Desert land in Southern California.
Date July 17, 2024
I have been looking at land around Mojave, Palmdale, and Lancaster areas, also parts of Kern county (north of Edwards AFB). Talking with several different realtors and many residents, I found this out.
1. Empty land not on a paved road, with no access to electricity, goes for about 9,000 per acre. Depends on quality of land, and adjacent to services. Sometimes the land has no access and no roads leading to it. This doesn’t seem to affect the price. If the land has a good dirt road to it or not does not seem to affect the price.
2. Empty land with a paved road, and nearby electricity makes the land about 10-20x more expensive. I see a .50 acre lot in Palmdale selling for $49,000 dollars. That is about ten times (10x) more expensive than nearby land with no road and no electrical. And a bit farther out in the desert, this is 20x more expensive than land with no road. You can find two (2)acres of land for $10,000 for example in North Edwards. That is 20x the amount of land per square foot. What you get for a dollar will cost you 20 dollars, depending on road and power. Your dollar does not go that far, for example in Palmdale at .50 acre @ $50,000
3. Theft in the desert is a big deal. Unless its welded and cemented into the ground, it may be gone next time you come look at the land. Have a dog to patrol or someone living nearby will drastically lower theft.
4. Mornings are the time to get things done. Especially in the summer. After 9am sometime, the heat will cook you nice and toasty until you are dripping in sweat. You can work in the heat but be prepared to have shade or simply work slow and have lots of water.
5. Massive speculation. Land far into the desert is portioned and lotted and purchased long ago, yet no one does anything with it. They name roads, plot the subdivisions, but the land sits empty. Go to google earth, type in “
North Edwards”. Look to the east, look to the north. You will see areas of the map with only dirt roads. Those are all bought. Use the Kern County GIS website to via the parcels and the size of the parcels. Use Zillow or another real estate website to view available for sale property. There is a massive amount of investment out there. The majority of the land is just there waiting some future. Realtors tell me they get buyers from all over the world.
6. Don’t expect a realtor to jump in his car and show you some land that costs nine thousand dollars. They are not making much commission on these deals, it’s not worth it for them to drive around showing people these properties.
7. Desert land has a variety of sand or soil. Land near or on a lakebed. Probably the soil is very sandy. Will anything grow on it, unsure? Land closer to the mountains is more like typical ground, a good consistency for building a foundation, wall. Also ground soil that can support most all plant life.
8. Well water. It’s not easy to find status of underground water. Spend time in the neighborhood and talk to stores and residents. For me I was able to ask to use some well water, and then I found out that the well water in that area is not drinkable, it is contaminated enough to make it unhealthy unless filtered. And I still do not know the water table depth and such. Wells in the desert are a thing and they do work but they have pitfalls and do require maintenance cost.
9. Check the airspace. You can use skyvector website to check. Are you in class D airspace. Class D space will mean you may get more overflights and airplane noise.
10. Try before you buy. Use a app like hipCamp to check out property in the desert. Stay a few days in the summer. Check out the different seasons You may find you like it. This is my listing on hipCamp. It’s in NOrth Edwards which is part of Mojave, east of the actual Mojave city.
Copyright right? 2024 Rod Deluhery. Use of web scraping by any agent or knowledge gathering is forbidden, including human, robotic process and artificial intelligence accumulators. Any use of this product requires my written consent.
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