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No woods, lots of wind that makes even a little bit of snow into a LOT of snow. Isolation. Everything my fellow Wyomingites have said on here is true and then some.
What you want isn't readily seen in most of the west
Quote:
Originally Posted by Princess83
My Fiance and i are looking for a plot of land thats pretty rural. We have a few tiny issues tough,it has to be within a short drive to a hospital for work, and at least a few acres of woods. we want to be able to see nothing but land, and no houses for a few miles.
also, we want to know does Wyoming have all 4 seasons (summer, winter, fall, spring)?
how are the schools?
how about pricing for houses or land?
what is there to do?
is Wyoming right for us?
A few acres within easy driving distance of a hospital where you can see no houses for miles -- right there, you've disqualified most of the intermountain west, full stop, thanks for asking.
Anywhere where there is a hospital is not going to be near a rural area. In most areas that are as rural as you're saying, you're lucky to see to see even a clinic with a PA/nurse and a doctor on rotation.
If you want to live in the rural west, Wyoming or otherwise, you'd better get used to driving. Where we used to live in Nevada, we had the lack of neighbors you specify (and more) and we would drive 120 miles for access to a Walmart and a regular grocery store. BTW -- that was the distance to a hospital, in a town of over 30K people. If you had a serious emergency, the air ambulance would fly into our county strip (which was mostly used by crop dusters in the summer and had no instrument approach), they'd throw your nearly dead body on the plane and you'd take off on a two-engine turbo prop to go to Reno or Salt Lake. It took them nearly an hour to get to our airport and an hour to get back to a city with an appropriate hospital.
The situation is the same in most of the rural west, often with airstrips nowhere near as nice as we had in central NV.
As for all four seasons. Suuuuure.... and at higher elevations in the rural west, you can sometimes have two to four seasons in one day. I've seen days when the daytime temp was 100F, and that night when I was baling hay, it was just above freezing... the second week of July. At higher elevations, there can be snow just about any time of the year, and killing frosts into June and as early as late August.
What is there to do? Outside activities. In the rural west, you really don't have shopping, movie theatres, etc. In some small towns, they get in traveling music groups/musicians and acts that come through every so often. The hunting and fishing are good, as are all other outdoor opportunities.
Big West Realty - Creekside Farm For Sale, Greybull, WY (http://www.landwyoming.com/ranches/Creekside/index.htm - broken link)
"The isolated setting is enhanced by the meandering creek, moderate tree cover, one neighbor and a lack of outside noise due to the valley setting."
It's possible to find land in Wyoming close to your description. For example, the above listing claims to be only 3 miles from greybull. It certainly would fit your desire for no neighbors and close access to a hospital.
However, as other have pointed out, it seems like there is a disconnect outside of Wyoming as to what is "forest," or "mountainous." For example, to many Wyomingites, "woods" could be considered a large grove of Cottonwood or Russian olive trees, which you see in abundance in the above listing. But beware, the above listing is nowhere near the mountains. Greybull is a good 30 miles away from any forest consisting of pines, firs, etc. This home is surrounded by desert, with the moderate vegetation only supported by water which comes and goes in Wyoming...
My Fiance and i are looking for a plot of land thats pretty rural. We have a few tiny issues tough,it has to be within a short drive to a hospital for work, and at least a few acres of woods. we want to be able to see nothing but land, and no houses for a few miles.
also, we want to know does Wyoming have all 4 seasons (summer, winter, fall, spring)?
how are the schools?
how about pricing for houses or land?
what is there to do?
is Wyoming right for us?
our great posters have covered about everything about locations,schools etc. one thing that may have been left out is the lack of private property meeting your desirers-correct me if I AM WRONG POSTERS-TWO-THIRDS OF WYO LAND IS NOT PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THEREFORE MOSTLEY WITHOUT MANY AMENITIES-THIS MAKES THE PROPERTIES CONSIDERD RURAL MUCH IN DEMAND AND OVERPRICED FOR WHAT YOU ACTUALLY GET, THE PRICE OF DEVELOPING THESES SO CALLED DREAM LOCALS IS AND WILL GET WORSE-THE BETTER THE VIEW THE HIGHER THE PRICE ETC. WYO IS NOT THE NEW FRONTIER-IF YOU WANT WHAT IS LEFT OF RURAL LAND IN ANY SCENIC AREA YOU WILL PAY-PAY-PAY. In a lighter sense come to our great state and enjoy our wonderful public lands-national forests etc. you do not have to pay out the nose for what wyo has to offer in its beauty-find a place for yourself in a nice area-the rest is free
Big West Realty - Creekside Farm For Sale, Greybull, WY (http://www.landwyoming.com/ranches/Creekside/index.htm - broken link)
"The isolated setting is enhanced by the meandering creek, moderate tree cover, one neighbor and a lack of outside noise due to the valley setting."
It's possible to find land in Wyoming close to your description. For example, the above listing claims to be only 3 miles from greybull. It certainly would fit your desire for no neighbors and close access to a hospital.
However, as other have pointed out, it seems like there is a disconnect outside of Wyoming as to what is "forest," or "mountainous." For example, to many Wyomingites, "woods" could be considered a large grove of Cottonwood or Russian olive trees, which you see in abundance in the above listing. But beware, the above listing is nowhere near the mountains. Greybull is a good 30 miles away from any forest consisting of pines, firs, etc. This home is surrounded by desert, with the moderate vegetation only supported by water which comes and goes in Wyoming...
Be very careful when you read such glowing property descriptions as Wyoming real estate folks tend to be somewhat misleading on a lot of "little" details about their listings.
In this case, it's about the property being divided into THREE PARCELS.
You have your choice of buying all three, for approx $500,000, which gives you the house and two adjacent meadow properties ... one apparently used for hay (with only 15 acres of water rights ... whatever that vague description means, we don't know if it's surface water for flood irrigation or if it's a well source; irrigation water rights and functional water are a very big deal here), and the other used for a "paintball" activity area, with an outbuilding for the business.
Or, you can buy just one of the parcels, but only if two others are previously sold ... according to their terms, the house parcel and one of the meadows.
Which means that the adjacent parcel to your house will be somebody's building site ... but you get to save $150,000 (or so) off the house and land purchase. So, you're losing the "privacy" aspect of not having a neighbor within view.
Even at that, if you were to buy the entire property, I'd sure be looking at the site very carefully with an eye toward what properties are adjacent, what is planned for them in terms of possible subdividing and development. You may well buy this place, thinking you've found your dream isolated spot, only to have an adjacent property divided up into 40's within a short time frame. With that will come houses in your view.
As we've discussed in many threads here, isolated/accessible Wyoming land is a very difficult proposition unless you've got a lot of money to buy up substantial acreage.
Ah, please note also ... approx 1/2 of Wyoming's land area is public lands, fed, state, county ....
Be very careful when you read such glowing property descriptions as Wyoming real estate folks tend to be somewhat misleading on a lot of "little" details about their listings.
In this case, it's about the property being divided into THREE PARCELS.
You have your choice of buying all three, for approx $500,000, which gives you the house and two adjacent meadow properties ... one apparently used for hay (with only 15 acres of water rights ... whatever that vague description means, we don't know if it's surface water for flood irrigation or if it's a well source; irrigation water rights and functional water are a very big deal here), and the other used for a "paintball" activity area, with an outbuilding for the business.
Or, you can buy just one of the parcels, but only if two others are previously sold ... according to their terms, the house parcel and one of the meadows.
Which means that the adjacent parcel to your house will be somebody's building site ... but you get to save $150,000 (or so) off the house and land purchase. So, you're losing the "privacy" aspect of not having a neighbor within view.
Even at that, if you were to buy the entire property, I'd sure be looking at the site very carefully with an eye toward what properties are adjacent, what is planned for them in terms of possible subdividing and development. You may well buy this place, thinking you've found your dream isolated spot, only to have an adjacent property divided up into 40's within a short time frame. With that will come houses in your view.
As we've discussed in many threads here, isolated/accessible Wyoming land is a very difficult proposition unless you've got a lot of money to buy up substantial acreage.
Ah, please note also ... approx 1/2 of Wyoming's land area is public lands, fed, state, county ....
You have a nice way of saying-don't let your money blow out the window on the way to your piece of nothin. I wish good folks would come look-camp in the place they would like to buy at a realators expense and the realator camps with them say for about a normal vacation-week to 10 days-how many land sellers would be willing to do that? My guess is 0. YOURS?
You have a nice way of saying-don't let your money blow out the window on the way to your piece of nothin. I wish good folks would come look-camp in the place they would like to buy at a realators expense and the realator camps with them say for about a normal vacation-week to 10 days-how many land sellers would be willing to do that? My guess is 0. YOURS?
Since we considered ourselves "seasoned" real estate investors/owners ... I've held a RE license in other states for my own trading purposes and my wife grew up in her Mom's real estate brokerage ... and we'd run into a lot of "shenanigans" with Wyoming realtors in looking at over 60 properties ....
We made our offer on the Wyoming ranch we bought contingent upon our final inspection, based upon our visiting here over a three-week period, with a hefty (refundable) earnest money deposit and a cash closing at the 4th week if all was OK. We came up for three three-day weekends and "camped out" at the vacant house, brought our horses up and rode around the place and met the prospective neighbors. We checked out the infrastructure, inspected the barns and outbuildings, looked over the irrigation system (the alfalfa fields were leased out and sprinklers or flood systems were operating), checked the fences, hiked the whole property ... had the well water quality and volume checked. Had the new proposed property lines surveyed (we were only buying a portion of the 6-section ranch, but we could have as much as we wanted at $X's per acre). Checked out the history and untimely deaths of the last two owners of the place. Ran soil samples through testing to know what we were getting. Investigated the old "fuel farm", buried underground fuel tanks site where the tanks had been removed to prepare the place for sale. Checked the wiring for all the buildings and grainary, and all the old, abandoned building sites and wiring and water lines, as well as the "junk" piles of cra* still on the place after the family's close-out auction. Watched the prevailing wind/weather patterns around the place for days to see how the house was sited.
In short, we went through all the pre-buy tests I've been telling people about ever since I first started posting on C-D.
You know what? We bought the place thinking we'd found an OK deal, knowing the defects and problems with the house and buildings and infrastructure. We were buying a project property at a project price.
With all that, we were still blindsided by some serious issues with the place that only the prior (deceased) owner would have known ... or so we thought. We later found out that the realtor knew about those defects and simply didn't tell us because we didn't ask about them ... or his answers were intentionally vague and misleading.
In any other state, the misrepresentation of the property would have been actionable against the realtor and his broker. In Wyoming? business as usual.
The poster above has the right idea ... don't buy a Wyoming property, especially a farm or ranch rural property ... without camping out on the place for awhile to get to know it as much as you can before spending a dime.
We did ... and still got taken advantage of. Fortunately for us, the price point was at the productive capacity of the farm per acre and not an inflated development land price per acre. So we didn't get hurt too badly. But folks coming into the area and spending $2,000-$3,500 per acre for 40 acres of prairie dryland dirt are not buying what they think they're buying. And folks coming into the areas around here and paying $995 per acre for remote desolate low productive no-water acreages that couldn't support cattle are really getting screwed ....
DW and I are planning on moving west from Ohio in 5 years, and we'll be taking our small RV out quite a bit, checking out different areas. We've apent time in both Colorado and Wyoming, and appreciate the candor of residents sharing their views.
Sunsprit,
"misrepresentation" may not be actionable in wyoming, but fraud is actionable in all 50 states with civil and criminal penalties. Even a bad lawyer could start an action for fraud and likely get a settlement.
At the least, People who are in such positions should spread the name of the realtors who do that in the community where they work. Those realtors wouldn't stay in business long.
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What you want isn't readily seen in most of the west
come to our great state and enjoy our wonderful public lands-national forests etc.
you do not have to pay out the nose for what wyo has to offer in its beauty-find a place for yourself in a nice area-the rest is free
