Buying Land

Hi, I'm Tim Carter, AskTheBuilder.com, and I want to talk a little bit about buying land

or in this case, maybe buying a lot. Right behind me is a building lot that's been available for

a little over 20 years, but here it is, 2022, and someone just bought it recently

and they're finally getting ready to build a new home. But there is a giant flaw with this piece

of ground, and you might not think it if you're looking for land, and I don't want you to make

the same mistake. Let me show you. Right here, this is what the land looked like before the people

bought it. As you look up into the trees, you might not think much of it, but that is an extremely

steep slope, and you have to think about how am I going to get into my land? How am I going to get

onto my lot? Let me show you the problem that these people are going to have. You can see that's my

Ford F-250 Super Duty up to the cab lights off the pavement, probably just under seven feet

And if you draw a line, you know, a level line from the top of my truck, you know, you can see that it hits right about here

So up here at the top of the land, right up here, they have to, they've got at least 10 feet of elevation change, maybe 11

and the distance from right here the pavement up to right here I just measured it is just about 50 feet So if you do that math it extremely steep

I now want to show you what the real problem is. And I have a section of my driveway that's just about this steep

And the trouble is, on a video like this, you really can't see three dimensions

But I'm telling you, this is steep. Let's walk up here. But if you're a car coming in to your you're coming home here

Let's say this is your lot and you're coming up And I'm walking up this hill

All right Not only do you have this steep part right here, but you've got to make an abrupt

180 degree turn because you can see right here They've got the footing forms in and this is where the driveway is going to be so you have to make

I'll kind of show it to you. You have to make this crazy

Look how high I am above my truck and I'm standing like I said

Just about 50 60 feet away from the edge of the pavement. Look how high I am

All right, so now you got to come in the driveway. You've got to you know steep

Imagine it's snowing icy. You got to make this 180 degree turn right here

where the trailer is Then you have to go up and make another left turn and up there where all those rocks are right in here supposedly there going to be an entrance to a garage up there You see that once they start to build the home

But when I talked to the gentleman yesterday who was forming this up, he told me there's going to be a garage right here

a lower garage right in this area, and then there's going to be a garage up above

You just have to keep in mind when you're buying land. There's a lot of things that you need to know

You need to know about water. I just got an email today from a woman who, with her husband

they purchased a piece of land kind of similar to this, but it was out west. It's out in Oregon

And they have no water. There was a dry well drilled 700 feet deep

They never hit water. They then spent another $20,000, drilled another well 200 feet deep, no water

that's just one little thing you have to understand about buying land let me show you one other problem

with this lot it's going to be huge if they don't waterproof the foundation look at this

so that is solid granite right there that's the meredith porphyritic granite and there was a

machine here working for three days to chip out this giant hole the the land continues to rise up

right where the tree line is, those boulders up there, they easily another 12 to 15 feet in elevation above this area right here So it really really hard to see that in this video but those boulders way up there way way way up there in the air and that hill behind the trees just continues to rise

up. What's going to happen here when it rains and sometimes we get really really big rains

and with the snow melt in the in the spring water is going to be cascading off this hill

aimed right at this house. So, and the soil is super thin

The soil is only, well, right here, there is no soil. Here, the soil over the bedrock is maybe a foot thick, if that

So, you can have what looks to be a really great lot. You're thinking, oh, gosh, this must have been a beautiful wooded lot

Well, guess what? It could have all types of problems. This lot, in my opinion, I would have never bought it

It had way, way, way too much elevation change. It was too steep

So be really, really careful when you go to buy a lot or buy land

I'm Tim Carter, AskTheBuilder.com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AskTheBuilder.com

Thank you