My husband and I begin our home - construction journeying in June 2019 when we bought a piece of property in Bend , Oregon . If you ’d read theannouncement of us becoming landowners , you probably retrieve , Wow , they got really favourable !
And luck did play a part in that , though it took a lot of legwork to get to that point .
Before I turn over into the design and grammatical construction of our home in veridical clip , I thought it would be fun to catch you up on how we take up looking for land , and why we terminate up with a teardown or else of an undecided plot of land to work up on .
countenance ’s go back in clock time to 2017 , the yearwe moved to Central Oregon . ( Yes , it took two years before we find our attribute , so do n’t give up if you ’re in the same gravy holder ! )
We ’d been work with a real estate agent from afar to search for sign of the zodiac , and even made a tripper to turn to look at some listings , but nothing ever grab us enough to say , This is it!and cue us to make a major purchase without really cognize the area .
Related : My 14 Most - Asked Questions After 5 long time of Living in Central Oregon
in brief after we move ( into a rental ) and did a few dissatisfactory drive - bys past potential homes , Will and I were ready to take a leap of organized religion . We palpate that construction — or else of buying — a sign of the zodiac could possibly be the right itinerary for us .
But land in Bend can be quite expensive , as the city does n’t have a unlimited supply of Edwin Herbert Land uncommitted to build on . ( We ’re bounded by the Cascade Range on one side and National Forest on the other . )
Many mass cease up buying and tearing down older manufactured homes . Whatever land is leave is either little and tricky to develop ( extortionate hillside fate or flat land littered with lava ) , or much too expensive to build on ( raw land on large acreage , or maestro - planned lots in luxury golf game course communities ) .
We were working against a modest budget and a household letting that was ending soon , so we had to get originative with our hunting .
This is exactly what we did to determine Din Land to build on , and maybe these six tips could aid you , too , if you want to bribe earth one day for building your dreaming home .
1. Narrow down our target neighborhoods.
In the same way that mass focalize on certain neighborhood and amenities when they wait for a house , we had a listing of must - haves when take care for dry land .
We need a quiet , favorable neighborhood that we make love and could see ourselves living in for a very long metre , where neighbors were n’t stack on top of each other but there was still a strong sense of community .
We want at least an acre of two-dimensional land , plenty of undecided space for gardening and playing , utilities useable at the lot argument , skilful southern orientation , and pretty view . experience a few mature trees would be nice ( for privacy , aesthetics , and treehouse - building ) , but nottoomany tree , as they would make dig up more complicated .
And in conclusion , we want to be within a 15 - instant drive from downtown or our favorite hiking and biking trails . Further down the list , having weewee right or multi - use agrarian zoning would be a bonus .
2. Work with a real estate agent.
We afford this lean to our federal agent , who send out us a new listing every time she found one that matched our needs . But with land , there just was n’t much useable in our price range , and a lot of land just is n’t list on the MLS .
Sometimes landowner list their land as FSBO ( for sales event by owner ) . Sometimes agent keep “ pocket listings ” that do n’t go on the market but are share only with other agent that might have the right-hand buyers for them .
We realized that if we were serious about building sometime in the next twelvemonth , we had to be proactive and not rely on any agentive role to institute us a listing .
One matter to note is if you ’re looking to buy land area , a land broker is worth consulting . That type of real estate broker specializes in big nerve tract of undeveloped land ( like farms and ranches ) and would have more lead for those kinds of listings .
3. Scour Google Earth.
Will and I have an obsession with Google Earth . It ’s how we find secret camping site , paths less locomote on our route trips , and hidden jewel in our own neighborhood . It ’s also how we initially found the neighborhood that we would finally buy in .
We pulled up a satellite purview of Bend and searched , street by street , for open bundle in our pet role of town . We also ante up care to area that were exceptionally green in the eye of our in high spirits desert part , which indicated a theory of water right . ( This is a unique deeded right that allows a landholder to use water system from the epithelial duct — the river , essentially — to irrigate individual land . )
Using a satellite map for our initial land search deliver us a lot of drive time , because we could weed out potential muckle based on their orientation , topography , and law of proximity to features we care or did n’t like .
Armed with a little information from these aerial single-valued function , we drove past the empty lots to see if any of them had signs in front and to get a smell for the neighborhoods .
We chatted with a few homeowner that we met while cruising their block , and left with a goldmine of local knowledge as far as how much snow they drive on an average winter , how bad the smoke was during the last fire time of year , and how deep they had to delve their wells . ( This last one in reality deterred us from a plot when we found out the next - threshold neighbour had to dig down nearly 500 foot ! )
We regain that most people were extremely insightful and helpful when it came to con more about their neighborhood ( especially if they feel you ’re going to be a good neighbor to have ) . A lot of the old - timekeeper also had wonderful news report to portion out about the chronicle of the earth we were look at .
The smashing thing about Google Earth — that you ca n’t get from but visiting properties in person — is that you get to spy on the neighboring family and more significantly , their backyards .
Most of the locality we liked had no homeowner ’ associations , which meant some of the homes had wads of task cars alfresco or look like unceasing construction sites . These were things we did n’t particularly want to live next to , so we kept these considerations in mind as we drove around .
4. Track down information from the county assessor’s office.
For the Lot that did n’t have signs , we wrote down their address and looked them up on our local tax assessor ’s site . ( Just Google “ [ Your metropolis or county ] assessor ’s office ” to get to the local property assessor ’s on-line database . )
you may also call your assessor ’s office or visit their office in person to get public property information , such as the owner ’s name and address , how the ground is zone , what the market place economic value is , and whether it has a septic feasibility study or any previous permits on file .
you may then get through the owners by mail to find out if they ’re willing to sell or subdivide the land . ( You just never get it on unless you ask ! )
We also looked up all of the ring properties to see if any of them had the same owner , as sometimes they ’re more tractable to selling if they already own a house on the street ( and are n’t holding on to land for their retirement home , for exercise ) .
I must have spend at least an hour each day , every Clarence Day , poring over the selective information on the county assessor ’s land site . I research the character of septic organization the neighbors were approve for , how much the land was valued at year over yr , and what other like homes were valued at .
I made multiple calls to our county construction department to elucidate the information online and make certain the wads we were looking at were actually buildable . ( One of the riverfront parcel we liked was in a flood plain , which highly curtail where we could place a house . )
We find out so much on our own that when it came sentence to do our due diligence during escrow , we were able to fold very speedily . We ’d done all of our homework before we made an pass , so there were no surprises !
5. Tell everyone—and I mean everyone—we were looking for land.
We tell apart all of our friend and our champion ’ supporter that we want to build a house . I severalise my hairstylist , my dental hygienist , and my mom friends that we were looking to buy land .
In fact , it was at a kids ’ party that we told another mom — who happen to be a genuine demesne agentive role — that we ’d been looking for land for several calendar month , to no avail . She gave us one slice of advice that proved to be invaluable , and that was to stop look for bare land , and to start looking for a split - down .
This was because bare land came with a lot of bureaucratic red tape to begin build on , not to observe additional fee from the urban center . ( It would ’ve be us $ 8,000 in “ System Development Charges ” alone — basically a taxation — if we ’d decided to build on bare kingdom ! )
On the other hand , a teardown would already have utilities trench and a driveway carved out ( save tens of chiliad of dollar ) . If we found the right teardown , we could actually tear down all but one bulwark and call it a remodel , saving even more money in permits and other fee .
We ’d in the beginning shy away from teardowns , believing it would have been too expensive to buy a house just to get free of it .
After all , we reason , a household has more value than empty land . We did n’t think we could afford an existing business firm on top of a new one built from scratch .
But after adding up all the fees associated with brand - new construction on unimproved state , we realized we ’d come out onwards if we switched our focus to finding an sure-enough mobile home that was prosperous to get rid of .
I can not accentuate enough how important it is to employ your web ( even if they are n’t related to real demesne ) , as you never know whotheymight know , how they can aid , or what little nugget of information they can give you that can save considerable time and money .
Once we adjust our hunting filters from bare terra firma toall properties — mainly manufacture home built before 1990 — it opened up a young humankind of possibilities .
( We choose to look at all properties because sometimes , there will be an one-time cabin , barn , or workshop / garage that ’s still gentle to pull down and/or draw it practicable for us to build elsewhere on the lot . )
6. Scour real estate listing sites like Zillow and Redfin.
After changing our hunt touchstone on a couple veridical estate sites , we issue forth up with a dozen more alternative that had potential .
We also try look for through Craigslist and lesser - known itemisation sites like LandWatch , but we found that most of the prop list were already on the MLS . Between Zillow and Redfin , we had peck to wait at .
I bless up for insistent email telling on Zillow , which alarm me of new listings that met my criterion as soon as they hit the market . ( I also liked how Zillow picture FSBO itemization that were n’t available on MLS - based website . )
A few months after we decided to stop bet to allow the market place chill down , an email from Zillow landed in my inbox and our dream property totally ambushed us . Is n’t that how it usually works ? !
It was a teardown with a 1974 mobile base , a 300 - foot drive , and utilities already connected . The only drawback to the holding was that the mobile home was sited exactly where we wanted to build , so we could n’t go in it while we were building .
We also have to supplant the ancient infected system , but I feel well get it on that we ’ll be starting fresh with a mark - new tank , drain field , and leach lines .
Our county building section has been immensely helpful in lay out our next stone’s throw . I rent all of their advice ( and money - saving arcanum ! ) plus our own experience with property hunting , and write a detailed guide onwhat you should know before buying landto build a home on .
Is there anything else you ’re interested in learning about the process ? Let me know and I ’ll try my skilful to respond your questions as we move forward !
View the Web Story onhow to find nation to ramp up on .
