Intrigued by the Nebraska panhandle

[drphilip]

Hi,

Thanks for that. Not thinking at all of large scale farming. If I bought a parcel, I would like to be able to provide water for the home and a garden. Would hope to xeriscape and not tie myself down to mowing a lawn...

How small a parcel can you build on in the panhandle?

Thanks,
Philip

[chimney rock newfoundland]

I don't know what the requirements are. I don't think there is a limit but not positive. Have you looked on realtor.com for this area?
REALTOR.com - Real Estate Listings & Homes For Sale

There are realtors listed that you could email for more information.

[itsMeFred]

There really aren't zoning requirements like you're thinking of. You can build on one acre of one hundred...

[HarveyRabbit]

You may be interested in looking in the Scottsbluff, Mitchell, Morrill area. Mitchell is an especially nice town of about 2,000 with it's own historic movie theater, grocery store, dentist, clinic, winery, assisted living facility etc. Scottsbluff is a town of 14,000 (20,000 if you include its sister city, Gering) and is less than 10 miles away on Hwy 26.

You can usually find relatively inexpensive farmland just north of the town, into the sandhills. However, irrigation there is a pretty serious business, the canals are scheduled only so many days a year and the amount of water you can use is severely limited. You may want to make certain you don't run into a well moratorium if you are planning on drilling. That said, the view of Scotts Bluff National Monument and, on a clear day, Laramie Peak is amazing in that area.

Also, if you are serious about green energy, you will need to check with Nebraska Public Power on that. Nebraska is entirely public power, and currently they do not buy back power from private systems.

[drphilip]

Thanks Harvey Rabit and all the others who have replied. Sounds like water is a bigger issue than I thought in the panhandle, but I am just starting the process. I do like the Scottsbluff hospital situation; sounds really up to date, and will want to be near there.

A lot of water still has to go under the bridge before I can make a move...doing the advance scouting for now.

[ken_&_nikki]

Check out Kimball, NE....there are windmills there, and it's a pretty, quiet little town without as much stink as we have here in Bayard, NE.

[Chris19]

I went though about a month ago to Cheyenne and Colorado from Eastern South Dakota and found the area from around Sidney to the Nebraska border (portion of the panhandle interesting with some cliffs and buttes which can be seen from the interstate) interesting. West of Kimball, one can notice a few oil wells pumping. Of the streches of I-80, I find the stretch west of where I-76 forks off to be the most interesting (with rolling hills, buttes, cliffs, and oil wells towards the Wyoming border).

When I went through, area looks nice and green with well-needed rain in the pandhandle. Two years ago, it was parched (easily noticed in North Platte and points west), but that was a drier time there along with most of Nebraska and South Dakota for sure. With water/preciptation in the high plains, it seems like it is either feast or famine and precipitation is mroe sparse than eastern Nebraska, Iowa, eastern S. Dakota, and Minnesota per se.

[itsMeFred]

In the early settlement days, banks were hesitant to loan money west of the 100th meridian (about Valentine down to McCook) because of how dry it was. The same is still true today, so far as rainfall.
If you look on a rainfall map, Nebraska gets steadily drier the further west you get, and the further into the rainshadow you get.
But it's also blessedly less humid than eastern Nebraska!

[Gunluvver2]

Dr. Philip,
Unless you find an existing rural acreage that has been "Grandfathered" in a previous sale sellers are required to sell plots of at least 20 acres or go through the sub-division process. This is a State Law. However there are many already existing smaller plots that you can choose from.

In Western Nebraska it is often easier to purchase 160 to 640 acres than it is to buy two or three.

Spend some time in an area before you buy. Bankers, real estate agents and so on are NOT the best ones to talk to to get an idea about what you are looking for in a lot of these small communities. Do some in depth investigating in an area before you buy. Prices may be drastically different than what you were used to in previous areas you have lived. Local coffee shops, cafes, bars, auctions, churches etc. are good places to get a feel for a community. After you get a grassroots feeling for the area then you can approach the real estates sales people with a bit more knowledge of what is going on.

Good Luck,
GL2