The Search Continues
From rolling sage brush country to well-treed forest and from finding bones to picking wild flowers, we’ve been really covering some ground over the past few weeks in our active search for land.
Due to our limited financial means, what’s available on the market right now, how fast land is selling, and what we are looking for, the search, well, the search has not been easy. It continues to amaze me just how different each property is. One piece has great varied terrain and good resources on site but the privacy factor is low and the highway noise is high. One piece is quiet with stellar views but the terrain is one-note and there are very few trees around. We drove to a piece of land for sale yesterday in the Bitterroot up Copper Ridge in Florence and while the drive and the forest were incredibly lovely, the piece of land for sale would’ve required that we get our serious mountain goat legs on. Sure it was a super good price but it was basically just a straight up steep mountain side for sale.
There’s an 11-acre property for sale here in Missoula up Larch Camp Road for $95,000 (which is a really good price). On paper (aka the computer on realtor.com) it looks like a great score. Until, that is, one attempts to traverse the super rugged outback-style dirt road it takes to get there (we tried). Moral of the story: anything for sale around the $100K mark is being sold at that price for a reason.
I’ve been on the fence about whether highway noise is a deal breaker for me. We’ve seen a couple of really promising pieces of land for sale - one in Superior and one in Arlee - where the main detractor for me has been the wealth of highway noise on site. Both pieces had a lot of other stuff going for them but I’m just not sure I want to put up with highway noise. Gosh it’s hard to know what is best to do here. Do we wait for the “right” piece of land to come on the market, assuming & hoping all the while that that day will surely come? Do we settle for something that isn’t our favorite and just make due? And what are we willing to bend and sway on and what are we not willing to bend and sway on, in terms of what we’re looking for? Questions, questions. Ponderings ponderings. Searching searching.
Mike and I have both been trying our hand at vblogging while we’re out and about on these land search adventures. Here’s one I recorded just yesterday (Sat May 15th) around the Stevensville area: