Stoop & Kin

What it really costs

The asking price buys the dirt. This works out what it costs to get water, waste, power and a driveway onto it — the work a house in town had done eighty years ago.

The parcel

If you do not know, leave it as unknown — that is the honest answer and it is priced as one.

The percolation test. This single field moves the total more than any other.

Pace it, or measure it on the county parcel map. Most co-ops run the first 300 feet free and bill every foot after that.

From the county road to where the house would stand.

Not whether you can drive onto it. Whether the deed says you may.

The page updates as you type. The button is for when scripting is off, and it works exactly the same.

All in, before a house

$60,100 – $165,800

1.7× to 4.7× the $35,000 asking price

The land, plus everything needed to legally and physically put a dwelling on it. Not the house itself.

Asking price $35,000
Ready to live on $60,100 – $165,800
WhatRange
Asking price $35,000
Drilled well, pump and tank 150-400 feet at $25-65 a foot, plus $2,000-$5,000 for the pump and pressure tank. Nobody knows the depth until the rig is on site, and the driller is paid for the hole whether or not it finds water. Pull the public well logs for the parcels either side before you treat the low end as likely. $5,750 – $31,000
Perc test, then septic $400-$2,000 to find out, and then either a conventional system at $6,000-$15,000 or an engineered one at $20,000-$45,000. This is the spread that decides the deal, and a few hundred dollars settles it while you can still walk away. Make the offer contingent on it. $6,400 – $47,000
Power to the building site 200 billable feet past the 300-foot allowance, at $10-40 a foot, plus the transformer and meter. Ask the co-op for a written estimate rather than a number over the phone. The figure moves once they survey the route, and the surveyed one is what you pay. $3,500 – $13,000
Driveway and road approach 400 feet of gravel at $8-20 a foot, plus the culvert and the county road-approach permit. $4,200 – $13,000
Survey, title and permits A boundary survey, a title search and title insurance, and the county building and septic permits. Rural title is the messy kind: heirs who never probated, mineral rights severed in 1948, a right of way granted verbally in 1960 by somebody long dead. Pay for the survey and pay for the title insurance. This is the category where saving a thousand dollars costs forty thousand. $2,300 – $13,000
Clearing and a building pad Clearing 1.5 acres -- the footprint and a yard, not the whole parcel -- and then cutting and filling a level pad that drains away from the house. $2,900 – $13,800
The work $25,100 – $130,800
All in $60,100 – $165,800

Every year, afterwards

$740 – $3,370

Property tax at 0.4–2.2% of value, plus insurance, which is dearer out here because it is priced off how long a fire engine takes to arrive and whether there is a hydrant when it does. An agricultural or forestry assessment can take most of the tax side away — ask the county assessor.

What a lender will not cover

$25,100 – $130,800

A raw-land loan wants 20–50% down at 7–11%, over ten to twenty years — and it covers the land only. The well, the septic and the power run are cash. This is the number that reorders most people's plans, and the reason to read the USDA programmes before deciding it is out of reach.

3 things to settle before you make an offer

These are not line items. Two of these can end a purchase outright, and a subtotal is where that sort of news goes to be ignored.

Check

No perc test. Spend the few hundred dollars before you spend the rest.

This single test is the difference between a $10,000 septic and a $35,000 one, and occasionally the difference between building and not building. Write the offer contingent on a passing soil evaluation, at the spot you actually want the house rather than wherever is easiest to get the auger to. It is the cheapest option you will ever buy.

Read next: Buy the cheap defect, never the expensive one, Keep two contingencies, and never waive these two

Check

No known water. The driller gets paid for a dry hole.

Well depth is the widest unknown in rural land and it is not insurable. Pull the public well logs for the parcels around this one -- most states publish them -- and ask two local drillers what they hit in that section. Thirty minutes of phone calls is worth more here than any estimate on a website, including this one.

Read next: Ring the three people who already know every parcel in the county

Saving

Ask what the agricultural or forestry assessment would do to the tax bill.

Most states tax land in agricultural, timber or conservation use on its use value rather than its market value, and the difference is routinely 70 to 90 per cent of the bill. The thresholds are lower than people assume -- often five or ten acres and a management plan, sometimes just hay or a few head of cattle. Ask the county assessor what this parcel is enrolled in now, because enrolment does not always survive a sale. Then ask the opposite question: if it is enrolled and you take it out, is there a rollback bill for the back years? Sometimes there is, and it arrives addressed to you.

Read next: Find out what you are actually buying, which is rarely all of it

Before you make an offer

We will send you the one-page version of this: the twelve things to check on a rural parcel, in the order that costs least to find out, and the four that should stop a purchase outright. One email, then we leave you alone.

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