Ah, Kiki. I for one was not ignoring you, it's just that many of your questions have already been examined in other posts. Do a search (at the bottom of the opening page) for specific topics.

One thing you will learn is that we won't tell you how much you might spend on any utility, or on building your house, or on fees. We CAN'T tell you, because costs vary wildly not only from one state to another, but even within the same state. You must deal with local bureaucracy locally.

We aren't going to tell you how to budget, either. We will tell you to do searches, read posts, record everything, and be prepared to make at least 10,000 decisions, hopefully after you've researched the information. We can tell you that no matter how carefully you plan, the project will likely cost more, easily 20% more than expected. We will tell you that the smart builder doesn't sign a contract much less start building until s/he has read and understands every clause and then can afford it, including that 20% overage. WE can't tell you what you can afford, only you know.

Okay, now that I've tossed all those non-helps at you: try the website B4Ubuild.com. At the least, if you read every page on it, you will have an idea of what you need to know, and what questions to ask. There are numerous websites, but I've found that B4Ubuild is basic, informative, and reasonably accurate.

Hi! We have been in a similar situation. We did not buy our property, its was deeded to us by my grandmother. We live on 230 acres in a very very rural area too. Our plan all along has been to eventually build a house one day, but we could not see ourselves wasting money on renting or the like in the meantime. We bought a used mobile home (trailer) for an exceptionally low price ($1000). It was older, so we had to re-do a lot of things inside. We spent probably another $1000 on renovations, approximately $1000 on a nice deck, and then another $1000 on basic appliances. It is not the nicest thing ever, but it has served its purpose. We are now in the beginning stages of building our dream home on our property and do not regret our decisions at all. Things you will need to consider cost-wise if you choose a similar route:

* a trailer - we got ours extremely cheap and it kind of fell in our lap, but you should be able to find a repo lot and get a nice deal there.
* septic tank - the same people that moved our trailer put in our septic tank and I think it cost around $2000
* well - Cost us around $2500
* power lines - could be a MAJOR cost. our house is 3/4 of a mile off the road. There was a power line already part of the way back to an older house that was used for a hunting club. The power company would only pay to run the power an additional 1000 (I think) feet and then we had to pay the rest. The total distance to be run was around 2300 feet. We wound up paying over $7000 just to have the power run. Had it just been for the trailer, we never would have done it. However, we knew this was where we wanted to live "forever" and we loved our location so it was worth it to us.

Now, I don't know what your budget is like or what area of the country you are in or anything like that, but it is an option I think you should investigate. And I didn't mean to scare you with the power story. Sorry this was so long, but I hope it helps you!

Is there a possibility of selling off some of the acreage to raise money for a dwelling? 220 acres is a LOT of land! A trailer would probably be your best bet for getting started. One can certainly be comfortable in a trailer. Other things people have done is build a barn, and live in that for a while, or even live in the upstairs and use the main floor as a barn. I suppose a yurt would be do-able, but I'm not that hard-core! I'd rather build a smallish building that I can put to good use after the main house is done. My personal plan is to build a good size shed, and live in that (by myself) while I build the barn. I'll then move into the barn (classy, huh?) while I build the main house. In our location, we have to run utilities about 300 feet. Electric is basically free, other than hook-up fees; phone is cheap; water (city) is expensive, at about $2000, and septic will probably run about $4000 for a system adequate for a 4 bedroom house. A well can be fairly cheap, or very expensive, depending upon how deep they have to go, and what they hit between the surface and the water. You'll likely have to have some trees cleared and a gravel driveway put in. In our neck of the woods, a gravel driveway runs about $10/foot, So our 300' driveway will run about $3000, NOT including clearing trees.

Since every area is different, I strongly urge you to talk to local power companies, well diggers, septic installers, etc. You must also do a lot of research on the property itself- Is it in a flood zone? Any zoning issues you may need to know about? You need to know if a trailer/barn/shed/yurt is going to be legal in your area. Some places have zero zoning, and sometimes not even a department for that kind of stuff. Other places you need permits for everything, and there are all sorts of restrictions for building. We bought our property out in the boonies of SC, but there were many subdivisions with restrictive covenants. I was surprised to find that in a rural area. Please do lots of homework before you buy any piece of property!

We have 97 acres (back acreage of my family farm) and put a modular up - ordered end of Feb, delivered beg. of June, and moved in Labor Day 2007. I'd have to look at how much everything cost - phone was free (665 ft run), we had to apy (about $2500?) for electricity incl a transformer sitting at the edge of our front yard.

My dad, DH, and my cousin cleared the land. My uncle did the foundation excavation, put in septic and underground utilities, knew a good guy for concrete - my dad did a lot of the fill and grading, trenching, driveway. Well was expensive - 500 ft deep and had to hydrofracture - something you don't know if you'll have to do until you have to do it.

I'd say if you can, sell off some of the land to afford to build, stay where you are or rent if you have to while building, or put up a modular and do a short-term rental. I wouldn't want to live in a trailer and put all my things in storage (I had a lot of furniture I didn't want to part with).

I don't know if this applies but I will throw it out there anyway....we only have 11 acres but it is an easy commute to the city. I was shocked at the amount of taxes we have to pay compared to a smaller piece of land. Obviously we still purchased it anyway but I am curious whether this is a factor when buying such large pieces of land. Is there much of a difference? Anyone?

Obviously your other questions would be better answered by your local contractors. Our septic field and tank were close to 11 000. Alot more than some of the prices quoted here. Power is also a major consideration and one I would certainly investigate. Our small run was 5000 incl transformer which we pay for but the power company takes responsibility for it's maintenance and we can see the end of our driveway from our house. Not a long run. So it can end up being a consideration if you are wanting to run a long line.

With that much land the current owner should have it as "farm and forest" - when you buy you'll have to declare a couple acres (depends on town) as a building lot and transfer the rest as "farm and forest" so the taxes stay low. We have 1 acre building lot, another "excess acre" residential that's valued at about $3500, and the rest is "farm and forest" (hayfields that we are trying to reclaim from the brush - we got about 200 bales last year, plus forest) so the tax break is substantial. We couldn't afford to live here if we didn't have the tax break.

Warning - if you develop any part of the land (say you buy the whole thing, withhold your house lot but then a few years later decide to build a house for a family member on another portion) the town can come after you for the difference in back taxes - here we have to hold it 10 years, renew it every 10 or when the land is sold.

I really have to look up my construction costs - a year ago I could have told you exactly what we paid each subcontractor/utility.

Step one before ANYTHING else: Go in and read every sentence in your town and county ordinances pertaining to zoning for the area, residential building, and development of a parcel. Also look into the "farms and forests" or "current use" requirements, whatever it is called in your area.

In ours, nothing comes out of current use until the foundation goes in. Then the town decides how much property surrounding the house is "improved" and how much is not and bases taxes on that.

Some places (ours, for example)will not allow you to live in an RV or put a mobile home in your neighborhood.

If you think you might subdivide, find out now if it would be allowed and what would be required. Where we are, if land is subdividable, it is only subdividable once--that is, the lots of a subdivided parcel cannot be further subdivided. Thus, people usually submit plans for as many lots as are as allowed, even if they plan to sell it differently (two lots together, only one lot out of the whole parcel, etc.). That keeps the value for future buyers. The issue there is that here you can have one "driveway" for two or three houses but must build a road to highway code for four or more lots. Some people get around that by having an approved plan for the road but not building it unless/until there are four or more lots with houses going in.

Sounds beautiful. Good luck!

i appreciate all the advice, you guys have given me a great place to start researching :) B4UBuild is very helpful, as are the stories here of people who made it work and the advice about zoning and restrictive covenants and taxes - so much to consider. thanks all!

Dh and I did just about the same as what you are thinking of; only not so much property(96 acres). We started making a "plan" about 10 years ago and stuck to it. First, we paid off all the property, then put in a travel trailer, then a well(very expensive). All this time Dh and I are still working while we pursue this "plan" as a retirement goal. Then we built a shop building with a small apartment inside. Last March we put our house up for sale, it sold in August and we moved into the shop! That is when we started our build and on March 6 of this year we moved into our new house! It was a long process but we are so glad we did it. The more you investigate ahead of time the better but there are some things that are out of your control.....our well, the excavation was expensive, etc. Good luck to you!

Here is what some of it cost us in KY.

Water $5,000.00 for hook-up to city water. We're rural but I guess not THAT rural...water became available up here about 5 years ago.

Escavation right off of the road $11,000. They hit rock.

I'm not sure about electric, it's underground to our house.

I read this book: Finding & Buying Your Place in Country by Les Scher and Carol Scher which you can find on amazon. It covers a lot of your questions and then some.

As far as the cost to run the electricity to your house, you can call the electric company that services that area and they can probably give you a general cost. One variable in the cost is how far away the house will be from the main line where they tap in, and wether you want the line above or below ground. As the book mentions, the ability to get power, water, phone, and septic are major factors that must be addressed before buying a piece of property. But there are a bunch of other factors like soil and drainage for siting the house that you also need to factor in. Just beacuse you have 220 acres doesn't necessarily mean that you can build a house on all 220. I have seen 100 acre lots for sale where only 1 house can be built not because of zoning restrictions but because of terrain.

Also keep in mind that the further away from the main road that you build, the more cost you will add for site preparation and roadbed. Even if you can handle those costs, you have to think about the costs of clearing for getting out in the snow. You can do that yourself but that adds costs for equipment you will need once you move in.

We moved from the burbs to a 5 acre lot in the mountains and it has been quite an adjustment. We used to worry about a few danelions in our small yard. Now I worry about huge trees falling into my house. The scale of problems and the time and cost to deal with them is a lot larger than I ever imagined. I laughed the first time I pulled out the push mower to cut a portion of my 2 acres of grass - it is a useless machine. Now I have a 50 inch cutting deck to get the job done.

When the large trees go down, it is a day of work per tree to cut it up and stack the wood. Thank goodness I am handy because without the ability to do things myself, we would be spending a fortune to bring in help. The book helped but it didn't cover everything that we went through to build our home and what it is like to live in it now. We love the natural setting and the quiet - but there is a daily cost of our time (and sometimes money) to maintain that.

Giving you costs for these items will be misleading because so much depends on the location of your property, the type of property if is (open or with trees, flat or hilly) the local economy, how far away it is from supply companies and tradespeople , etc. All I can say is that whatever you think it will cost, add at least 20% to that number to keep as a reserve fund to deal with any issues that pop up - which they will. And if you are lucky enough to not need the 20% reserve during the build, you will surely use it to buy new toys that you will need to maintain your land and home.

Good luck!

Here's a link to the property in case anyone would like to look :) The last several of the 12 photos show view of water -

The price of running the electric is enough to make you look for alternative sources! Perhaps I could devote some of the acreage to raising hamsters in wheels ;)

Here is a link that might be useful: rural acreage in wv

Solar??

We built on 110 acres in a very rural area. We considered putting a temporary home on the property or an apartment in our garage while we built the house but ran into some problems with the permits required to do so. We were lucky in the end because we put our old house on the market and got an offer immediately from a couple that wanted to rent it out for a year. We took a few dollars off the purchase price and stayed in it for a year while we built!

For power we were able to get an estimate from the company which turned out to be pretty accurate. We paid $7000 for 300ft of power.

We had a driveway already so that was a saving.

The well cost us about $9000, we had to go 360 feet down.

Our septic was close to $7000 which was less than the estimate.

The other costs of building weren't higher because of where we live but we did find it hard to get tradespeople to work out here. It was so much easier for them to take a job in the city ratehr than drive an hour to us and there was no shortage of work to be done at that time.

i'm in the same boat--found the perfect property and need to scheme a way to make it happen. luckily i only owe a quarter of what my farm is worth, and the land i want has a newish barn on it already. it may also have useable services, such as well and septic and electric, since there was an old farm house which burned down. that home was right up close to the road, if i build i'll be building as far from the road as i can, so that would have to be taken into account.
the other factor is my friend--she and her husband have also been very interested in the 100 acres, but can't swing the whole thing either, naturally we're thinking the way to go is to buy it and subdivide into two lots so we'd be neighbors.
if we split the price of the land, and i got what i needed for my house, than i think i could build what i need without taking out a loan.

fallingwaters ~ check your local regs before buying. Some areas are a little unreal! I own 16 acres with road frontages in the local mountains. The previous owner had it for about 40 years, the next owners back passed it down the family since late 1700's. According to local regs at the time I purchased, it could be divided one time. Period. Since then, county administrators have put a 10-acre minimum size [each] for any subdivided portions. No grandfathering, I'm short 4 acres of ever dividing.

Maybe you can increase the size of your 16 acres. Sometimes you can purchase a piece of property from an adjacent land owner and merge it with yours, if your neighbor is willing. As long as the losing parcel does not fall below the statutory minimum, the county may have no problem with it.

I have participated in one such boundary realignment. I took the old plats to the country planning officer and explained our intentions. She agreed to sign off on boundary change. I had a survey done, got the planning officer's signature on it. Deeds were executed (there was a swap involved), and everything was recorded.

We have since subdivided the property defensively. We have no current plans to sell, but we don't want to get blocked by some future rule change should we decide to sell in the future.

I think I've decided that New England is a rip off after reading some of these posts!

For us:

5 bed Septic= $19.5k
250' well= $7k
bring power 450'= $8k
12 KW generator- $9.5k