How we get these numbers
A site that tells you a parcel costs three times its asking price owes you the arithmetic. Here is every figure it uses, and everything it does not know.
The whole rate table
Every figure the calculator uses is below. There is nothing else: no adjustment we have not told you about, no regional multiplier, no model. The calculator applies these ranges to the facts you give it and adds them up.
Which means you can disagree with it specifically. If your county's well drillers charge $90 a foot, the figure on this page is wrong for you, and now you know exactly which figure to replace and by how much.
| Item | Range | What it assumes |
|---|---|---|
| Well drilling | $25–65 per foot | Depth is the unknown. Shallow areas 80–150 ft, deep areas 200–450 ft. The driller is paid either way. |
| Pump and pressure tank | $2,000 – $5,000 | Fitted, with the plumbing to the house site. |
| Perc test | $400 – $2,000 | The cheapest money in this whole table. Spend it before closing. |
| Conventional septic | $6,000 – $15,000 | Tank and drain field, where the soil passes. |
| Engineered septic | $20,000 – $45,000 | Mound, sand filter or drip. What a failed perc forces. |
| Power line extension | $10–40 per foot | Past the 300 ft most co-ops run at no charge. Surveyed route, not phone estimate. |
| Transformer and meter | $1,500 – $5,000 | Even when the pole is at the boundary. |
| Off-grid solar and battery | $15,000 – $40,000 | The comparison worth making past about a quarter mile of line. |
| Gravel driveway | $8–20 per foot | Cut, base, gravel and crown, built to survive a wet spring. |
| Culvert and road approach | $1,000 – $5,000 | Including the county permit. |
| Creek crossing | $15,000 – $80,000 | The widest range here. A pipe in a ditch, or a stamped engineered structure. |
| Boundary survey | $1,000 – $5,000 | Plus $20–90 an acre over 20 acres. |
| Title, closing and insurance | 2–5% of price | Never less than $800 – $3,000. Do not economise here. |
| Permits and impact fees | $500 – $5,000 | Building and septic. Varies wildly by county. |
| Clearing | $600 – $2,500 per acre, partly wooded | Open $0, fully wooded $1,500 – $6,000. Only the 1.5 acres you build on. |
| Building pad | $2,000 – $10,000 | Cut, fill and drainage away from the house. |
| Establishing legal access | $5,000 – $25,000 | Litigation, not groundwork, and this range assumes it goes well. |
What the calculator deliberately does not include
- The house. Every total on this site is the cost of a parcel you could legally and physically build on. The dwelling is a separate project and a much more variable one.
- Your labour. People who clear their own land, run their own trenches and build their own driveway spend far less cash and a great deal more of their life. Both are real costs and only one of them is in the table.
- Regional multipliers. We could apply a state-level factor and the number would look more precise without being more accurate. County variation swamps state variation, so the range stays wide and honest instead.
- Anything about the market. No appreciation, no rental projection, no investment case. This site is for people who want somewhere to live.
How we would like you to use it
Put a parcel in, look at which lines are widest, and go and close those three gaps with local phone calls. The point of a range is to tell you where your ignorance is expensive. When the perc test line is wide, the next thing to do is not more arithmetic — it is a few hundred dollars and a man with an auger, while you can still walk away.
Why are the ranges so wide?
Because the honest ones are. Rural trade pricing varies more between two counties two hours apart than it does between two years, and well depth is not knowable before drilling. A site that answered "$18,437" to the question "what will my well cost" would be lying with a decimal point. Where a range here is narrow it is because the work is standardised, not because we know your county. Treat the width of a range as the instruction: a wide one means go and get a local quote before you commit.
Do you make money if I buy a property?
No. There is nothing for sale on this site, no commission, no referral fee, no lender or agent paying for placement, and no listings. The only thing we ask for is an email address, and the only thing we send to it is the checklist and the occasional genuinely useful update.
Is this a substitute for a surveyor, an attorney or a soil test?
No, and the entire point of the calculator is to show you which of those three to spend money on first. Every figure here is a national range for deciding what to investigate. The decisions that actually commit you — whether the soil passes, whether you have legal access, where the boundary runs — need a local professional, and they are cheap relative to the mistake.
The county research checklist
One email. The twelve things to check on a rural parcel before you make an offer, in the order that costs least to find out — and the four that should stop a purchase outright. Then we leave you alone until there is something genuinely worth sending.
No charge, no account. Unsubscribe with one click, and we never pass your address to an agent, a lender or anybody else — there is nobody we would pass it to.