I May Not Be Cut Out For This

We noticed this carving as we were heading out yesterday after looking at a piece of land about 35-minutes from Missoula. I’m not a big “this is a sign” kind of gal but when I spotted this, I did think to myself: Hmm, maybe this is a sign.

On our way home after 6-hours of land searching and dirt road driving yesterday, I said to Mike: “I may not be cut out for this whole land search thing.”

Part of me enjoys it and part of me is so very exhausted by it. Both things are true.

There is just so much to take into consideration. And to make matters even more challenging, there isn’t a ton of land for sale in our price range right now - and what there has been has been selling quickly.

I mean, we’re not just talking about finding land and moving on it - we’re talking about a whole change of life situation here. We’re talking about selling the only house we’ve ever owned and have been in for 18-years and moving into the woods on a piece of land with likely no services or structures. To take into account all of the various pieces of the puzzle to make this happen near explodes my brain.

Yesterday, we looked at one piece of land that we found online using Land Watch - which is where we find most of the land that we go out in search of with boots on the ground - that had a small cabin on it. Mostly we look at bare land, so this was a little unusual for us. Side note: It’s not that we are necessarily averse to finding land that already has a structure on it, but for what we’re looking for location/price/privacy/access wise typically that equates to bare land.

Now in theory, like on paper/computer screen, this place - located in Drummond, MT up Felan Gulch Rd - seemed like a real contender (see pic above). But it’s rather unheard of to find 40-acres for $110,000 with a small cabin on it (and the cabin even came equipped with solar panels). We’ve now been at this for long enough to know that there was likely some kind of reason for the low price point. And there was. The dirt road to access the property was a beast. Not only that - technically where these folks built their little cabin is on BLM land, not their own private land. Yeah. Sooo, not great.

The next piece of property we went to look at was on Cramer Creek Road in Clinton, MT (see pics below) and clocked in at $179,000 for 20-acres. Interestingly, & in contrast to the previous parcel w/cabin and no services, there were no structures on site but both a septic system and a power hook-up were put in.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided it might be helpful for us to come up with some sort of way to keep track of all the different elements in relation to the pieces of land we’ve been seeing. So we designed a sheet that we call our “Looking for Land Metric,” which we’ve now been filling out for each piece of property we look at.

Here it is:

Looking for Land Metric sheet.

Our way of keeping track of all the things.

Just like nearly every other piece of land we’ve seen, the Cramer Creek property had some good things going for it. It also had some strikes against it. Welcome to the search for land!

It’s not uncommon for us to be able to rule out certain properties once we’ve seen them. Whether they are too far back on the dirt (like the one up Felan Gulch) or the neighbors are too close, there are a number of factors involved where we can pretty easily say: hard pass. Understandably then, we don’t fill out one of our Land Metric sheets for properties that aren’t in the running. But for possibly-worth-pursuing pieces of property (holy alliteration!), we’ve been filling these sheets out and finding them helpful.

Pros for the Cramer Creek land include: dirt work has been done to level out a large area for a building site; there’s septic & power already on site; the neighboring land mostly consists of BLM land; there’s a nice small creek on site; good privacy.

Cons include: 6-miles back on the dirt (which may not seem like much but is really no joke; it puts some decent extra travel time into the mix and wear & tear on both your body & your vehicle, especially if you consider needing to traverse it every time you go to town); sits at 5,000 in elevation; winter access will be a serious endeavor; located in a canyon, ie: poor sun access.

Where does this leave us? Whelp. Still on the hunt I reckon.