Richard Robbins and his wife, Lisa, knew their family of nine needed more space than their half-acre lot in suburban Utah County, UT. The problem? “Land prices where we lived were exorbitantly expensive,” Richard says.
So in 2019, the family set off for the tiny town of Christiana, TN, where they purchased 11.25 acres for $800,000. Robbins points out, “A similar property in Utah County would have cost several million.”
The Robbins family made the most of their acreage, adding a garden, fruit trees, and a livestock barn for goats, sheep, chickens, and rabbits. When not working remotely on their athleticwear business, they grew the majority of the food they ate and learned from other ex-city slickers now living off the land.
This wasn’t just a lifestyle overhaul. It was also their latest real estate investment.
“We have evidence that the growth path from the surrounding metro areas—Murfreesboro, Franklin, Nashville—will continue to move out to where our homestead is,” says Richard, who’s invested in rentals, spec homes, and hard money loans for over 10 years. “This will make it more valuable in the years to come.”
The final frontier 2.0
Country life has always had its appeal, and it became even more popular during the pandemic with the onset of remote work. Yet a new crop of land-hungry buyers is flocking to remote areas for a different reason: They can’t afford to live anywhere else.
Since mortgage rates began climbing in 2022, real estate prices in rural locations have surged 13%—over triple the growth rate of 4% in urban areas, according to Realtor.com. Nonetheless, life in the sticks is still cheaper, with the median list price in rural counties coming in at $299,950 versus $348,200 for their metropolitan counterparts.
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Real estate investors have also shifted their focus toward wide open spaces to get more for their money.
“Many are taking alternative routes to break into real estate investing, and one of those routes is buying a property in a cheaper rural area,” explains Harrison Stevens at TurboTenant. This doesn’t mean you have to move there; many city dwellers run rural rentals remotely, a trend called rentvesting. As Stevens explains, “People may live in a city for their job and can’t afford to buy there, so they’ll buy a rental property in a rural area and use that as a second income stream.”
Although rural real estate may be cheap, that doesn’t mean it’s risk-free.
“Rural purchases look simple on paper, but the unknowns can cost far more than a city lot,” warns Jacob Naig, who bought land outside of Des Moines, IA, that, at first, “seemed picture-perfect—rolling hills, a pond, space for cabins. I only discovered after we closed that the soil wasn’t conducive to septic. It was a costly reminder that rural deals require an added layer of due diligence to know what that land can and can’t do.”
“The biggest advice I’d give is to understand your exit strategy before investing,” says Richard Robbins. “I have seen people purchase land they have to dump later for what they bought it for or less. Investors need to have some idea of the population growth and other factors that will make the property more valuable.”
To learn more, check out this guide to buying rural real estate.