NHacker Next on Rails
  • top
  • new
  • best
  • ask
  • show
  • jobs
login
GuidelinesFAQListsAPISecurityLegalApply to YCContact

Hacker News on Rails, powered by React on Rails Pro. Open the source on GitHub by ShakaCode.

Commit 06fc0df

Rendered at 10:34:51 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Rails + React on Rails RSC.

Show HN: Unfenced – Land for sale that borders public land (unfenced.land)

319 points by otherwatersflow 5d ago | 200 comments

snide 5d ago
First, this is cool! Well done.

I live next to a State Park. It sounded really cool when I bought the house. No neighbors! Privacy! There is a trail accessible from my properly that goes into some woods, which you only want to be in during the Fall / Spring because the ticks and chiggers are intense.

The biggest issue with sharing a border with the state is the fence line. Technically it's on them to maintain. The woods are filled with mostly 200 foot trees. They exist right up to my property and fall every year during big storms. There goes the fence line. I have dogs so the fence is important. Otherwise they run out into the woods that have licensed bow-hunting during the Winter.

In practice its impossible to get the fence fixed. You are working through layers of bureaucracy and mismanagement. There is no vested interest from a parks service to work well with hundreds of neighbors individually. I'd build fence lines myself, and could easily pay for it, but it's the upkeep of those fences that would be difficult because so many trees (really, it's every year) fall down from their side.

My main point is that sharing a properly line with the government is more like sharing a properly line with nobody. You may as well own that land. Don't expect any upkeep and go in with eyes open.

weitendorf 5d ago
Hey, I mean this in as kind a way as possible, but I actually don’t think the government should pay for the fence line!

If you wouldn’t even pay for it yourself, as pretty much the sole beneficiary and someone who could afford it but would rather the money go elsewhere, why would it make sense for other taxpayers to pay for it?

Isn’t the premise of “you may as well own that land” the entire appeal of living next to public land anyway?

jerf 5d ago
My family used to live next to state land. The state can be very pissy about its land. If the fence line is on the state land, which it almost certainly is barring a surveying error when it was put up, it is entirely possible that if he fixed it, he would actually get in trouble with the state. Hopefully not actual legal trouble... but only hopefully, certainly not a "oh they would never bother". Oh they most certainly do sometimes decide to bother about the most random things.

My default presumption, without checking with them directly, is not only that it would not be allowed, but that this is also very much not a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" situation either. Even just asking the question can draw attention from them you may not want.

The ready accessibility of the land is advantageous in some ways, but as neighbors the state can be quite nasty. Your other neighbors don't tend to have anywhere near the regulatory firepower to make sure you comply with what they want.

estearum 5d ago
I think they’re suggesting building their own fence on their own property and eating the cost (as the sole beneficiary) of maintaining it through tree falls.
newsclues 5d ago
When a 200 ft tree at the fence line falls into your property that can take away much of your usable land.
Aurornis 5d ago
Cleaning up fallen trees is part of owning a property in these areas. Doesn’t matter where the fence is.
hagbard_c 4d ago
This somewhat silly statement reminds me of when a city person moved in to a house on a piece of land bordered on all sides by mine in rural Sweden. Come autumn the trees - of which we have many, living on the forest edge as we do - started shedding leaves which also ended up on the gravel path leading to his house. He came to me and asked me to remove those trees bordering the path because they drop leaves on it which he doesn't want there. I had to explain to him that he no longer lived in the city where the streets are swept, that instead he now more or less lived in the forest where trees are the dominant life form and that these happened to be mostly deciduous trees which shed their leaves every autumn and as such the solution to his conundrum is not to urbanise the forest but to accept the occasional cover of leaves and the occasional branch on the path, remove them when they're in the way and otherwise just leave them be. Not long after that he bought a garden tractor which he now uses in a futile attempt to recreate his urban park in the forest. The trees keep on winning though, they're many against his one tractor.
The_Fox 5d ago
And provide firewood to heat your home for the year. Depending on how much of a problem the broken fence is, you might even like it to fall your way.

Depending on the size of the tree and your home you might have enough to sell to the neighbors too.

I'm assuming the state doesn't come around asking for payment for their fallen trees.

Aurornis 5d ago
> If the fence line is on the state land, which it almost certainly is barring a surveying error when it was put up, it is entirely possible that if he fixed it, he would actually get in trouble with the state

Trying to maintain the state’s fence is not a good idea.

You would build your own fence on your side of the property set back by a couple feet.

monknomo 5d ago
It's very common to build a fence on your own land, even if your neighbors have a fence?

Like my neighbors have a fence, I have a fence, there is like a 1' alley in between them, everything is on the respective owner's land, and that would definitely work even if your neighbor is the government.

If fence integrity is important, you need your own fence. Otherwise your fence is as good as your least interested neighbor.

SkyPuncher 5d ago
It depends. I had fences on several sides of my yard growing up. Nobody doubled up. For the most part, it worked. It seems liked all of the fences had a primary owner who’s attitude was “I have a fence, it doesn’t matter if you have a fence, but I do - so I will pay to maintain my fence”

It worked.

_heimdall 5d ago
I'd also assume the fence is on state land if its theirs to maintain. That doesn't stop someone from putting up their own fence on their side of the property line though.
jerf 5d ago
You couldn't integrate it into theirs, so you'd be looking at having to fence in the entire space you want the dogs in because the gap you'd leave would have to be big enough for a dog.

Which is hardly the end of the world, but it can definitely grind the gears to be spending thousands when you could fix the problem for several hundreds, if not perhaps several tens, of dollars if they wouldn't be assholes about it. But I would absolutely advise anyone in that situation to spend the thousands and not bank on the state not being assholes about it.

I can also add that you can't even be sure that if you got away with it for years that you will continue to get away with it. The particular issue that my father got into a bit of hassle with the state about is that he accidentally put a pole barn across the state line. Didn't mean to, but he misread the survey markers. Fortunately, they let him remediate it at his expense without pursuing the matter any further legally... but it means they did, after several years of it being there, come through a with a survey team and verify that nobody on the border was crossing into their land, and anything they found they made the residents fix no matter how many years the deviation had been there. All the laws about such thing between two citizens mean nothing to the state.

Aurornis 5d ago
> You couldn't integrate it into theirs, so you'd be looking at having to fence in the entire space you want the dogs in because the gap you'd leave would have to be big enough for a dog.

These properties only border public land on one side.

If someone is trying to fence their dogs into their property, it’s implied that they’re already fencing every other part of the property. They would be completing it with a back section.

troupo 5d ago
> You couldn't integrate it into theirs, so you'd be looking at having to fence in the entire space

Oh no. Tbe preposterous idea of putting a fence around your own property.

prmph 5d ago
> If the fence line is on the state land, which it almost certainly is barring a surveying error when it was put up, it is entirely possible that if he fixed it, he would actually get in trouble with the state.

Oh, the joys of living in a place with actual rule of law.

Here in my 3rd world country, people are free to annex land demarcated for streets that adjoin their property, without any real consequences, as long as it is not meant to be a major street.

juleiie 5d ago
You have never dealt with government if you think asking anything even in good faith and especially in good faith is a good idea.

For some reason every bureaucracy is a host to a type of person that will go very far to make sure everything is in accordance with rules. If you draw attention to yourself they might want to check some ridiculous things that no sane person would ever actually pay attention to.

These are the ambitious bureaucrats and are probably the worst scum on earth. If you watched Andor you know who I am talking about. Not the lady but that security guy. This is the exact type.

Sure, most times you will not meet them but some totally amazing people.

But it’s enough to meet them once and your life could be ruined forever.

The power asymmetry is too strong to risk it.

I would rather act as if I was an outlaw and a guilty criminal with my dealings with government. Guilty, on all accounts. Now.. how to avoid the punishment?

That’s how we think about the government in Eastern Europe culturally. Whether that’s exotic or relatable to you as American, that will be interesting.

jandrewrogers 5d ago
The government often claims exclusive authority and responsibility over the land but never acts on the responsibility they've asserted except to prevent anyone else from doing so. You can be required to pay a significant fee and file reams of paperwork to fix things for free that the government is expressly obligated to fix but never does.

It is common in parts of the US for government land to be illegally maintained by locals at their own expense because the government fails to do so. The impacted people aren't left with many other choices. There is little recourse when the government claims sole authority but also neglects its responsibilities under that authority.

This has been an issue in land management for as long as I've been alive. It sort of works to the extent the government is oddly incurious about someone else illegally doing their job for them. But every so often a bureaucrat with idle hands will decide to make an example of someone for illegal maintenance without addressing the underlying problem.

IanCal 5d ago
> Hey, I mean this in as kind a way as possible, but I actually don’t think the government should pay for the fence line!

Which is a fine option, but it should be something agreed to by both parties. You can't just hand over a cost like that, and if you buy property with some kind of agreement this choice is baked into the original price. It makes perfect sense for the government to uphold agreements it has made.

Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?

toast0 5d ago
> It makes perfect sense for the government to uphold agreements it has made.

The key question is what is actually in the agreement. 'The state will maintain the fence' doesn't indicate the level of maintenance or the timeliness of said maintenance, it just means the neighbor isn't allowed to do it.

> Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?

From discussions I've seen, generally there's no legal responsibility for tree falls, unless there's neglegence like ignoring a clearly failing tree. But leaving a forest to do whatever the forest wants doesn't feel like neglegence.

estearum 5d ago
Did the government agree to maintain a fence…?
dylan604 5d ago
If the government built a fence on their property, the burden is on them to maintain it. What other agreement is there?
estearum 5d ago
Your position is that if the government builds a fence it is de facto obligated to maintain it to any abutting property owner's standards in perpetuity?

There is no agreement whatsoever, that's the point. No agreement was made or mentioned. The mere existence of a fence on government property does not constitute an agreement to maintain said fence.

jmaw 5d ago
Are you going to call the HOA on the government to enforce them to maintain their fence?
empyrrhicist 5d ago
> Isn’t the premise of “you may as well own that land” the entire appeal of living next to public land anyway?

If you start actively managing it (removing invasive species, dead trees etc.) the state can take a more active interest at any time and sue/fine you into oblivion.

lazide 5d ago
Yup, and this becomes a very real issue if there is something like serious fire danger due to lack of (politically untenable) logging.

Or a serious pest issue (someone mentioned ticks, for instance).

Pros and cons of the situation, for sure.

sophrosyne42 5d ago
I think the gist is more something like: you should expect the government to neglect their property.
bdcravens 5d ago
Put up your own fence inside of your property line that you can keep up to your needs and standards.
timcobb 5d ago
Sounds like trees would fall onto it every year :/
nkrisc 5d ago
That’s what happens when you have lots of trees on or adjacent to your property.

If that bothers you, don’t buy property adjacent to 200ft tall trees. They will fall. That’s what trees do. They grow, then die and fall over.

alexgoodhart 5d ago
And when they fall, they need to be dealt with. Responsible land management would assess whether the deadwood should be mulched and resoiled, left untouched, moved, etc. If a tree needs to be moved or broken down, you can't just bring heavy equipment or controlled burning to federal land.

It feels like the top commenter is simply sharing personal insight, not recriminating and pleading woe, so Idk why these responses act like they're being egregious. The situation simply requires cooperation with a government that apparently is loathe to go through the process with.

itake 5d ago
I trim and clean up my trees before they become high risk for falling over. If my neighbor fails to maintain their trees, then I may have legal grounds to remediate property damage caused by their negligence.

My presumption is the state does not regularly audit and trim high risk limbs or branches near the property line. Since the fence is owned by the state, they will not sue themselves in civil court for their own negligence.

luqtas 5d ago
or better! exercise and support the freedom to roam [0] by not having fences and have no dogs which probably disrupt wildlife too

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

alexgoodhart 5d ago
Right? Why have walls? Why have humans when we have wildlife? And dogs? Humans have only been sharing their company for more than twenty thousand years. Get over it, stop destroying the environment.
intrasight 5d ago
So move your fence 50 feet away from the property line. Obviously, this means you need to find a big property if it's adjacent to state land with large trees.
everforward 5d ago
At that point he may be able to sue the state to fix it (or have insurance do it).

And if it’s your fence you can build one of the ones that’s cheap and easy to replace. I wouldn’t be shocked if you could put chain link back up after some straightening. You could use the downed tree to fix the fence if it was split log (not so good at keeping dogs in though)

dylan604 5d ago
Just to mention something people might not have ever considered, but basic home owner's insurance does not cover fences as they are not part of the house. I'm sure someone would be more than happy to provide additional coverage for additional fees that would cover a fence, but it's something to keep in mind. I know multiple people that were oblivious to this until their fence was damaged from trees falling on them during a storm.
zeroonetwothree 5d ago
Yes it’s because fences break constantly. So it would be less “insurance” and more like a forced savings plan.
phyzix5761 5d ago
The amount of people on here who have never lived out in the country is surprisingly obvious. It costs a tremendous amount of money and time to bring the right equipment to cut down trees, move them, put up fences, mend broken sections, etc.
nomel 5d ago
I knew a couple that bought a house out at the edge of town, to be closer to nature, then complained that their kid couldn't play outside alone because of mountain lions!

Most people don't actually want to be at the edge of raw nature.

pyrale 5d ago
I assume this kind of property is large enough that OP can afford to build the second fence one tree height away from the property line.
bdcravens 5d ago
At least they'd have control and can fix it as they see fit, instead of waiting for the government.
hasbot 5d ago
That's a good point. What about wetlands? My property has a terrible mosquito problem and I just found out there is a pond/swamp hidden in the brush. Since it's my property, I'll take steps to reduce the mosquito problem next year but if it was public land, that'd probably wouldn't be acceptable.
jaggederest 5d ago
If you throw some mosquito dunks with BT into any given water body small enough it doesn't have a name, nobody is going to come after you. I think it's probably a pretty prosocial thing to do, unless I'm missing something
tristor 5d ago
> I think it's probably a pretty prosocial thing to do, unless I'm missing something

Agreed. I'm in South Texas where we have Aedes mosquitoes that are an invasive species and spread Malaria, Dengue, Zika, and other infections which kill people. I consider disrupting their lifecycle to be an unvarnished good. I carry mosquito dunks in my pocket when I go on walks and toss them into any puddles, drains, storm sewers, and ponds I encounter, and it seems to have helped a lot anecdotally. I care a lot about nature/ecology, but also fuck mosquitoes.

jaggederest 5d ago
I'm slightly less pro-social in motivation because the bastards bite me preferentially and I'm fairly allergic. The pathogen-transmitting mosquito species, as far as I am concerned, could be magically extinct tomorrow and the world would be better off for it. There are lots of mosquitoes that don't drink blood, let them have the niche.
hasbot 5d ago
Doing that on public land is a risk. The USFS absolutely has restrictions on chemical usage. For example, pressure treated lumber is not allowed.
jaggederest 5d ago
USFS uses it themselves so I don't know that they have much in the way of complaining to do. It's regarded as the least toxic mosquito management option, since it's quite specific and biological instead of pesticide.

https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/bti-mosquito-control

cucumber3732842 5d ago
>I think it's probably a pretty prosocial thing to do, unless I'm missing something

Also massively illegal if you live anywhere that has a state level wetlands protection type law and the enforcement authority decides to exercise their discretion to make your life hell. They typically claim jurisdiction and authority over all activity in/around wetlands so theoretically you should be getting a state permit before digging a mailbox post hole or doing any sort of "management" of plants/animals but most of the time they just turn a blind eye to private homeowners who are being reasonable.

Wetlands laws and rules (non-criminal code generally, but wetlands are some of the worst) are written in a way to make RICO look like a meticulously scoped out piece of technical legislation.

Syper 5d ago
I thought you could ask your local assessor or judge where the WOTUS line is? If so, you do your management up to just short of the line.
cucumber3732842 5d ago
First off, that's like asking your building inspectors "what can I do without a permit". Governments are dearth to "help out" like that. Even if you know a guy, the boundaries typically aren't binding until a survey has been done the state or municipality has a approved it and it's been registered with whoever handles land stuff in your jurisdiction.

Second, most states that regulate wetlands beyond the federal minimum adopt some sort of absurd expansive standard far above what the feds want. It's complex and varies by state. Sometimes there's a square footage minimum, sometimes there isn't. There's also "gotchas" where manmade areas can become wetlands if they are let to be that way too long, so like farmer Johnson can absolutely get screwed by his grandfather's bright idea to make all the drainage converge in one spot 40yr ago. Sometimes there are exemptions, sometimes not. There's huge variation by state and some states allow local governments to enforce rules above and beyond the state ones.

verelo 5d ago
My internal dialog can imagine my biologist wife yelling at you already.

Honestly i do not know the full scope of this one, but if there's one thing I've learnt from observing her work over the last decade...it's humans need to stop adding chemicals to water bodies with the goal of thinking they're helping something.

jephs 5d ago
Note it's not a chemical agent; its bacterial spores that infect and kill mosquito larvae! I'm pretty sure they're not harmful to anything that isn't a mosquito, blackfly, gnat, or midge. Though midges are important to pond ecosystems as a source of food for fish and dragonflies and stuff? Idunno, ask this guy's wife.
verelo 5d ago
I will ask her and report back...

I can imagine her having some long explanation about the unknown risks of man spreading this substance, even if its not a chemical agent. I lean on the edge of listening to Grandpa Simpson on these kind of things: https://i.imgur.com/MdjduDH.png

jaggederest 5d ago
They are dropped from planes by the thousands or millions in Florida and other places, for what that's worth. Between the actual pesticide fogging (back in the day it was DDT) and bacterial controls, they're a big part of the reason that Florida and other southern states don't have malaria any more.
ses1984 5d ago
Mosquito dunk is some kind of microbial culture that’s supposed to be safe.
verelo 5d ago
The path to hell is paved with good intentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia

It might well be safe, but the question is what are the downstream affects of reducing the population of mosquitos (or other bugs in the water that this substance impacts). Maybe they've exclusively positive, but I assure you determining that is no walk in the park.

james_marks 5d ago
The mosquitoes don't exist in isolation though. Isn't this exactly how food chains / ecosystems work? You can't remove a tier without consequences.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Good one. Wetlands are a gap right now. The closest thing the site shows is the FEMA flood zone for each parcel, which catches some wet ground but not a hidden pond or swamp like yours. I believe US Fish & Wildlife Service publishes a National Wetlands Inventory for the whole country, so checking how much of each parcel is mapped wetland is very doable. Adding it to the list, thanks.
dietr1ch 5d ago
It sounds like your expectations on your neighbour are way too high. Especially since them doing "their" part on par with your expectations benefits mostly just you.

When your neighbour isn't as invested as you in maintaining the border or has other annoyances you are better off leaving some buffer zone that allows to isolate yourself from the border and whatever road, river, canal, forest or loud or busy place is at the other side.

bell-cot 5d ago
> I live next to a State Park.

In what state? Last I knew, the State Parks in most US states were miserably underfunded - so quick fixes (for pretty much anything, not just fences) just ain't gonna happen.

And what's the legal status of the fallen trees? In a fair number of places a 200' tree, already down, might be kinda valuable.

0xbadcafebee 5d ago
Mostly it doesn't pay to process individual lumber. If it's near a property it may have metal in it, and it's likely wood you can already find at a nearby lumber yard. If it's a particularly beautiful large tree, you have a use for slabs, can rent a skidsteer/forklift, and don't mind waiting a few years for it to season, it can be worth it. Or if you have a hankering for very large boards of unusual wood.
prometheus1992 5d ago
>>The biggest issue with sharing a border with the state is the fence line

Is it the physical blockade that the fence provides or just "where is the boundary?" - my guess is that it's both. While physical fence is hard to sustain due to trees falling but could there be an electronic solution for keeping the boundary line intact by putting some sort of gadgets underground which you can always ping to see where is the boundary?

0xbadcafebee 5d ago
I'd much rather do yearly fence maintenance than deal with neighbors.
ram1500natrluvr 5d ago
Do you have room to put up a fence away from the treeline?
IncreasePosts 5d ago
I know this wasn't your point but you could get a buried wire fence for your dogs. Or outfit them in beautiful orange jackets in the winter
m463 5d ago
wow, I kind of wonder...

tree falls over onto your property, you fix the fence.

tree falls over and you clear it, illegal logging you get in trouble.

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thanks, and this is a really useful perspective. The fence and dead-tree problem is exactly the kind of thing a map can't show.

My experience has been the opposite, though it's a different situation: I bought recreational land in Pennsylvania that borders state game lands, and I don't live there full time. What I wanted was the ability to step off my own ground into something wild and mostly untouched, and it's been a very positive experience.

I think you've put your finger on the real point: it's a trade-off, and it depends on what you want from the land. Living next to it full time with dogs is a very different thing from a weekend place you go to so you can disappear into the woods. "Go in with eyes open" is good advice either way.

kyleblarson 5d ago
I owned a house on 60 acres in Washington State that was bordered on 2 sides by state land (WA DNR). It was generally great and the only time I closed my gate was actually these two weeks of every year for regular rifle deer season. I never had issues with hunters coming on my property (I did give some friends permission to bow hunt). My driveway was about a mile long and had to cross DNR land to reach my property, but I had an easement. The easements typically have a 35 year expiration and it would take extreme circumstances for the state not to renew an existing easement. Complete and total privacy is really nice, but it's certainly a lot of effort and money to maintain a remote property of that size with a large house. I had to travel to SF a lot for work and that was certainly not ideal: 2.5 hour drive minimum to a tiny airport that only served Seattle, then on to SF.
HawtAds 5d ago
At 60 acres you can probably do a 3000 feet grass strip runway. Get a Cessna and fly yourself, being within flying distance of a tiny airport in this case is pretty awesome. 2.5 hour drive is ~ 1 hour flight time for your C172s.
ggreer 5d ago
It really depends on how flat the terrain is and what the weather conditions are like. If it's often rainy, windy, or snowy, you might not have many opportunities to use the plane.

At some point, I think electric VTOL aircraft will make economic sense. Companies like Vight Aero are working on two seaters with decent range and speed.[1] Then you'd just need an area the size of a tennis court to take off and land. You also wouldn't have to ship fuel in, as you could charge the aircraft with off-grid solar. If that happens, I could see a lot of people moving away from cities.

1. https://vightaero.com/

ramraj07 5d ago
What would realistically be a ballpark expense for basic living (I assume you mean food water and power)
kyleblarson 5d ago
Washington is already extremely expensive and our area was even more so. Water was free (well) but electric was very expensive and often went out. I put in a 48kw generac with a thousand gallon propane tank for backup which was a big project but very nice to have. Food, plowing, driveway maintenance, property stuff were all also high. (wife wouldn't let me get a beater 80's f-250 plow truck) Getting trades to even return a call was hard and could be months out for any jobs so I learned to do a lot on my own. I lived in WA for 25 years so just got used to the costs but moving to Boise last year made me realize it was insane.
mckn1ght 5d ago
Haha, I thought a well meant free water, until a pinhole developed on the pipe right above the pump, about 250’ below ground.

And like you said, hard to get anyone out to even fix it. We had to wait 6 months for the snowpack to thaw and scheduling to line up. So that meant an extra thousand or so bucks just to build a workaround system in the meantime.

kyleblarson 4d ago
Yes, that was one thing we luckily avoided. The previous owners of our place had the older 25 year old well crap out. It also didn't have good GPM in that location so in addition to fixing the old well they added a new well and cistern about 200 meters away in a location with better flow. The old well was enough to run irrigation (we only irrigated a few acres of lawn around the house) so they set it up so the old well ran irrigation and outside frost frees and the new well ran the house, with cutoff so that I could swap as needed. I sometimes thought about retiring from software and starting a handyman business that would shoot for a 24 hour response time and fast turnaround for small things like outlet repairs, light fixtures, small plumbing fixes, etc. The main trades in the valley were backlogged with 6 figure new builds so I don't really blame them for ignoring calls for a 2-4 hour job that would take 2 hours of driving to access.
hasbot 5d 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.

otherwatersflow 5d ago
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.

1f60c 5d ago
:/

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...

hasbot 4d ago
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.

bob1029 5d ago
Having a national forest as your back neighbor is pretty much the best possible thing I've experienced so far in real estate.

The biggest downside is trees will absolutely murder the local infrastructure if a serious windstorm blows through. It's one thing to lose power, but it's something else to lose roads. I keep a battery powered chainsaw in my truck for emergencies.

The only other issue is that maintaining a garden can be difficult without aggressive access control. Deer will eat anything you haven't put in a cage. I don't bother trying to keep them out anymore. I'm convinced they jump the chain link fences at night when no one is watching.

The fact that the land is public has had zero negative effect. The local grid operator is the most frequent visitor by a long shot. I made the intentional tradeoff to have an electrical easement between my property and the forest. The grid operator has to keep the tree line maintained. In practice, it's mostly self-clearing. The trees have a hard time overwhelming the lines when they are energized.

windowshopping 5d ago
This is super unreliable. I clicked through a few of the listings and none of them were what this site seemed to think they were. In one case it said a unit had 50 acres of land, and when I clicked through it was a two-bedroom condo with no land. Another said it had 1400 acres of land and when I clicked through it was 0.14.
clark_dent 5d ago
The issue is how the MLS (multiple listing service) allows listing of condos/apartments/etc. Since each unit has no actual land to itself, they're allowed to list the total land that the complex sits on for each unit. There's also basically no oversight or correction on what gets listed, so listing agents have no reason to be accurate or perspicacious.

Everyone then scrapes or subscribes to the MLS data. It's why you have a dozen identical realty sites: Zillow, Realtor, Redfin, Trulia, etc.

otherwatersflow 5d ago
That's exactly it, thanks for explaining it better than I did. I ran into this early with Vermont ski-resort condos: every unit "had" the acreage of the whole resort. The lot-size field just doesn't fit condos well. The site already hides acreage on listings typed as condos and flags units that resolve to an association's common parcel, but some condos come through typed as townhouses or single-family, and those slip past. Checking the claimed acreage against the actual parcel size is the fix I'm working on.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thank you, that's exactly the kind of report I need. Acreage comes from the listing data, which is messy: lot sizes arrive in square feet, or as the whole condo association's land, and my checks catch a lot of it but clearly not all. Could you share the links (here or contact@unfenced.land)? I'll trace both and fix the rule that let them through, not just those two listings.
noman-land 5d ago
It's blowing mind a bit that you made this and released it because I was on the verge of doing it myself. Very nice work.

Really curious about your data sources. Where are you getting all this stuff?

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thanks, that's really nice to hear. Happy to share:

- Listings: RentCast's API (licensed), pulled weekly.

- Parcel boundaries: state and county GIS services where they publish statewide parcels (about 20 states), and Realie (licensed) for the rest.

- Public land: USGS PAD-US 4.1, filtered to fee-owned, open-access land of 50+ acres.

- Elevation: USGS 3DEP point queries. Roads: Census TIGER. Flood: FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer. Wildfire: Forest Service Wildfire Hazard Potential (2023). ZIP search: Census ZCTA centroids.

The free state parcel services were the biggest hunt: every state publishes differently, and a couple that looked open turned out to be test or internal-use-only endpoints.

airstrike 5d ago
Any possibility to include city or county-owned land too?
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Not yet. The public-land source (USGS PAD-US) does include county/city land, but most of it is small parks, and I set a 50-acre minimum. County forests and large preserves are a good idea though, I'll look at adding those.
Anon1096 5d ago
If you have public land do you just have people walking over the property boundary onto your parcel all the time? Especially in the more populous states like NJ some of them I'd expect that to be pretty common, interesting idea as a thing that people search out specifically for though.

Regardless, neat site. Couple things, first maybe a disclaimer on why you would want this on the home page? And on the state page itself I can't tell how bordering is different than adjacent. IMO just calling it "within 75m" would be better, and since this is for the US consider making it based on feet :p. Also, I would recommend that at least for user facing strings though you give it a little TLC and remove the really really obvious Claudisms

> official boundary maps, not listing descriptions.

> An analysis of publicly available boundary data — not a survey, and not a listing service

plus everything on the How It Works page is extremely obviously LLM.

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thanks, this is useful feedback.

On people crossing over: it depends a great deal on the land. Next to state game lands you'll see hunters in season; next to a big national forest you may rarely see anyone. It's very dependent on individual perspective and location.

Bordering vs adjacent: bordering means the parcel lines actually touch and there's a measured shared edge; adjacent means no shared edge but within about 250 ft (usually a road or a strip of other land in between). You're right that the state pages don't make that clear, and feet is the better unit for a US site. Tho most US geospatial data is published in metric lol.

And fair point on the copy. I run a small design studio and built this in my free time, I leaned on AI for a lot of the site text. The "Why this exists" section on How it works is my own story, but the rest deserves a pass in my own voice.

pwg 5d ago
> I leaned on AI for a lot of the site text.

So that's why the site text reads as AI slop.

delusional 5d ago
> checked against official boundary maps, not listing descriptions.

Were you ever seriously fooled?

JustResign 5d ago
For real. Just write it yourself.
ashdksnndck 5d ago
I demand a refund!
jmtulloss 5d ago
My land is adjacent to public land and yes we have people coming through all the time. There is a forest road that becomes a private road and cuts through our land and people use it. We could put up a fence if we wanted but we don't want to... we're high enough up the hill that as long as people are being cool it's nbd. There are signs and most people (not all) are respectful.

I've found that living next to public land is an insanely undervalued luxury. There's very little I would trade it for.

hasbot 5d ago
It's weird how people think navigating through undeveloped land is like walking across a parking lot. Brush, branches, thorns, downed trees, uneven ground, etc can make walking through undeveloped land difficult to impossible.
ksymph 5d ago
Really depends on the land in question. Some forests have thick underbrush, some are almost completely clear. A lot of undeveloped land isn't even forest - swamp, desert, rocky mountains. Sometimes it's far easier to navigate than a parking lot, IME.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Very true. Bordering a big block of public land doesn't mean you can walk through it easily, and the acreage number says nothing about brush or deadfall. That's part of why the site only reports what it can measure (the shared edge, the size, whether a mapped road reaches the parcel) and doesn't promise anything about getting around once you're out there. Trail data would be a nice addition someday.
ggreer 5d ago
It seems to not find quite a few properties that border public land. For example, if I scroll around Zillow to find stuff that borders the Gifford Pinchot national forest, I can find properties like this one.[1] But I don't see anything matching it on the Unfenced map.

I bought 20 acres bordering the national forest a couple years ago. The seller made sure I had some idea of what I was getting into. Due to the isolation and terrain, everything is more difficult. It's been a lot of work to build a road, level an area to build on, construct a shed, and set up off-grid solar power. But it's also very rewarding. The views are spectacular, and at night you can see the milky way. There's still a lot more work to do before it's worthy of being called a vacation spot, but I'm very happy with my decision.

1. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Snag-Mountain-Rd-110-Wash...

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thanks for the example, and congratulations on the land. That sounds like exactly the kind of place this is for. That listing isn't in my data at all, so it's a coverage gap rather than a measurement miss: either it wasn't in this week's listings feed or it was listed after Monday's update. I'll trace it this weekend.
bko 5d ago
This is cool, but isn't owning property bordering public land undesirable?

Sure, there's the ability to hike directly from your home, but I imagine you'll regularly have people wander on to your property. And if something illegal happens on your property by a different party, you might be liable.

Seems like the cons outweigh the pros. Or is there something I'm missing?

qzw 5d ago
I think for an individual owner there are some downsides, but if you're a big developer buying a large piece of land it can become a selling point. There's a private residential development in my state where they completely enveloped the entrance to an existing state park trail/boardwalk. So to access it, you actually have to go through this gated community. Supposedly anyone can go in if they say they're going to the state park, but I'm not sure that's true in practice and you have to interact with the private guard gate and show ID. I was able to go in with my family, but we look like a typical suburban family, so that doesn't mean others wouldn't have more trouble. It's a pretty gross case of effectively privatizing a public resource.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
That's the flip side of this: private land controlling the way into public land. It's a real problem in a lot of places, and an interesting thing to map someday.

American Prairie in Montana is an example going the other way: a nonprofit buying private land that surround public land and opening them to the public. It's somewhat contentious locally, but it shows how much the private parcels around public land shape who can actually use it.

oblio 5d ago
> I was able to go in with my family, but we look like a typical suburban family.

How does the typical suburban family look like? Did all 3-4-5 of you drive F150s there?

collingreen 5d ago
It means a group of people unlikely to be stopped and turned away at that gate. My assumption is white, middle class, dressed boring but clean, decent car without damage, with young kid(s), no/light tattoos, no motorcyckes in the back and no drug/booze/gun stickers or visible stuff. Basically someone the Karen's won't call to complain about.

Other people deserve access to public land too but might not pass the vibe check of the private guards, which is what op was lamenting as well.

qzw 5d ago
We look exactly like the Simpsons before they nerfed the animation.
toast0 5d ago
That would be a typical f150 family. A typical suburban family travels in a convoy of chevy suburbans. A luxury suburban family travels in a convoy of escalades.
0xbadcafebee 5d ago
The F150s are too expensive now, so it's a convoy of Rangers or Mavericks (which honestly are better)
gwbas1c 5d ago
> but I imagine you'll regularly have people wander on to your property

Well, that depends on how large and obvious your property is.

Assuming you have a typical suburban 1/2 acre or 1 acre property, the simplest thing to do is put up a fence, or otherwise make sure that there are no trails that go over the property you use.

Otherwise, you need some kind of bounds marking and obvious "no trespassing" signs.

FWIW: The site identified public lands near my house that have a lot of trails on it. There are trails that go right behind peoples' yards, and most of them either have fences or sheds that make it obvious where the bounds are.

bluGill 5d ago
That is going to depend on location. Most public land is way way out. There are often only a handful of visitors per month, and most of them won't get close to your land. Most of them are locals who know where the bounds are (and probably know you)
otherwatersflow 5d ago
That matches my experience next to state game lands in PA. There's a few hunters in season who know where the lines, especially with OnX, Mostly quiet the rest of the year.
dboreham 5d ago
It means that nobody can build more houses "up the road" from you. That's the primary benefit. Unless the government sells the land, which this government has been trying to do in various places. This one issue is responsible for much of the reduction in republican support in Montana, for example
jameshart 5d ago
If you want similar benefits in more urban environments, consider property next to a cemetery. The neighbors are quiet and the lot is very unlikely to be turned into a strip mall.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
"Nobody builds up the road" is the reason I hear most often from buyers, and it's personal for me too. My aunt and uncle bought a home in rural Ohio 35 years ago, on about a few acres, in the middle of nowhere. Over the years they've watched the farmland around them get sold off and housing developments creep closer.

Land that borders public land doesn't have that problem on at least one side. That's also why the site shows which agency manages the land next door, since that affects how likely it is to stay as it is.

otherwatersflow 5d ago
For some buyers, yes, and that's a fair point. The site doesn't claim bordering public land is better, it just measures it, because listings say "borders state land" constantly and it's hard to check.

The people who've been most enthusiastic so far are hunters, homesteaders, off-grid folks, and people who want somewhere to walk out the back door and keep going, where the public land is the whole point. Others will see the same boundary as trespass risk, hunting pressure or a fence the state won't fix (see the comment above about a state park). Same fact, different buyer.

On liability, rules vary by state, so that's worth checking with a local attorney before buying, whatever the map says.

MeetingsBrowser 5d ago
A price filter would be useful.

Most of the listings near me are for tens of acres and >$5 million

HarHarVeryFunny 5d ago
Agreed that some more filters would be useful.

I had a browse around a few states like Indiana and North Carolina, and was able to find plenty of low cost lots, even large ones, but the general problem is that they are miles away from civilization and on tiny local roads that may become an issue in winter.

It'd be useful to filter by proximity to a larger city, or airport.

Very cool idea though - some amazing large lots with beautiful views if you don't mind being pretty isolated.

AndrewKemendo 5d ago
I appreciate this OP

As somebody who is constantly looking for property adjacent to BLM this is a really good resource.

Edit: as of 1200ET the OP responding to me nicely is flagged/dead which is crazy. What is happening?

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thank you, that's great to hear. Honestly, the number of properties next to BLM was one of the things that surprised me most when I started building this, there's ~2,700 right now. On the map you can set the land type to BLM to see just those. And since you're always looking: any search can send you a weekly email when new matches turn up (starts Monday). Curious what else you check for on BLM-adjacent land?
AndrewKemendo 4d ago
I can only speak for myself but I’m specifically looking for: forested with a natural spring that is close to a hundred mile+ trail
brendoelfrendo 5d ago
I know some folks to have a cabin that they use seasonally that borders national forest land. First of all, it's gorgeous and being able to open their back gate and walk out into unspoiled wilderness is awesome. But it does have some drawbacks; their biggest "neighbors" are cattle ranchers who let their cows graze in the forest. The cows will often wander onto their property, and the cowboys are not shy about breaking fences or cutting wire to get their cattle back out. Since they're only there for part of the year, they've also had issues with hunters breaking the locks and using their cabin as a place to hang out while they're not there.

Surprisingly easy to manage, though. You'd think that things like propane delivery and septic system service would be hard to hire when you're miles out of town, up a steep logging trail, and across a home-made bridge, but the local businesses are used to it. I genuinely don't know how they find the place most of the time.

ramses0 5d ago
Apologies if this is somewhere else, but "price per acre" as a sorting mechanism would be really helpful. In the Dallas area, there's a few like $350k/0.2 acres (eg: a typical house on a lot).

Price per acre could suss out whether it's developed or in demand vs more rural (less price per acre).

Other than that, bravo! Great idea, well implemented!

ltsSmitty 5d ago
This is super cool. I love this use of public data to do something cool. The page seems like it's biggest value is to help potential property buyers find property they wouldn't easily be able to otherwise (that's what I like about it). Given that, seems like being able to filter on cost and size of lot would be useful filters on top.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Thanks, and agreed, that's the main use case. The map view (unfenced.land/map) already has min/max price and acreage filters, plus property type, shared-boundary length, elevation and road access. The ZIP search and state lists can only sort by price and acreage right now, so adding the same filters there is a good call. It's going on the list.
tjwebbnorfolk 5d ago
Are you using this for parcel data? Or are you sourcing them directly from every county

https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/landrecordsus/us-parcel-laye...

otherwatersflow 5d ago
Not that one. Parcels come from about 20 states' own statewide GIS services, and from Realie (licensed) for the rest. I'd want to check the license on that Kaggle dataset before using it, since county parcel data comes with all sorts of terms.
runtime_terror 5d ago
Cool concept!

One big issue: not having a price and acreage range selectors means you see a lot of 0.2acre lots and $8mm parcels which I'm assuming most of us wouldn't be looking for

dirtbag__dad 5d ago
Yes! As another Pennsylvanian, this is a hard requirement for my forever home. The idea that I’d go all-in on a large property in an undeveloped area, only for the surrounding land to get developed or demolished is scary. State game lands is a way to protect against that outcome.

Also a concern is proximity to fracking and now data centers. Not sure how to see if neighbors sold their underground…

As an anecdote, my parent’s home, where I grew up, is a small plot along my town’s watershed property. When the price of lumber went up recently, the town council conveniently remembered that the watershed property was once a massive “tree farm,” and since has leveled all of the surrounding woods. We never expected this. It has been emotionally crushing.

hasbot 5d ago
Gonna have the same "issue" with private lands. Over the 20+ years I owned a tree farm in rural Oregon, numerous of the nearby parcels were clearcut. This has benefits too. One day I was up on my ridge and was surprised to see a mountain I had never seen before because the ridge to the north was just clearcut.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Same here, I found my land bordering state game lands in the Poconos for exactly that reason. I'm sorry to hear about the watershed woods; that's the risk with land that isn't actually protected. Fracking leases and mineral rights are a great point too. They're hard to see from public data, but worth thinking about.
caseyf7 5d ago
Very cool project. One of my favorite Show HN posts. It’s interesting to see how hard it is to line up the maps from different sources, but in most cases it is close enough to dig further. A really useful tool. Thank you
SwellJoe 5d ago
Neat idea, but literally every property I looked at, a half dozen of them, was:

a. Not for sale.

b. Wildly incorrectly priced, according to the Zestimate and most recent sold price, when sold recently. I mean, like, $59k vs $470k.

gapo 5d ago
Very well executed and built ! Great example for what agentic coding can enable for projects run by someone with good 'taste' !

Thanks for sharing

pavel_lishin 5d ago
Some of this isn't exactly "land" - this is a condo in Jersey City that allegedly has a water view.

But this is still very cool.

TheRealPomax 5d ago
It would be nice to already see parts of the entire map coloured so you can see (extremely approximately) what's available.
ProjectArcturis 5d ago
Very cool! I would love the ability to search for land with or without a house, or at least to be able to sort by $ per acre.
hk__2 5d ago
*in the US only.
willschneider26 5d ago
Very cool thought about something similar. How are you getting the data if you dont mind me asking?
intrasight 5d ago
Feature request: near bike trail.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Good one, thanks. I think OpenStreetMap has decent bike-trail coverage, so "distance to the nearest trail" is quite doable. It's on the list.
bombcar 5d ago
It's showing me 3,200 acre "public land" near houses and it's just a real long trail ha!
crustyoldhuman 4d ago
we're house hunting right now--actually going to use this!

this reminds me of old school internet. just tiny little purposeful pages and that's it.

bobmcnamara 5d ago
Whoa, one of these is right up the road from a cannibal murder.

Small world.

rafram 5d ago
Did you exclude NPS units intentionally?
otherwatersflow 5d ago
No, they're in. About 470 properties border or sit near NPS land (parks, monuments, recreation areas, lakeshores), e.g. a few along the edge of the Smokies. You're right that the headline copy only mentions national forest, BLM and state land, so that's misleading; I need to update the wording. The map's land-type filter has a "National Park Service" option if you want to see just those.
rafram 5d ago
I don't see a single national park in California or Utah on those states' maps.
alisa007 5d ago
Came here to procrastinate, now I need land
darksim905 5d ago
neat :)
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Hi HN, I built this. Listings that say "borders state land" can't easily be checked: you open the county's GIS viewer and line up parcel lines against public-land maps by hand. I did that a lot while looking for land of my own, then automated it.

How it works, once a week:

1. About 700,000 active U.S. listings come in from a licensed listings API.

2. Each listing near public land gets its county parcel boundary, from state and county GIS services where they publish them and from a licensed parcel provider elsewhere. With no boundary, the page says so and measures from the listing point, but never claims a shared edge.

3. Public land is USGS PAD-US 4.1, narrowed to land an agency actually owns (Category = Fee, so no conservation easements), that's open to the public, and that's at least 50 acres.

4. Parcel and public land are compared in a local metric projection (shapely/geopandas): within (an inholding), bordering (the boundaries touch, and the shared edge is measured in feet), or adjacent (within 75 m, about a road's width).

Each property also gets the size of the connected public land behind it, its elevation (USGS 3DEP), road access (Census TIGER roads), FEMA flood zone and Forest Service wildfire hazard. The output is about 16,000 static pages with Leaflet maps on Cloudflare Pages, rebuilt every Monday on a Mac mini. ZIP search looks the ZIP up in your browser from Census centroids, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Things that were harder than expected:

- Lot sizes sometimes arrive in square feet in the acres field. A Birmingham, AL listing came through at 7,000 acres. Sizes are now checked against price, property type and the parcel itself, and corrected or withheld with a note.

- Condo and subdivision listings often resolve to the association's common tract, so a single town lot can appear to share miles of boundary. Those are flagged as shared parcels.

- PAD-US stores some units as one multipart polygon. My first "connected public land" figure for one Montana property was 69.7 million acres, about three-quarters of the state. Units are now split into pieces and joined only where they actually touch.

- Road centerlines and lot lines come from different agencies and are often tens of meters apart, so "does a road touch this parcel" needs a tolerance, and frontage only counts where the boundary runs along the road.

It's free, with no account and no cookies. There are free weekly email alerts for any search, starting Monday. I'd especially like to hear from anyone who has bought rural land: what should it measure that it doesn't?

someothherguyy 5d ago
> 1. About 700,000 active U.S. listings come in from a licensed listings API.

What API is that? It looks like you or the data broker are violating some NAR / MLS / State Compliance rules to me. You might want to look into those.

qzw 5d ago
Not sure if you meant it that way, but this comes across as a bit hostile. Do you care to share some specific rules you think are being violated?
someothherguyy 5d ago
There are gazillion compliance laws, etc, but basic copyright laws commonly cover these things.

https://www.rentcast.io/terms-api

> You and We acknowledge and agree that, in the event of a third-party claim arising out of or relating to your access to or use of the RentCast API, or your possession, use, disclosure, display, resale, or distribution of the API Data, including any claim that such activities infringe any third-party’s intellectual property rights or do not comply with applicable laws and/or regulations, you, and not Us, will be responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of any such claim. You will promptly notify Us in writing of any such claim.

rafram 5d ago
Database copyright isn't really a thing in the US.
otherwatersflow 5d ago
It's RentCast (rentcast.io) listings API and parcel boundaries come from state/county GIS services and Realie (realie.ai). Fair question on the rules: I'm not a broker or MLS member, so NAR/MLS rules don't bind me directly; I license the listings through RentCast's API under terms that allow displaying them, and how they source the data is on their side. I also left agent phone numbers and emails out of the downloads on purpose so the site can't be used to build contact lists. If anyone from an MLS sees a problem with a specific listing, I'd genuinely like to hear about it: contact@unfenced.land
orphea 5d ago
Which LLM did you use?
otherwatersflow 5d ago
Mostly Claude Code. I have a background in 3D Design and Geospatial Mapping, the data sources and the decisions about what counts as "bordering" were mine
derekhong 5d ago
The 69.7 million acre Montana figure made me laugh. I've hit the same kind of bug joining government datasets, where one weird record only shows up once you run every state.

How do you handle listings that go off-market between weekly rebuilds? Do those pages 404, redirect, or stay up as sold? I run a few sites built on weekly public data and still haven't settled on what works best with Google when pages disappear.

verelo 5d ago
I'd love to chat to you about this. I have been solo building in the real estate space for about 5 years now. I've finally got to a point where I make a roughly market salary from it, and I'm starting to venture wider into providing a listing service for everyone from FSBO's to large brokerages. Theres a huge opportunity to displace the position Zillow et al have, but it's riddled with legal challenges and risk (They've done a great job of making it hard to break in).

If you're up for a chat, please ping me! This is pretty cool and I'm wondering if theres a collaboration, or if I can straight up use some of what you've made.