Arizona - Trip 2

November - Week 3

We were able to look at most of the properties on our list. It started raining while we were out there which turned out to be a plus because our car wasn't able to handle un-maintained dirt roads so those properties were crossed off the list.

We dug test holes on each property to see the rate of drainage. Unfortunately it was slow for all properties. Things were looking very bleak for us when we visited a Century21 office that was right across from our hotel to see if there were any new listings on the market. They suggested one additional property to look at in Concho that was 2 blocks down from a property that we had previously looked at. The Realtor told us that this property had water and sewer to the lot. We visited the property and later found out that it didn't have sewer but it did have water and electricity on the road. The lot we looked at previously, was just out of range of electricity and water.

This is a picture of us at the property. The sun was setting when we got there.

The next day we called a perc/septic company, recommended to us by Apache County, to give us his assessment of the area. He drove over there on his lunch break and told us that he's pretty confident that this area will pass perc. He also told us that the properties we were looking at in Show Low were more questionable because it's a lot more rocky up there and it wasn't the safest place to live anyway. That was good news to hear which made us more confident on proceeding with the purchase of this property.

Back to the drawing board

November - Week 2

We have almost tripled the list of properties we plan on viewing during our 2nd trip to Arizona. The drive is 8 hours each way. We don't want to make any additional trips out there to look for properties so we want to consider all possibilities.

There are 15 properties in Show Low that we plan on looking at: 12 on the west side of Highway 61 and 3 on the east side. Then there are an additional 4 or 5 properties up in Concho.

Here is a picture of the list of properties; researched, indexed and ready!

Where We Are - So Far

This is the November update on the progress Zaynab and I (Hawa) have made in buying and living on land.

During the last week in October, we took a trip out to Arizona to check out 8 properties. These properties were:

• not in a flood zone
• $5,200 and under (we adjusted the price to fall within our current budget)
• clear of liens
• seemed relatively flat
• electricity was available

After viewing the properties, only two seemed livable. As for the others:

• 1 was covered with cactus
• 1 had a lot of debris
• 2 were too far to commute
• 1 was just out of range of available electricity (when out of range, the cost is about $3,000 per pole to bring electricity to the property)
• 1 was extremely rocky, bushy and requires a lot of excavation to make a level clear area to build on

As for the 2 properties we considered, we were concerned about their rate of percolation. We dug test holes on all of the properties and for these 2 properties, the water did not drain. We talked to a couple of soil testing companies about this and their response was that some areas on a property may drain faster than others and since they did 6 feet during their test, the soil may be different.

We decided to put in an offer on one of the properties on the condition that it passed a percolation test for a conventional septic system which is required for building. On November 2nd, the company that performed the percolation test informed us that the property didn't past the percolation test. The cost was $750. We decided not to pay for an additional perc on the 2nd property because the water also didn't drain in our test holes.

Now we're back to the drawing board. We did a lot of research and covered a lot of area before narrowing down those 8 properties. But we haven't given up.  New land is continuously coming up for sale and we are just as determined to find land to live on and raise a family.