Building lots, wells, and septic

Inside a city, the city issues the building permit and the city usually has water and sewer at the street. Outside city limits, you are dealing with the county, and the services are on you. That single distinction changes the cost of a lot more than almost anything else about it.

A parcel can sit a hundred feet outside a city boundary and be a completely different project from the one across the road. Before anything else, find out exactly which jurisdiction the parcel is in and call that office.

If there is no sewer, you need a septic system, and whether you can put one in depends on what the ground under the lot will actually absorb. That gets established with a soil evaluation and a percolation test, reviewed by the local health department. The Bear River Health Department covers this part of the state.

A lot that fails, or that only passes with an expensive engineered alternative system, is still a lot. It is just a much more costly one. This is a test worth doing before you are committed, not after, and it is worth writing into the contract as a contingency if the seller has not already had it done.

High groundwater, heavy clay, and rock all show up around here, and none of them are visible from the road.

If the lot is not on a culinary system, you are looking at a well, and a well needs a water right behind it. That is a state process with its own timeline. Ask early, because the answer sometimes changes what the lot is worth to you.

Then there is the unglamorous list: how far is power, who pays to bring it, is there gas or is it propane, and how does a vehicle legally get from a public road onto the parcel. Access that has always worked in practice because a neighbor never minded is not access. An easement is access, and it needs to be recorded.