You've found it. The price works, the photos look like the place you keep picturing, and the satellite view shows nothing but quiet for a mile in every direction. There's one catch: it's three states away, and you're wondering whether you really need to make that drive before you commit.
You're in good company. Plenty of people buy rural land without visiting it first, and for ordinary reasons: they're deployed, they work two jobs, or the trip would cost more than the first year of payments. Vacant land is also simpler to check than a house. There's no roof, no plumbing and no furnace to inspect. You're checking ground, access, rules and paperwork, and nearly all of that lives in public records and free maps.
This guide is the homework, in the order we'd do it ourselves.
One afternoon, six steps
None of this needs special software or a professional. Set aside a couple of hours, keep the listing open in one tab, and work down the list.
- 01Find the parcelPull it up by its parcel number on the county map and check who owns it.15 min
- 02Call the countyTen questions that tell you what you can build, camp and park there.30 min
- 03Walk it from aboveTerrain, history and neighbors, from free satellite imagery.45 min
- 04Check the road inWhich road reaches your land, and who looks after it.15 min
- 05Check the ground and weatherSoil, winters, fire season and phone signal.20 min
- 06Ask for the paperworkWhat to ask the seller before you sign.20 min
Find the parcel, then find the owner
Every piece of land in the country has an Assessor's Parcel Number, or APN. It's the land's ID in the county's records, and it's the one thing you should copy out of any listing before you do anything else. Every Westward listing shows it near the top of the page.
Search the county assessor's website or GIS map for that number. Most rural counties have both online now, and they're free. You'll see the parcel's outline drawn on an aerial photo, its acreage, its assessed value and annual taxes, and the owner of record.
That last one matters more than it looks, though it won't always be the seller's own name. Land companies sometimes hold a parcel through a partner company, so the record may show an LLC you haven't heard of. That's normal. Just ask the seller who it is, and expect a straight answer before you send a dollar. There's more on why in the red flags section below.
Write these down while you're there
- The APN and the legal description (it often reads like "Lot 14, Block 3, Unit 2 of…")
- Acreage, and whether it matches the listing
- Annual property tax, so you can put it in your budget
- The zoning code, if the map shows one
- The parcel's GPS coordinates, for the satellite step
Call the county. It's the most important call you'll make.
The county decides what you can do with the land, and the staff in the planning or land use office answer these questions every day. Call with your APN ready. Nobody else's opinion, ours included, outranks what the county tells you.
Ten questions for the planning office
Say: "I'm looking at buying parcel number ____, and I'd like to understand what I can do with it."
- What is it zoned, and what does that allow?Camping, RVs, a cabin, a manufactured home, animals.
- Can I camp or park an RV there before I build? For how long, and do I need a permit?
- What's the smallest home I'm allowed to build?
- What do I need before I can get a building permit?Septic, a water source, a driveway permit, an address.
- What are the setbacks from the property lines and the road?
- Is the road to it a county road? Who maintains it, and is it plowed?
- Is the parcel in a flood zone or any special district?
- Does the county have a record of a well or septic on it?
- Are there unpaid taxes or liens on it?
- Is there anything about the area you'd want to know if you were buying?
That last question is worth asking out loud. County staff won't advise you on a purchase, but you'd be surprised how often they mention the road that washes out every spring.
On a Westward listing, the Zoning information section is taken from the county's own zoning, with a note that covenants can be stricter. Use it as a head start, not a replacement for the call. Rules change, and the county's word is the one that counts.
Walk it from above
Free satellite imagery is the closest thing to a site visit you can get from home. Use Google Earth Pro on a computer rather than the phone app. It's free, and it has the one feature that matters most here: historical imagery, a slider that shows the same ground year by year.
Paste in the parcel's coordinates, turn on terrain, and tilt the view so you can see the land's shape. Then drag the history slider back. You're looking for change: standing water in a wet year, a burn scar, a new subdivision creeping closer, a track worn in by someone who's been camping on it.
✓What the picture can tell you
- Rough slope and the shape of the land
- Trees, clearings and likely camp spots
- Whether a road or track reaches the parcel
- How close the neighbors are, and how they keep their land
- Dry washes and low spots that hold water
- How the area has changed over 10 to 20 years
—What it can't
- Whether the road is passable in March
- Soft sand, rock or mud underfoot
- Noise, smell, and what the wind is like
- Exactly where the property corners sit
- Whether you have phone signal
- How it feels to stand there
If a public road runs near the parcel, drop into Street View on Google Maps. Even a view from a mile away tells you what the roads in the area are like and what "rural" means there.
Check the road in
The most beautiful parcel in the state is no use if you can't get to it. The good news is that most rural land, including most of ours, sits right on a county road: usually gravel or dirt, and kept up by the county.
A few questions cover it: is the road a county road, is it passable after rain or snow, and what will you need to drive it? If the land doesn't touch a public road, ask for the recorded easement, a written right to cross a neighbor's land that's filed with the county. It's rare on our land, but worth knowing the word. Owners' groups and local Facebook groups for the area give the most honest road reports you'll find.
Check the ground and the weather
Most of this land is dry high desert, well outside any floodplain, and flooding there is minimal. Be aware that a few areas have no digital FEMA flood map you can look up online, so you have to pull the FEMA documents for the individual parcel. The things worth a few minutes are the soil, the internet and the weather, and these free tools answer them:
Think in seasons. A summer satellite image won't show the snow that sits from November to April, the mud season that closes a road, or the fire restrictions that ban campfires in a dry July. Your county's emergency management office can tell you which of those apply.
Look up the winter before you fall in love with the summer.
Ask for the paperwork
You don't need to dig through county records for this part. Ask the seller, and expect clear answers to each of these before you sign:
- Is the title clear? Are there any liens, back taxes or claims on the land? If you'd like extra peace of mind, a title company can check for you.
- Does anything cross it? A power line, say, or a neighbor's driveway.
- Are there covenants (CC&Rs)? In a subdivision or HOA, these can be stricter than zoning: no RVs, a minimum home size, no shipping containers. Ask for a copy.
- How are you buying it? With owner financing, know exactly what you sign: when the deed is recorded in your name, whose name the title is in until then, what happens if you miss a payment, and whether you can pay it off early.
Ask for anything you don't understand to be explained in plain words. A good seller would rather answer ten questions now than one angry phone call later.
If you'll build, budget for the ground work
Cheap land and cheap building are different things. If you plan to put a home on the parcel one day, these are the costs that surprise people most. They vary enormously by county, ground and distance, so use them to ask better questions, not as quotes.
| Item | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Septic system | $3,500–8,5001 | Soil and the county's rules. Poor soil can mean an engineered system at two to three times the price, or more. |
| Water well | $15–25 per foot2 | Depth to water, rock, and whether a pump and tank are included. Some areas allow hauled water and a cistern instead. |
| Power to the parcel | $5–15 per foot3 | Distance to the nearest line. Many off-grid owners go solar instead. |
| Driveway & permits | Varies | Your county's permit fees and how much road you need to cut. Ask in step 2. |
Ballpark figures from national cost guides, 2025–26. An engineered septic system where the soil is poor commonly runs $7,000–20,000 or more, a pump adds $900–2,500 to a well, and a mile of new overhead line can pass $40,000. Your county, a local driller and the power company will give you the real numbers. The USDA soil survey in step 5 tells you early whether septic is likely to be easy or hard.
Red flags
Any one of these is a reason to slow down, ask more questions, or make the trip:
- The seller dodges basic questions
- No clear legal access
- The seller can't explain who the owner on record is
- Pressure to pay before you can check anything
- Payment by wire, gift card or crypto only
- Title problems or back taxes
- Mapped flood, landslide or high fire zone
- A price far below everything nearby
Fake sellers target vacant land
Scammers pose as the owner of a vacant lot, often one whose real owner lives far away, list it below market, and push for a fast, remote sale. The real owner can lose the land to a forged deed, and the buyer can lose their money with no valid title to show for it. In June 2026 the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center warned that these vacant land scams are rising.4
The defense is simple: check the county's owner of record. It should be the seller, or a company the seller can name and explain. Reach the owner through contact details you found yourself, not the ones in the listing, and never send money on emailed instructions without calling a number you already trust.
When to go and see it anyway
Most of the time, the homework above is enough. These are the times it isn't.
A private road, a creek crossing, or a stretch nobody maintains. See it with your own tires.
Slopes, wetlands and odd terrain are hard to judge from above, and they decide where you can build.
When the house costs far more than the land, a weekend trip is cheap insurance on the bigger number.
If a question from your research won't go away after a phone call, trust that and go look.
Reserve it now, see it later
You don't have to choose between making the trip and losing the parcel. Every Westward property comes with a 90-day guarantee: make your down payment to reserve it, then take up to 90 days to go and stand on it. If it's not the one, for any reason, we'll refund everything you've paid except the document fee, or move you to another parcel.
See available landWhat every Westward listing gives you
We built our listings so most of this homework starts already done. You still make the county call, but you start it with the right numbers in hand.
The facts, up front
- Parcel no.
- The APN, with a link to verify it with the county where we can
- Location
- GPS coordinates and a satellite map with the parcel pinned
- Zoning
- From the county's zoning, with what's allowed
- Utilities
- Power, water and sewer, as far as we know them
- Costs
- Annual taxes, any HOA dues, and the full payment plan
And if something isn't on the page, ask us. We'd rather you buy with your eyes open than buy twice.
The remote buyer's checklist
Tick as you go. Your ticks stay in this browser, so you can come back to it, or print a clean copy.
Before you buy
Things people ask us
Yes. Vacant land is one of the few kinds of property people regularly buy from a distance, because so much of it can be checked in public records and imagery. The homework in this guide is what makes it a sensible decision rather than a gamble.
Start with the parcel's GPS coordinates and the county map on your phone. Many rural lots have old survey pins at the corners. If you need exact lines, for a fence or a building, hire a licensed surveyor to mark them.
It depends entirely on the county. Some allow short stays freely, some need a permit, and some limit how many days a year you can stay before you build. It's question 2 on the county call list above.
The coordinates saved offline, a paper map, more water than you think, a spare tire you've checked, and a full tank. Phone signal often drops in the last few miles, so tell someone where you're going.
Here's the part nobody puts in a checklist. Once the homework is done and the land is yours, that first visit stops being an inspection. You aren't judging a listing any more. You're turning off the engine, stepping out, and standing on your own ground for the first time.
It's worth doing the work for that.
– Jon & the Westward team
Sources
- HomeGuide, Septic system cost (2025–26), homeguide.com/costs/septic-tank-system-cost; Angi, engineered septic system cost (2025).
- HomeGuide, Well drilling cost, homeguide.com/costs/well-drilling-cost; HomeAdvisor, Cost to drill a well.
- HomeGuide, Cost to run power to a property, homeguide.com/costs/cost-to-run-power.
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center public service announcement, 16 June 2026, as reported by the American Land Title Association, 18 June 2026. Report fraud at ic3.gov.
- Soil, broadband and climate tools: USDA NRCS Web Soil Survey, FCC National Broadband Map, NOAA NWS NOWData. Google Earth Pro historical imagery: google.com/earth/versions.