Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A steep site is not necessarily a bad one. This Virginia location is deeply shaded in summer
but affords a view of the lake and fields year round.
diminishes. For insulation against the rest of us, you
should have five acres or so, on which there may be
one or several acceptable house sites. Unfortunately,
everyone wants a five-acre plot, and that puts the price
up. We'll get to relative prices later.
Consider a large tract and find friends to buy the rest
of it, keeping your choice plot. Or consider ruining
your bank account for larger acreage, with the idea of
selling off some later. Or buy it anyway, sell your second
car, and give up all your other expensive habits. Land
and a log house will take all your energies anyway.
Land purchase is a one-time outlay, unless you later
mortgage it to pay for the kids' college. You can find
out current prices from those deceptively attractive
real estate catalogs, from local real estate agents, and
from just asking around. But in the end, this one big
expenditure is your choice, and is worth it or not to
you alone.
The right land must be so right you just can't let it
get away. Then price becomes less awesome. You get
this feeling of belonging to this one hill, or wanting to
dig your hands into its soil and become a part of it, and
Finding Your Land
Today the same requisites for a cabin site apply as they
did 150 years ago. Small acreage is generally hard to
find. The expense involved in dividing a large holding,
surveying, and providing abstracts for every piece (the
record of all transactions in the past) makes reason-
ably priced land sell only in large units. Tracts of 160
acres or more are easier to find, and usually much
cheaper per acre.
If you look long enough, you will find a good tract,
for a price. There may be an old foundation there, or
perhaps jonquils in the spring gone wild from some
settler's path no longer visible. For enough money you
can still find a prime location.
And that leads us to the inevitable question: How
much
money?
Land is worth whatever you think it is. Owning an
acre of ground, to do with it what you wish, is worth a
lot to some folks. And small parcels cost more per acre
(lots more, depending on location). As part of a large,
more remote holding, the relative cost of a few acres
