I would hike on back to the 130 foot LuLu waterfalls where I would camp out and fish. It was truly beautiful.
And isn't that what we are really looking for? Are we looking for the beautiful life?
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