For the past three months, I began to develop a daily routine of methodically checking the classifieds ads of my local paper for land. I’d turn to the real estate section of the ads. I worried that if I didn’t do this right away, someone else may beat me to the punch and buy that perfect piece of Hill Country property.

To my surprise, I soon realized that not many people advertised rural land for sale. Even when they did appear, many of the properties included ranches and homes on them. Since I intended to visit the land for short periods rather than live permanently on it, I didn’t want a house that I had to pay for. Therefore, I concentrated on finding raw, unimproved land.

Most of the newspaper listings were for large tracts of land: 240 acres in the millions of dollars, 100 or less usually went for around $400,000. Occasionally, smaller acreages were advertised: 30 acres for $200,000, 16 for $130,000. I’m aiming for 20+ acres at a price around $65,000. Impossible? We’ll find out.

After a few weeks of this newspaper routine I saw property followed what looked to be a pattern. In parcels more than 100 acres, a price as low as $600 per acre wasn’t uncommon! But, for tracts less than 20 acres, $3,000 or more per acre was the asking price. In other words, as stated in my little story of the “Texas Rancher and the Snobbish City Man”, the greater the number of acres in a parcel, the lower the price per acre. One of the reasons was because it’s just too much a hassle for large land owners to break off small parcels for such a minimal profit.

I also noticed another pattern: The closer the land was to Fredericksburg (my target area’s largest town), the higher the acreage price. However, this didn’t really bother me because I actually prefer an isolated spot away from town.

By the way, if you’re on the real estate hunt like I am, be sure to catch the Sunday editions of the San Antonio Express, it contains the largest rural land listing of any day of the week.

I’m beginning to doubt that I will find property by waiting for it to appear in the classifieds. Classifieds seem to be used only be realtors looking to make a quick sale and they’ll splash crazy numbers in hopes that there will be at least one crazy buyer out there amongst the thousands of people reading. I don’t blame them for doing that–it’s their job. I also realize that this is not going to be easy. I will have to get my feet dirty if I’m going to find cheap land out in the country, especially in the Texas Hill Country. However, before I do this, I’m going to compose a WANTED ad that hopefully will generate some responses.