Forty acres with eight you could build on is an eight-acre property with thirty-two acres of view, and it should be priced like one.
Per-acre pricing is how rural land is advertised and it is almost always flattering, because it averages the part you would live on together with the swamp, the cliff, the power easement and the strip the county will not let you touch.
The number that matters is what you are paying for the acres that can actually hold a house, a drive, a septic field and whatever you came here to do. Work it out and the ranking of the properties on your list usually changes, sometimes completely.
What to actually do
- Pull the parcel up on the county GIS viewer with the contour layer on. Anything over about fifteen per cent slope is expensive to build on and sometimes impossible to permit.
- Check the FEMA flood map for the parcel, not the area. Being in a special flood hazard area changes what you can build, what it costs to insure, and whether a lender will lend.
- Check the National Wetlands Inventory, and then be sceptical of it in both directions -- it is a desk survey. A wetland determination on the ground is the real answer.
- Subtract the easements. A power line corridor, a gas right of way, a shared drive and a county road frontage setback all remove land you are paying for.
- Divide the asking price by what is left. Compare that number across properties. That is the comparison nobody else on the viewing is making.