Buying RV Friendly Land (because you need a home base!)

we are super excited to share this video with you guys mercedes and i have been looking for rv friendly land all over america and in this video we're going to share 10 things that you have to look for if you're looking for rv friendly land because it's not as easy as you would think it's tough [Music] welcome back to the rv couple my name is john and my name's mercedes and we rv in pursuit of freedom independence and adventure because life is so short guys we are so excited to bring this video to you this week we've done a ton of research on purchasing rv land with the circumstances that have happened in the past year for the panorama and state and national campgrounds closing down as full-time rvers we need a safe place to go a home base of sorts a home base so mercedes and i started looking at small pieces of land all over the country and within our research we found out fascinating information in this video we're going to share 10 things that we learned about buying rv land and this is huge guys because you would assume that just buying a piece of property and owning said property would mean you can do what you want on that property right now this is america right the truth is is that there's so many different rules and zoning and health departments there's actually a spectrum when you start considering buying an rv law so what we mean by a spectrum as far as rv friendly land it's kind of a continuum and on one side of the continuum you have the stuff that's already set up so this types of properties will have all the utilities they'll be deeded they'll be designed for rvs specifically on the other side of the spectrum this is where you kind of enter the wild wild west yeah which we love yeah so maybe you're going into land that has not been cleared yet it may not be drivable for an rv maybe it's in the middle of nowhere and you can't even get cell reception so there's kind of this spectrum and in that spectrum you need to find how much work do you really want to do to make sure you can park your rv there we started looking for landing communities in uh incorporated counties now we're starting to look for larger pieces of land outside that are unincorporated right and and we find that this is the most conducive to the type of rv land that we want to own we've been looking at big pieces of land that we could possibly share with other like-minded families right and actually we're looking at all the rules and the things that need to be done to be able to do this so that everybody's interests are protected so you buy a piece of land outside of an incorporated area some of them in texas don't even have building departments can you imagine buying a piece of land and doing whatever you want to do with it well guess what it's not as easy as you guys think it's really fun looking for property but you have to find a piece of property that you're going to be able to do or accomplish the goal in our case we want to put an rv there or buy a big piece of land split those lots up so it's multiple titles into a private community so the easiest way to accomplish this is grab the legal description on the property and make some phone calls if they have a local building department or local health department if they have a zoning department right and they'll be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with property get a good realtor the realtor should know it's their job to know and do the research to find out if you can do what you want to do to purchase that land obviously they don't want to waste their time and we don't want to waste our time but if the realtor can't answer those questions grab the property description call the local building department if there is one the zoning department the health department and there's a few questions that you can ask that we're going to go over right now which this actually leads to the second thing that you want to look for you see is there an hoa you see you don't have to just look at the state requirements the county requirements the city requirements that property could also have an hoa on top of that and if it does i mean just forget it unless it's full of rvs exactly and if it's an hoa property that's designed for rvs then you need to look into like what value does the hoa offer what did the fees actually include is it a thriving community or are they like on their last dollar and you know those dues are going to go up so the hoa isn't necessarily a deal killer but unless it's a designated rv spot it could be a big problem now the third thing that you need to look for is accessibility and there's kind of a spectrum to that too and here's what we mean you see there are some properties that are going to be 45 minutes to an hour away from groceries or maybe they're so far away that there will be zero internet signal or phone signal whatsoever or security right out in the middle of nowhere no police activity and and and maybe it's not even accessible by a standard vehicle maybe there's no way you could even get the rv on it because there's no roads in that area yet whereas then on the other side of the spectrum everything is nice flat and paved you've got internet you've got a grocery store you know a half mile away so there's gonna be this spectrum of accessibility to those those key things that everyone needs those key functions groceries police fire department you know internet cell phone tower is a big one guys so that's something you're gonna have to ask yourself those hard questions like how much accessibility do i need and how much time and money am i willing to spend to to you know grade roads on your property all right baby you ready good thing we have a jeep huh i know here we go let's see let's see if we can get out here and see this is actually really nice compared to some of the places we've been to oh my god could you imagine trying to drive the rv down this oh my gosh hold on tight now the perfect piece of land that mercedes and i are looking for is going to be something that is zoned recreational or agricultural those seem to be a little bit easier but again there's no one way it's going to vary depending on which state county municipality all that stuff is going to make a big difference but we're looking for a little bit of seclusion that's probably 30 to 45 minutes away from like the closest walmart or services right gas stations and we're looking for a place that's going to be very quiet very peaceful right we'd like some tree cover on it but that does come at a cost because when you're out in the middle of nowhere like that you're going to not have security you're not going to have access to services like electricity sometimes as far as easements go you have to get access to the property we found some really cool property got excited and then when you dug into it there was no right of way there was no easement to actually get to the property and that's why they were so inexpensive so you're going to want to be able to access the property legally from a road that hopefully is county maintained or state maintained and this is where i think you really need to be honest with yourself you see john having his experience as a builder is going to know certain things that if it was just me i i mean i've never heard of the word easements before i mean i've heard of easel and you know you write on it but definitely not easements right so you need to be honest with yourself about what you can do what you're not really good at and and what you should just you know leave to the profession hire it out yeah so now that you found your dream piece of land right you know that you can do what it is you want to do with that piece of land the next thing you're going to want to do is find out if that if you can get an address for that property very very important right typically that's never a problem but most counties will make you put in an approved driveway you have to pull a permit to put a driveway into that property and then they will give you an address for that property once you've got an address how are you gonna get water right and some counties will have county water that you just tap into but there's a big fee for that when i was building in colorado those tap fees were about fourteen thousand dollars just to tap into the city's water system guys and so it can be super super expensive now in mercedes case we want to be completely self-sufficient and dependent we're hoping to buy a piece of property that we can put a well in so does it have water rights right if it does have water rights the best thing to do is to call some local drilling companies and ask them hey give them the legal description they'll know where it is right they've probably hopefully been doing this for years they'll be able to give you an idea but not a guarantee of the cost of drilling oh yeah you could drill 150 feet and hit good clean water sometimes if you're in the mountains you may have to drill to 3 000 feet to hit water so it's very important that you call the local drilling company ask them what they think it might take to take water on that property because they'll know the area so they should have a sense but they can't guarantee yes so along the lines of water whether you have water rights whether you need to tap into the water for the city or the county or whatnot there's also electricity and it's a big one well yeah cause like tesla's electricity in the air didn't quite work out so so what do you do about electricity electricity is pretty important guys but in today's world it's not absolutely necessary right and so look to where the closest electrical lines are to the property call the electric company ask them if they service that area you may want to you can actually invite them out they'll walk it off they'll tell you how much it will cost to get electricity to the property the more secluded it is the farther sometimes the electricity is going to be electrical companies will charge you per the foot and per pole unless it's underground to install electricity this can be an absolutely huge cost but because today we have solar it's not necessary that you have to have electricity it's nice if you can get electricity but you don't necessarily have to have electricity in today's world and i suspect that that's going to change quicker and quicker that solar and batteries are going to become more of the norm in the future so now you've got your dream piece of property you know that you can do what you want with it and they're not going to stop you you found out that you can get an address you found out that you are going to drill a well and that you can get electricity and if you can't get electricity you're going to go with some type of a generator or solar system to do this the next thing you're going to want to do is take care of your poop guys and what this means is that you want to find out if you can put a septic system in that area best way to do this is to call the local county health department right now the county health department is going to tell you what you need to do for them to approve a septic system there are counties in texas they don't care there's counties in florida they don't care you can go ahead and put any type of septic system in that you want to but most counties are going to force you to pull a permit to put in a licensed septic system or an engineered septic system once you know you need to do that you need to call an engineer they come out and do a core drilling report the engineer after taking those core soils tests will design a system that will perk that lot depending on how many people you're going to be servicing so if it's one campsite two campsites 10 campsites 12 campsites that makes a lot of sense because in florida you can't be too close to the coast with your septic system and and not just that but also like soil septic like for us our goal is to be self-sustaining looking at those usda hardiness zones because that will tell you like your climate and what plants specifically will will do better in certain hardiness zones than others right so yeah i could see how that would be a huge one so the next thing you want to consider is natural disasters that happen in the area that you want to own this land right uh is it on the west coast and good luck doing anything on the west coast even the upper northeast right you're going to be dealing with earthquakes you're going to be dealing with hurricanes in florida you're going to be dealing with tornadoes in tornado alley these are all things that you're really going to want to consider if you're going to be doing something with an rv right and so in florida maybe you're going to have to put some straps down with what's called helicals into the ground to strap that unit down this is something that they do with mobile homes in florida there's actually way to anchor those rigs down so that they're not going to fly away on you another thing to consider is it in a flood zone you never want to put anything in a flood zone so you got to be super super careful to do a little bit of flood research well and if it is in a flood zone it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't do anything in that area but you will be incurring extra costs like you'll have additional flood insurance depending on the structure and extra things that you're going to want to look at and you're also going to want to make sure the property grades in such a way that you're not sitting in a basin you're not getting washed out right the next piece that is really important you see we want some privacy we want some trees we want that space to kind of be on our own we don't want to be in the middle of a hustling and bustling city right but there's a cost to everything that you want there's a pro and a con right and the con is that if you're in the middle of nowhere if if a bad guy finds you the good guys are really far away some of the things you should really consider if you are secluded out away from fire department police department is your personal protection of your family and your property guys so it's just really really important that if you're going to be secluded make sure that you can defend what's yours and what you love your job is to take these 10 considerations that we've listed and to really make a list in each one what is it that you're looking for what are you looking to do on the property what is your budget realistically remember buying the property isn't necessarily the most expensive purchase sometimes doing the stuff to the property will cost five times as much as the actual land itself yeah it's a great point because you might need some chainsaws you might need a little skid steer to do a lot of the work yourself right rather than hiring this stuff out mercedes and i have already eyeballed a few properties that we love one of them is 180 acres we've also had our beyond squad members reach out to us and say they're interested in maybe jumping in on that community aspect of it what's really cool about that is you can actually deep pieces up we haven't gotten to the details yet once we get the group together and we actually have property that we can look at we'll you know we'll present it to that group of people but we are super excited about this we have a lot of hope for our future and building the community that we want to live in yeah because we're all thinking it right we all need a bug out place right things are getting a little crazy crazy and okay maybe not bug out maybe it can just be like an escape right a nice place outdoors that you can really enjoy nature whatever your rationale is we can definitely all relate to wanting to have a place that's beautiful that's out in nature and and that's safe right so if you're interested please make sure that you are signed up for our newsletter because this is something that we're going to relay to our newsletter people first make sure you sign up for the newsletter and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: RV Odd Couple

Views: 194,828

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Id: p7RI-2gGktY

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021