Replies

How many acres? With irrigation or stock water or without? With buildings (ie, a house) or not?

Raw land, without irrigation water rights, runs perhaps $200 to $400/acre, more if there are services installed. In Nevada, you can always drill a domestic well (ie, water for your house, family, domestic animals and perhaps a 1/2 acre yard). They don’t meter your domestic well, so you aren’t held to a strict account of how much you use.

Irrigation water rights are getting bid up to 10’s of thousands of dollars per acre foot if you’re within the areas where Reno/Carson/Vegas are buying water rights. An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to apply one foot of water to an acre per growing season (April-October). Typically, most land with irrigation water has four to five feet of water rights that go with it. If you don’t make “beneficial use” of irrigation or stock water for five years, the state can yank your water rights, so if you buy property with water rights other than domestic, be sure the rights are “vested” (ie, pre-date NV water law and not subject to “use it or lose it” regs) or you’re prepared to use the water at least once every five years.

Before you buy property in the center of the state, you should think real hard whether or not you can deal with the isolation. You have to be pretty handy and be able to think ahead and not get hurt in most all situations, because medical services are a long, long way away in some of these places.

There’s more private land available along the I-80 corridor than anywhere else in NV, because those were the railroad lands.

If you’ve got more questions, just freepmail me and I’d be happy to answer any questions I can.