If you want some privacy when you buy a piece of land, it’s best to choose a lot that is an acre or larger. However, if you’ve never purchased a large piece of land before, there are some factors unique to large land tracts that you’ll need to keep in mind. Thinking through these variables ahead of time will ensure that you don’t run into unpleasant surprises after you’ve signed your name on the dotted line.
Topography
Before you invest in a piece of land, it’s important to understand the topography of the land. The topography can have a big impact on how well the land drains, whether you’ll receive runoff from surrounding land, and a variety of other important factors. While you can get a pretty good sense of the topography of a piece of land simply by inspecting it, you can also get a topographical map made by a professional mapping company.
Taking Care of the Land
A large piece of land will require a lot of care. If you have a lot of grass on your tract of land, you’ll need to choose from a variety of lawn tractors to ensure you don’t spend all of your time cutting your grass with a push mower. Even if your land is forested, you will still need to perform basic maintenance to ensure the trees on your land stay healthy.
Ability to Build
Just because you have a large piece of land doesn’t mean that you’ll have ample room to add buildings. If the topography of the land is varied or there is thick forest covering the land, adding buildings could be quite costly and time-consuming. That’s not to say that you can’t build buildings on a particular piece of land, just that you need to consider this cost when thinking through the purchase price of the land. Of course, if you’re buying the land simply for hunting, hiking, or other natural purposes, then only small building additions will be needed, and this factor will be much less important.
Protecting the Perimeter
If you want to keep trespassers off your land, you’ll need to think about ways to protect the perimeter of the land. On a small piece of land, it’s easy to add a fence or another type of boundary. On land larger than an acre, though, adding a fence could be quite costly. You can always opt for some “no trespassing” signs placed at strategic points if you don’t want to go to the trouble of building a fence.
Even if you face challenges with a piece of land, the investment is definitely worth the cost. In general, land only ever increases in value because it is a finite resource. Therefore, if you want an asset that can help build wealth and serve as something that you can pass down to future generations, there are few options as attractive as a tract of land.