How to buy land, cheap.

Sounds simple enough doesn't it? Well, it should be, but sometimes it isn't. It takes a lot of courage to reach out of your comfort zone and make a change in you and your family's life. It would be easier to just keep renting an apartment or to live in a house that you're not really happy about.

You have to decide why you want to make a change. Is it because you want the satisfaction of owning your own home? Is it because you want to know how it feels to actually own your own land? To be a landowner?

Maybe you want to live in the country so you have more room. With more land you can have the big garden that you always wanted. Maybe you want to raise a few horses. Maybe you would like to have more room for the kids to run around. Or maybe you just can't stand having close neighbors any more.

Decide for sure what your reasons are and write them down on paper. This will help you focus on the kind of land you're looking for. Go through your list often to get motivated and to stay motivated.

You have your list of reasons why you want to have a home in the country and own your own land. Now take some time to establish and write your goals down. The best way to do this is to ask yourself questions, and then answer them.

What are the five top reasons you want to live in the country?
How much land will be needed given the reasons?
(One acre is about the size of a football field)
It will not take as much land if your reason is to just have a large garden. It will take more land if you want to raise 6 horses. Decide a range. 1-3 acres, 4-7 acres, or 8-12 acres.
How far do you want to live from a city or a town?
2 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, or maybe 20 or more miles.
Have some idea.
Are you willing to live on a gravel road? Or must it be paved? (I live on a gravel road 1 mile off the highway and we get along great. Not nearly as much traffic as a highway and much quieter)
What does your budget look like?
How much are you willing to spend?
Sure you might want 40 acres and have a hobby farm. But you might want to start a little smaller.
Determine a time frame and affirm it in a sentence.

For example: "One year from now, (put date in) my family will own 5 acres where we will build a walk out ranch style house."

These are enough goals for now. Don't overdo it. Don't worry about what direction you want the house to face. Or how long the driveway you do or don't want. This much detail would just limit you.
Keep it broad.

Now review what you wrote down for your reasons for living in the country, and also review your goals. Construct a short paragraph to serve as your goal or mission statement. Something like this;
"Our goal is to live in the country because we enjoy the outdoors, the kids need more room to play, and we would like to raise a few apple trees. Within a year we will own 5-10 acres, no more then ten miles from town. We will purchase the land at half the current market value."

Now it is time to target your area of interest. Obtain a transportation map. You can probably get one at your local county road department; they usually have large maps with all the county and state roads. Select an area ten miles all the way around the town and draw your boundaries on your map. This is your first target area, 400 square miles. That is a lot of land to cover. Now split it into quarters, the southwest quarter, northwest quarter, northeast quarter, and southeast quarter.

Choose the quarter that is your preference to start with and target that area first.

Grab your road map and hit the road. Start with the quarter you selected first and be prepared to drive every road. Here is what you will be wanting to look for;
Odd corners in an adjacent field. Many fields will have an odd corner. It could be cut off by a ditch or an old fence line. If you live in a farming community, it could be a corner cut off from the rest of the crop field. Farmers usually don't like to spend the time to crop awkward pieces. It is too hard to maneuver their equipment.

Look for areas that have been neglected. Since the odd corner is too awkward to farm it might be neglected. Maybe it has grown up into weeds, or has trashy trees and shrubs growing up on it. The neglected area could be an old abandoned acreage site with an old house foundation on it. Now it is all grown up in weeds.

If you find such places as these, mark it on your map. These are just the places you're looking for.

It is important to be able to look past the present and be able to look at what the possibilities could be.

I recommend selecting at least five sites per quarter of your targeted area. That is 20 total sites. Mark the location of each site on your map, along with some notes to help you remember. Even take some pictures with your digital camera. This will help you prioritize the sites.

Now it is time to rank the sites in your order of preference. Remember to use your future eyes and see the possibilities. Your ranking list may look something like this;

Site 6: First preference. Had nice topography. Walk out ranch house would work. Stream going through property. Approximately 8 acres. Old fence line on the property. 1 mile off the main highway. Old rock pile and thorny bushes.

Site 11: Second preference. Two big hills. Walkout could work. Silted in old pond. A lot of weeds. Old farm machinery lying around. Some nice big trees.

Continue to do this with all twenty sites. Take some time and do a good job.

Research the sites. Select your top 5 sites and get ready to do a little research. You will need to gather an aerial photo for each of the five sites. I recommend a couple of different places to obtain an aerial map. No matter where you live in the U.S., the land you are interested in probably has an USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Service Center near by. The USDA Service Center will be a great resource of information for you. Go to www.nrcs.usda.gov and find the office that covers the county or perish of the land you're interested in.

Go to the USDA service center and ask for the aerial maps you need. Make sure you know how to explain where the land is located. Take your transportation map with you to the office. It would also be good to know the township name and section number if you have it. Go into the office and talk with the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) staff. You will be able to gather topography, drainage, and soils information for the sites you're interested in. It is very important to evaluate the drainage conditions, and soil information. You don't ever want a flooded basement, or build on sandy soils. The NRCS staff can be very helpful in this regard.

You can also go to Google and obtain a map from there. But I would still strongly recommend you going to the USDA Service Center. It will be worth the trip.

If the soil and drainage conditions look poor for where you want to build a house, then drop the site like a rock. Stay away from it. It would cause you nothing but headaches. Just move on to the next site.

Research the present owners.
Now you have some good maps and good knowledge of the soil and drainage conditions. It is time to find out who currently owns the land.

One way to do this is to go to the county or parish courthouse. You can find out the current title holders by visiting the assessors office. Ownership is public record. You will once again need to describe the site in pretty good detail. Take in your transportation map and aerial photos. Know the township name and section number. You should have no problem in finding out the name of the current owners.

A lot of the county offices have the capability of finding this information online. Do a little checking to see if your area does.

Once you find out the owners name and address, you need to find out where they live. Do they live in the same general area? Do they live out of state?

Now it is time to visit with the landowner. Of course it is much better if you can talk to them in person as opposed to sending them a letter.
If you can give them a call and tell them you would like to meet with them to discuss your intentions.
When you do meet in person, be kind and be a good listener. Start developing a relationship with this person. Be sincerely interested in their life, in their family.

Tell them about your goal for your family. Tell them how you have researched different areas. Be careful not to brag up their land too much because they may get the idea that maybe it could be worth more to someone else.

Then finally ask them if they would at all be interested in selling.

If the landowner shows any interest at all in selling then you need to make the deal. They may be interested in selling but don't want to go through the hassle with the legal stuff.

Maybe they would be more willing to sell if you offered to do the legal stuff for them. You set up the legal survey, you work with the deed company. The easier you make it for them to sell to you, the better they will like it. Especially if the landowners are up in age.

Tell them what your goal is and how they can help you achieve it. Then simply ask if they will sell it.
Remind them of all the work it needs. Offer them 50% of the current market value of the land as if it didn't need any work.

If they say more, just thank them for their time, and walk away.

Try the same procedure at your left site. Don't offer more. Just be polite and move on to the next one.

You will get a yes before you know it.