To find land, look for the right community

    If building your family's forever home on your own land is something you’ve been hoping to do, it's crucial to find the right plot of land.

    But finding just the right piece of land is often the most difficult part of building your family's dream home!

    Sure, sometimes land is for sale and listed with a real estate agent, and you might be able to find it on Realtor.com or Zillow. Often, though, the perfect piece of property is sitting there with a "For Sale by Owner" sign on it, or maybe it isn't even actively for sale (but you could buy it if you knew the right person). So how do you find that land?

    You could drive country roads in the area where you want to buy land and hope to find what you're looking for. In fact, that does sometimes work.

    But what about the bank-owned land that isn't advertised (but the bank would take pennies on the dollar to unload it)? Or what about those five acres that a family in a different state owns (but haven't had the time to list)?

    To find the right piece of land, you'll need to be able to tap into the community of people who are always scouring central Oklahoma looking for just those types of properties.

    That community consists of real estate agents, mortgage lenders, bankers, farmers, and everyday people who live and work in small communities around central Oklahoma.

    They know the lay of the land. They know the families who live in the area, because that's where they live and work. In the course of normal, everyday conversations, they hear and talk about everyday lives and situations—and sometimes, that involves talking about the land that a neighbor is trying to sell, or the plans that a relative has to split ten acres off the family land.

    In order to find the right land, it's very useful to find some point of entry into that community so you can also be aware of those opportunities. For a lot of families, that point of entry might be the builder they choose to work with.

    Any builder who claims to specialize in building on your land should already be wired into that network. They should be able to help you find just the right land for building your dream home, because they know what you're looking for and they have an ear to the ground to know what's available.

    The builder you choose to work with should have a land specialist who will go out of his or her way to help you locate, evaluate, negotiate for, and buy that piece of land you've been dreaming about. If your builder can't, or won't, help you do that, or acts like the thought of helping you find land is completely foreign to him, it's time to find a builder who wants to help you out.

    2 minute read