Houses with land? (Huntsville, Madison, Athens: for sale, real estate, established neighborhood)

[nontradstudent]

I am looking at relocating to the Huntsville area, and I would like to have a modest ranch house on an acre or so of land. I really like 50s-60s brick ranches, so older neighborhoods are fine. Are there particular neighborhoods that I should focus on? In cursory searches, it seems that northeast and southeast areas are older parts of the city that may have a better chance of having larger lots.

My spouse works for Publix and will probably have to move around stores periodically, so I do not want to go too far outside the city.

Thanks for any insight!

[FatTails]

If you limit the search to lots >= 0.9 acres, house age >= 50 years old, and located within a 20-mile radius of Huntsville you end up with 14 houses currently for sale. About half have been on the market for 20+ days which is unusual since most houses have a habit of going off market within a couple of days. Average list price is $198k and average square footage is 1500. You'd get different results if you expanded the age or added new criteria (house size, # of beds, etc.). There are a couple of houses for sale in city limits, but most are in the county (Athens area, Hazel Green, New Hope, New Market, Harvest, etc.). Just depends if you want to pay a premium to live in the city or not. Looking at the map it doesn't appear there are any particular neighborhoods to focus on... it's pretty scattered.

[dwhisent]

It is getting harder to find houses with land in the cities, and developers want to buy acreage and then try to put as many houses into it as they can to maximize profit. I went through this myself in my recent house hunt. I used ValleyMLS where you can filter searches based on lot size, also my real estate agent filtered the houses she found for us also based on lot size. We finally found a nice place halfway to Athens on an acre lot. But there were also some hits even in Madison and Huntsville city limits. So even if that was over the top, the suggestion of using the search tools is a good one.

[nontradstudent]

Thanks for your kindness, Surge001. And thanks to FatTails and dwhisent; this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for so I know to just keep looking more at random with filtered searches on lot size rather than targeting certain neighborhoods. I had used the national search engines, but I had not tried ValleyMLS. I appreciate the tip as it seems to show more than the national sites do.

[Mississippi Alabama Line]

Good luck. You'll need to get at least 30 minutes solid drive time outside of anywhere developed to find this. I spent 6 years trying to find it when I lived there and it's only built up since then. Nowadays a lot of people who DID have this have now sold it for subdivision development.

If you're alright driving, it can be found. But if you have a commute to somewhere inside of HSV everyday, may as well give up that dream. In any city, honestly, unless you really want to pay big money.

You're going to simply do the work if you want to do this, you won't find it on the internet. Find the area you want to live, get in the car and simply pound the pavement until you find what it is you want. There's really no shortcut. Everybody wants a house and an acre, especially post-COVID.

[sk8grd]

Since you mentioned Pulbix and yes I know they are going in all over the place Take a look at these 2 zip codes 35773 and 35749. I myself live in the 35773 which is Toney, Al less than 20 minutes to Huntsville or Madison and we have a Publix 5 minutes from our house. A few more minutes south of our house and there is another Publix (Wall Triana and Pine Grove) Maybe another 10 from there and you have the Publix at Clift farm, County line road and the one at Hughes road. Maybe this might help put you central to all of them? The established neighborhoods are more to our south, in Madison and in Huntsville but you still can find some older homes and land for that matter in our area. Just my 2 cents....

[RocketDawg]

The house I moved from 30 years ago was almost exactly what you're looking for. It was a ranch-style house on a bit over 3/4 acre in south Huntsville just west of Memorial Parkway. But it was in a neighborhood, not in the "country", if that is a criterion. The point is that houses like you're looking for do exist in the city, but finding one for sale might be another matter. It's a very tight market here right now - just not that many houses for sale.