31 Days of Building a Home - Day 4

Sorry I am a bit behind on my posting! The weekend got the best of me!

When we first began looking for a spot to build our home, we knew that we wanted something outside of a neighborhood and HOA restrictions. We had dealt with an overbearing HOA in the past, and it was not something we were looking to do again. There is nothing wrong with an HOA, it just isn't for us. Since my mom watches our boys during the week, our targeted area was in a 5 mile radius of their house. It also helps that the area surrounding their house is beautiful pasture and farm land. 

After searching online and doing a bit of driving around, we found a gorgeous 1 acre lot, but it wasn't the 2 acres that we had hoped for and the owner was asking DOUBLE the list price of other properties. The land had been for sale forever, so we thought we would make an offer and see if they would come down. Our offer was immediately rejected. We tried to negotiate a few more times, but ultimately the owner was not willing to budge and we decided to move on. (That land is still sitting for sale). 

We spent a lot of time looking with little luck. Randomly, my dad remembered seeing an old sign for land for sale on a street nearby. We hopped in the car to look at it, and called the number on the sign, but no one answered. We kept looking at other tracts but none of them compared. A few weeks later Brad drove by again and tried the number. Thankfully the owner answered! The land was very fairly priced, and we were able to get two acres for less than the one acre we originally tried to purchase. 

It is a beautiful flat piece of land, surrounded by tall oak, hemlock and magnolia trees.  It came complete with a little old barn and it could not be more picturesque. In the evenings we can hear the sounds of little league baseball and high school football games. I love everything about it!

Since the property was not listed on FMLS, it had sat a while. As soon as we had made a verbal agreement with the owner, two other people were lined up behind us to purchase it. Timing was everything in this case. My recommendation to finding land, would be to know your target area and drive it frequently. Take back roads, side roads and don't always go the way that you normally do. We never would have found our land if it hadn't been a little back road my dad took occasionally.