LAND EXPEDITION
The search for viable acreage to build the Hoosier Homestead. How to find land and do some basic research before purchasing.
HOOSIER HOMESTEADLAND
Michael Brewer
5/20/20258 min read
The view from the back deck of our current home, looking at the Mission Mountains behind Flathead Lake.
Land Expedition
My spouse, K, and I are originally from central Indiana, and now, about a decade later, we return to central Indiana. We currently live in northwest Montana, perched on a ridge of the southeastern Salish Mountain range overlooking Flathead Lake (yes, that image above was literally taken from my back deck). I love it here, K not so much. She likes it warm and humid. Several years ago, we began a search for property somewhere between the mid-Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. We ended up finding a small piece of land in the Florida panhandle on Blackwater Bay, which has ocean access. Not sure we could have found a better name to invoke imagery of black sails, eyepatches, hooky prosthetics, and parrots quoting "Dead men tell no tales."
But things changed, we adopted younglings, and our eldest went forth to university back in our home state. Our parents (and a single remaining grandparent between us) are aging, and we (she?) felt it necessary to return to the amber waves of grain we escaped a mere decade ago. Admittedly, we have more friends and all of our family is there, and it would be nice to have a village to lean on occasionally after 10 years of self-reliance. Though I've made some great friends here, circumstances have made me quite the hermit.
The Shadow of the Past
Having been down the arduous journey of finding, researching, testing, and purchasing a piece of raw land before, I knew we were in for an exhausting exercise. We probably scoured the Hoosier countryside for a year before we found the One. These were our requirements:
No HOA or Covenants that run with the land.
At least 3 acres, preferably 5+.
Near enough to civilization to make grocery runs convenient.
Locations near to my parents or K's grandparent preferred.
Buildable and free of risk and easements.
Other Posts about the Hoosier Homestead Project:
Our Experience Determines Our Requirements
I grew up in trailers, first near a train track and then one parked in a former gravel pit. The Little Blue River water table flooded it, and someone thought it would be a swell place to rent out lots. They weren't wrong, it was pretty. Then I lived in barracks during my service with the Corps. K also grew up in a trailer, then a small bungalow in a small town in southern central Indiana near the White River. Then, we both lived in a townhouse apartment together with friends while we attended school. Afterwards, in a single-family ranch in the suburbs, and also part of a Homeowners' Association. Now AGAIN in an HOA, albeit a small one of only 13 members with expansive estates. Yes, Virginia, HOAs exist even in the mother@#$%#$ frontier!
I hate them. K hates them. We all hate them. So no more HOAs! And I never want to share walls with neighbors, or even be able to really interact with them from my curtilage (something I do love about our place in Montana). Which is why I need a good buffer of acreage around the home. But K doesn't want to feel stranded in the boonies, so we need to be close to a sizeable town with amenities. It would also be nice to be near the people we are moving back to, otherwise, we might as well just stay where we are.
Finally, we need to ensure the site isn't problematic. No flood zones. No easement required to reach it. No protected wetlands. Soils that are drainable to sustain a septic system that isn't exotic or super noticeable. An aquifer that provides plenty of potable water. A build site that won't require building up with engineered fill or exotic foundation structures. Oh, and it is not on the list, but it goes without saying that we need to be able to afford the property and the construction of the new home!
Taken individually, the requirements are not hard to fulfill, but as a sum, they are more akin to a unicorn.
The Land Finding Process
My process for finding real estate, raw or with a house, comes in two flavors:
A piece of land catches my eye, then I track down and contact the owner.
I create an endless barrage of saved searches on real estate sites, but still search manually.
The first is a process that has never panned out for me, but it might work for you. It's fairly easy to do, just follow these steps:
Identify the county the land is located in.
Find the nearest address.
Use the county's GIS (Geographic Information System) service to locate the parcel and its owner's contact info.
The second is a tedious, ongoing process where I end up with a spreadsheet of potential properties with columns like acreage, taxes, distance to nearest town, the school district's score from Great Schools, how its district voted in the last election, checkboxes for features (waterfront, ocean access, mountain view, wooded, pond, the price and price per acre, days listed - if this number is high, it is a great indicator that something is wrong), the address or a map pin, a link to the listing, and two columns for ranking (one for K and one for me).
I tend to use Zillow, Realtor, and the local realtor association's own website, which, in our most recent property search, was usually MIBOR (Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors). I find that each site might contain different information. I especially like Realtor.com's map layers that include wildfire and flood risk. Anything with a flood risk I immediately eliminate, and Realtor.com has a nifty feature that allows you to hide homes from returning in your search results.
My preference is to narrow my search at the beginning with a very strict set of filters. Then I draw a boundary on the map, starting with a small area, looking at all the properties available, saving them, then moving the search area. This is especially useful if you do not have to be in a specific location because of a job. I work as a software engineer and I'm 100% telecommute, so as long as I have internet strong enough for an audio meeting on Zoom, I'm golden. When I looked for oceanfront property, I would just scour the eastern seaboard on the map. It was a tedious process. If I'm dissatisfied with the results, I loosen the filters. So I go from 20 acres, to 10, to 5, to 3. I would expand the property type from land to farm to single and multi-family dwellings. There might a gem with an old building that you can just bulldoze (or maybe you just find the perfect house).
I take my saves, I add them to the spreadsheet, then I systematically use the GIS service the county contracts with to research potential pitfalls of each one. For our county, they use Beacon. Below is an example parcel of property and it has some very useful information. The layers on the left navigation menu give you access to important information, like floodplains. Note a lot of this property is unusable for home sites because it sits in the AE floodplain, which is the highest risk flood zone outside of coastal regions (read this article for more information about flood zones).
The owner address can be found in the lower right-hand corner. I've blurred it as a courtesy, but it's all public information. The layers can also show you rights of way (easements), wells, septic systems, zoning (more on this later), school district, contour lines for elevations, regulated drainage, election districts, soils (important for a rough idea of whether select fill will be required), and aerial views from various years so you can see development trends. The caveat here is that each GIS is different, and even within the same GIS, each county may provide more or less information. In Hancock County, Indiana, if you click on the parcel, you can see a parcel report with tax history and sale prices.
Now that you have the details, you need to look up the county zoning ordinances for your property. You may find the township or specific zoning places restrictions on what you can do with the property. For my county, the ordinances can be found at https://www.hancockin.gov/247/Planning-Building
If we find Zone Agricultural (A), we will find a bunch of rules specific for my zoning. Specific to Zone A are the following:
Minimum lot area: 43,000 square feet.
Maximum lot area: not applicable.
Minimum lot width (measured at front setback/build-to line): 125 feet.
Maximum lot coverage (including all hard surfaces): 25%.
Minimum front yard setback - (measured from street right-of-way): 50 ft.
Minimum side yard setback - (measured from property line): 15 ft.
Minimum rear yard setback - (measured from rear property line): 15 ft.
Minimum living area per dwelling: 1,200 square feet.
Minimum ground floor living area: 1,200 square feet.
Maximum primary structures per lot: 1 dwelling.
Maximum height: 40 feet.
Note, these are not all the rules and restrictions; careful reading needs to be done beyond your zoning. For instance, I cannot build an accessory building for any purpose other than agricultural before a primary dwelling unit exists, at least not without a special exception, which requires meetings and notifications to neighbors. See §156.062.B.1.a.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that I use to rule out properties:
Covenants & restrictions that run with the land (i.e. an HOA in disguise).
Great Schools rated properties in a school district less than 6 stars.
Flood zones.
Protected areas (wildlife or forest).
Landlocked with no deeded easement (and I tend to shy away from easement-only access).
Near nuisance properties (factories, agriculture elevators, pig farms, airports, stagnant water, high school parking lots).
Odd-shaped property (such as long & narrow).
Fully wooded property (clearing trees is a good way to require exotic/costly above-ground septic systems).
Final Steps
The very next step is to put boots on the ground. You will want to see and walk the property firsthand. This might require permission via a real estate agent first, but if its just an empty field, go walk it. Take a gander at the neighboring properties. Drive around the area if you are unfamiliar with it.
Perhaps before any of this, I should have told you to find a reputable real estate agent. We've had nightmare scenarios with horrible but highly recommended agents. Luckily, we developed a friendship with one we trust a long time ago, and she was able to help us out. Over the course of a year found a few properties and she spearheaded our negotiations for us. All but one were quickly eliminated. Once a property is chosen, the next step is to hire a geotechnical engineer to do a soil test for septic systems and possibly ensure the soil stability for one or more potential build sites. Then, of course, title and easement searches that your real estate agent will hopefully line up for you.
Did We Meet Our Requirements?
The above photo is from the paved county road (I note it's paved, because we have 2 miles of dirt, not gravel, county road before we hit our paved driveway in Montana) in front of the 10 acres we acquired. I'll revist the list of requirements and note whether we met them or not:
✅ No HOA or Covenants that run with the land [Absolutely zero restrictions beyond county zoning, which is Agricultural, the least restrictive zone].
✅ At least 3 acres, preferably 5+ [Got a whopping 10 acres].
✅ Near enough to civilization to make grocery runs convenient [Less than 18 minutes to shopping/restaurants].
✅ Locations near to my parents or K's grandparent preferred [10 minutes and 90 minutes, respectively].
✅ Buildable and free of risk and easements.
✅/❌The Great Schools ratings were mixed, the elementary (the one most important the moment was 7/10, the highschool is 3/10.