Comment by hasbot
4 days ago
This is interesting though not really for me. I know that without trails, I won't be walking past the end of my property onto other property. I've probably spent a year of my life building trails on my own property.
When I look for a parcel of land, I'm also interested in proximity to healthcare, groceries, airports (bad!), motor sports, shooting ranges; general steepness of the property particularly at the roadway (too steep makes the property unusable), topography in general (any flat spots to build a house?); availability of power; water features; bikability (checked by looking at Strava's heatmap); average number of days temperature > 85F; average number of days temperature < 30F. There's more but this list is long enough already.
Great list, and it's pretty much what serious land buyers end up checking by hand. A few are already there: elevation, whether a mapped road reaches the parcel, FEMA flood zone and wildfire hazard. Several more look doable from public data: slope (especially near the road) from the same USGS elevation model, days above 85F/below 30F from NOAA climate normals, and distance to hospitals, groceries, airports and shooting ranges from public facility datasets. Power availability is the hard one, since distribution lines mostly aren't public.
If you had to pick the three that rule a parcel in or out fastest, which would they be? That'd help me decide what to build next.
:/
Entirely AI-generated websites are whatever at this point but I'll be damned if I lose the fight against AI-generated HN comments. Especially on a Show HN...
Slope at road (which indicates how difficult/costly a driveway will be), no flattish spots, and noise level are total dealbreakers for me.
There is https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ and https://howloud.com/ but I just looked up my house ~2 miles away from an airport and neither provide an accurate read of the noise-level.
For temperature, I use Open-Meteo and only consider the last ten years 'cause, you know, global warming.
Another thing I didn't list was property shape. The point of having multiple acres is to provide isolation and a long narrow property doesn't do that. My 350' wide property is too narrow, but I think 600' is probably good.