The seven checks
In rough order of dealbreaker potential:
- Legal access — recorded easement or deeded frontage; a handshake is not access.
- Zoning capability — confirm a dwelling is possible for this parcel under its zone; farm and forest zones have specific paths and limits.
- Septic feasibility — the site evaluation gates everything where sewer does not reach.
- Water — well prospects via neighboring logs, or spring/community alternatives with their legal status.
- Utilities & driveway math — real quotes for power distance and access construction; these swing budgets by tens of thousands.
- Survey & corners — know exactly what you are buying; old fences lie.
- Site history — fire, fill, prior uses, and anything the ground remembers that the listing forgot.
Sequencing and structure
Smart land offers buy time to verify: feasibility contingencies covering evaluation, research, and quotes are standard practice, and sellers of honest parcels accept them. The alternative — buying first, discovering second — funds many of the valley’s cautionary tales.
I walk parcels with clients before and during diligence: fence lines, corners, soils, sun, slope, and the site plan puzzle of where well, septic, home, and driveway can actually coexist. The dirt decides; we just interview it properly.
Local rule of thumb: Never pay homesite prices for land that has not proven it can host a home.