North Carolina Land Sales Expert Eric Andrews explains a little bit about buying land in the country. The good thing and the bad thing about unrestricted land is that it’s unrestricted. If you want to be sure that neighbors now or in the future will not do something you disagree with, you should probably look into a subdivision. Chatham County has several large acreage subdivisions.
Speaker 1: Buyers agents ever want to make sure that you can ensure that there will never be something obnoxious going in next door to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The agents ask that and buyers ask that. So yeah, you have 10, 20, 40 acres in the middle of the country and you are buying unrestricted land that is outside of a subdivision and it might be unzoned, or it might be zoned for residential or agricultural use, which there’s pretty loosey-goosey, countywide zoning regarding those types of properties. I will have clients that will buy their five or 10 acres in the middle of the country, amongst all this beautiful farmland, and then they want to make sure, “Hey, there better not be any chicken houses ever coming in next door to me and everything.” Or, “Want to make sure we don’t have any hog farms.” Or, “Want to make sure there’s never a firing range.” Or, “Want to make sure there’s never a kennel,” or anything that is an obnoxious use.
The only way that you can prevent that is if you own what is next door to you. So you can’t go in the middle of the country and buy a five, 10 acre lot and then be surprised, or disappointed, if a chicken house comes in next door to you because you are out in the country and those people are dependent on making their livelihood off of that kind of agricultural land or rural land and everything. No one is more hated than someone that gets their little slice of five or 10 acres and then wants to dictate what everybody else can do around them.
If you want to make sure that you’re not going to have that kind of obnoxious use next door to you, you need to buy into a large acreage subdivision, which is an area and we have them here, five and 10 acre lot subdivisions. And that way you know everybody around you is not going to have the chicken houses or the hog farms or whatever.
But if you buy land out in the middle of nowhere, you can’t expect to dictate what your neighbors are going to do. Those are the benefits and the risks of buying out in the country.
