What to Check Before Buying Off-Grid Land: A 5-Point Checklist
By Tyler Robinson ·
Cheap rural land is cheap for a reason. Sometimes the reason is harmless — it's just far from a city. But often the reason is a deal-breaker you can't see in the listing photos: no legal way to reach the parcel, a water table 600 feet down, or a county rule that quietly prohibits the way you planned to live. This checklist covers the five things to verify before you spend money on a site visit, a survey, or earnest money.
1. Legal access — can you actually get to it?
Not all land touches a public road, and a parcel without deeded access can be effectively worthless. Look at the parcel on a county GIS map and trace how you'd reach it. If the route crosses a neighbor's land, there must be a recorded easement — a verbal agreement with the current owner doesn't survive a sale. Landlocked parcels sell at steep discounts precisely because fixing access can cost more than the land itself.
2. Water — the most common deal-breaker
Water kills more off-grid plans than anything else. Check three things: annual rainfall (under 20 inches makes rain catchment a supplement, not a source), nearby well depths from your state's well log database (wells past 400 feet get expensive fast — often $40-80 per foot drilled), and any surface water like creeks or springs, along with who holds the rights to use it. In much of the western US, water rights are separate from land ownership.
3. Zoning and county rules
Living off-grid is legal in most of the rural US, but counties control the details. Some require a connection to the electric grid for an occupancy permit. Some set minimum dwelling sizes that rule out small cabins. Others prohibit full-time RV living or composting toilets. Call the county planning office before you buy — ask specifically about minimum dwelling size, septic requirements, and whether off-grid power is permitted for a primary residence.
4. Natural hazards
Check the FEMA flood map for the parcel (flood zones make insurance expensive and building permits harder), wildfire hazard ratings for the area, and seismic risk if you're in the West. A property in a high-hazard zone isn't automatically a bad buy — but it changes your build costs, insurance, and long-term risk, and you should know before you commit.
5. Buildable terrain
Steep slopes drive up every cost: foundations, driveways, septic systems. Ground slope over about 15% makes conventional septic difficult, and over 25% makes most building expensive. Also check soil drainage — soil that percs poorly may need an engineered septic system costing $25,000 or more instead of a $8,000-15,000 conventional one.
Check all five in one minute
GoOffGrid screens all five of these factors — plus solar potential and growing conditions — for any US or Canadian property, using government data sources like FEMA, USGS, and USDA. Enter an address or GPS coordinates and you get a free 0-100 viability score in about a minute, before you've spent anything on the property.