[JimP]

Pippi, after 4 yrs of fulltime RV living/travel, I decided I wanted a homebase for summer & winter. I bought raw land in rural southern NM and in the south central mountains of Colorado. I lived in my motorhome on the land while I developed them into seasonal retirement homebases. You do have to do some due diligence ahead of time and its mostly controlled by the County zoning & building codes. The more rural, the more lenient those codes usually are. The more rural the farther away your nearest neighbor will be. Its usually the neighbors who complain to the County enforcement officer. The County doesn’t go out looking for RV’s parked on rural land unless someone complains. As you said, you wont get away with living in an RV anywhere close to existing single family homes.
I built both mine about 10 yrs ago, so my costs are a bit out of date, and these costs vary greatly depending on the specific location, the access roads and the ground conditions. My water wells costs about $5000 each; my septic systems cost about $2500 each, and my electrical service at the NM ranch cost $10,000 including 1/2 mile of power line to my property. The Colorado mountain property had existing power at the property line and only cost $5000 for the 200 amp service install. After living on these properties for several years in my Motorhome, I did eventually build small homes on each. I still travel part time in my motorhome, using these 2 properties as seasonal bases. Let me know if there are any specific questions, but when I did my research many years ago, each and every County had difference requirements and restrictions. Know what those are before buying any land.

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