​There’s something incredibly romantic and idyllic about off grid real estate. Finding the perfect off grid homes for sale, however, is a completely different business.

The decision has to be 100 percent pragmatic and based on rationality. Whether you’d like to buy land, an off grid shelter or something a bit more luxurious, you’ll need to keep a couple of important practical considerations in mind.

4  things You Want to Consider With Off Grid Real Estate

Location

The first and the most obvious characteristic that all off grid homes for sale should have is a good location that ensures access to natural resources.

A dependable and clean natural water source nearby is a must. If you plan to use solar panels for energy production, you’ll need to go for a spot that’s characterized by a big number of sunny days throughout the year.

Natural building materials will also be required, whether you’re just getting land or you’ve found a house that you’ll eventually like to upgrade. Rocks, stones, clay and wood will all be required for sustainable, off grid living. Having such resources available in the area can save you a lot of money and effort in the future.

Power Generation Considerations

We’ve already touched upon the topic briefly but power generation considerations are incredibly important when examining off grid homes for sale. If the property doesn’t have an installation already, you’ll have to do the math and figure out how much it’s going to cost you.

If you’re interested in a property or an off grid shelter that doesn’t have an electric installation, you’ll have to get in touch with contractors. Request several quotes to see how much the project’s execution is going to cost you, what the deadline is going to be and whether you’ll get a guarantee. When opting for such property, be prepared for the additional work and effort that will be required to set up the electrical system.

Waste system Availability

Sewage regulations exist in most of the remote areas, even the ones that don’t follow building codes.

Some of the acceptable and good options for off grid homes for sale include septic tanks, composting toilets and open-air lagoon pits. Keep in mind that the soil conditions will impact the septic system. They will also determine the cost of setting up and maintaining the septic system. When looking at an off the grid house, always make sure that the waste management system is in place, that it adheres to regulations and that it’s cost-efficient.

Price

Though the cost of off grid shelters is a primary concern for many potential buyers, it shouldn’t be the only one. Looking at the price to quality ratio is a much better way of evaluating the real estate.

The cost of off grid real estate depends on many factors. The location, the water purification system, the electrical installation and the size of the building itself will all have an impact on the price. Sometimes, however, it makes sense to buy a more expensive house that is in a good condition and that will require fewer upgrades. The decision will make more financial sense in the long run.

You Also Might Be Interested in...

Hydroponic Systems

Want to know more about hydroponic? systems???? Start here.

Aquaponics

Aquaponic is a marriage between fish farming and hydroponics. Protein and vegetables in one unit

Urban Farming

With urban gardening you can transform even the smallest piece of land into a food farm for your family.

Indoor Gardening

No land, no problem. Indoor gardening can give you food as well as healing herbs.

Vertical Gardening

With vertical gardening you can create a garden, inside or outside, anywhere you have a sunlit wall.

Aeroponics

Aeroponics is quite possibly the future of farming.

Summary: Living off the grid

It's not at all difficult to store your own electricity in car batteries, to make your own power, or to grow your own food. These things take time and some training but in the end run, you may be far better off than you are now.

Cut your expenses down and your personal choices go up.

It's that simple.

In order to effectively live off the grid, it doesn't require some type of country dwelling or out of the city housing. In many cases, city laws or codes dictate that you must be part of the main grid and if you are not, the area housing authority, the city codes and other ordinances may be violated and you're going to be penalized for that.

In which case, accept the dictates of your environment, but there is nothing that says you have to use them. The ideas on this website will drastically reduce your footprint. If you can get the utilities to PAY YOU, or whittle them down to a few dollars a month, then you've the turned the game on its head. Besides, on grid utilities are great as a back-up power system. Make the utilities work for you.

The same with food. Food didn't use to be much of an expense, now however, it is. A family of four can easily consume $500 per month in food. By growing your own food hydroponically, indoors or outdoors, You can put a large portion of that $500 back in your pocket.

Take hydroponics one step further with aquaponics and you can add enough protein to your plate to feed your family AND your neighbors.

Many cities and suburbs allow chickens. Another great way to get meat on the table. ​Chickens can give you organic compost for your garden, eggs, and endless entertainment. Seriously, chickens are a blast to watch. Children love them. They are also easily domesticated.

Believe it or not there are off the grid communities that are cropping up all over the country.

Oregon has Three Rivers and Breitenbush near Salem offers another. Virginia features Twin Oaks off the grid commmunity while North Carolina has Earth Haven. Arizona offers Arcosanti Ecovillage and Missouri has the Possibility Alliance where community members share the work, farm and cook with sunshine. Not everyone lives there year round but some people do.

If you're lucky enough to live off the grid completely...

If you're going to be living off the grid completely you will need land where you can install a septic system legally and where you can have a well to get your water. You will absolutely need a water holding device as well as a way to store the energy that you create so investing in generators and storage devices will be a necessity for off the grid living.

Choose a place that can offer you wind energy or solar energy or where you can use water to make power. Selecting an area that is sunny and has frequent breezes and a good water source nearby is essential.

Typically living off the grid means making your own food, your own water and your own energy and finding a way to store and preserve all of those things. There are some wonderful possibilities today for livng off the grid and still being able to maintain a normal lifestyle with the power, the communications and the other tools that you need. Explore your options to see if you can live off the grid and get started today.

You also might like this FREE download: Click here.​

You Also Might Be Interested in...

Hydroponic Systems

Want to know more about hydroponic systems Start here.

Aquaponics

Aquaponic is a marriage between fish farming and hydroponics. Protein and vegetables in one unit

Urban Farming

With urban gardening you can transform even the smallest piece of land into a food farm for your family.

Indoor Gardening

No land, no problem. Indoor gardening can give you food as well as healing herbs.

Vertical Gardening

With vertical gardening you can create a garden, inside or outside, anywhere you have a sunlit wall.

Aeroponics

Aeroponics is quite possibly the future of farming.

When visitors come to our home the most asked questions is usually, "How difficult is it to start living off grid?". For most people we have to assume that they are really asking us, do you think 'I' can do this?

With a reasonable amount of energy and determination anyone can achieve these same results. Here is a list of our

Top 10 Tips to get you started.

1. It's all about the land when you are considering living off grid.

Picking the right piece of real estate can be as easy as asking some neighbors or as difficult as moving all the way across your state or province (as our family did). The choice is up to you.

What kind of land do you want? How big? and where do you want to live? Different areas are more desirable to some people. Our main criteria was that we wanted a big enough parcel that we would have firewood and building material resources. We wanted a good water supply. And lastly we wanted quiet.

After the hustle and bustle of the area we came from a quiet area away from the main road was a top priority for us.

2. Debt free living = Happy.

Before considering any move or change in your lifestyle consider your financial situation. Living debt free is a major consideration when starting something new. Do we have those old nagging monthly debts following us around? How do we get rid of them?

A simple plan like the one we followed really has allowed our family to live free once again, free of the 'wage slave cycle' that envelopes us and keeps us where we are.

Change is very difficult to implement for most families and those monthly bills, once eliminated can be a real liberator for you and your family. That is the place to begin once you have set clear objectives for your family.

Your plans must cover the elimination of debt for you to succeed.

3.Involve your entire family.

Kids are smarter and more industrious than we sometimes give them credit for. Involving even small children in the move can really change things for the better. It turns a potentially frightening change in lifestyle into an adventure.

From our own experience our kids were really pumped about the great adventure that awaited them moving to our own property.

4. Learn about solar panels and whether they can work for your family.

From the beginning we employed solar panels to run our home. It was a good choice and one that allowed us to live how we wanted.

Solar panels, especially if you build your own solar panels is a great choice and a real time and money saver for your family. Every dollar invested is a dollar (and more) saved from your energy bills each month.

5. Learn about wind generators and whether or not this option can work for you and your family.

Just like solar panels, wind generators could be the answer. Providing a great supply of electrical energy when the wind blows this is a great compliment to any home renewable energy system.

In fact, we would recommend a so called 'hybrid' system combining the two for anyone considering such a move to off grid location.

6.Invest in some form of backup power system.

Even if you only have to run it a couple hours per week, a good gas or biodiesel generator is a good investment.

Our family invested in a Honda Generator, only 2000 watts, that is quiet and has passed EPA testing standards and it has turned out to be a great investment for living off the grid.

Granted we only run it for maybe 1 hour per week, just to charge batteries when it is particularly cloudy or not windy, it is good to know it is there.

7. You need to embrace technology to be successful at living off grid.

In the beginning we thought we were pioneer homesteaders and lived as such, but the amount of work necessary to make a homestead run is tremendous. As we got older we knew we could not keep this up forever.

Not that 40 is old by any means, but we did want time and energy for more enjoyable pursuits, not just for the mundane tasks of everyday living. Satellite internet, solar powered water pumps, satellite TV, and of course our renewable energy system all have contributed to our enjoyment of living off grid.

8. Remember that it takes time.

Just like any sizable project living off grid will take time. Do not expect that you can simply pick up where your neighbors left off, this is a project you need to grow into and get used to.

Building your own renewable energy system is a fairly large project, and building your own home which you might also choose to do is also a big project. Look at this as long term and break it all down into manageable sections and you will be fine living off grid.

9. Make time for gardens and hobbies outdoors.

Remember that you can work too hard at a project, and you need other activities to balance everything out. What might appear to be fun time, building and working outdoors, compared to your regular 'job' work, will quickly become 'work' too if you are not careful.

Take the time to plant a garden, sit in the lawn chair, and enjoy the birds and animals of your new location too. After all that is the reason you decided to live off grid in the first place,isn't it?

10. Keep learning.

It always amazes me that when people get done school they think they know everything they need to know to live a successful life. The ones who treat education as a lifelong process are the happiest and most successful.

Never stop learning about ways to live better and embrace a better life and living off grid will turn out to be the best decision you ever made.

You also might like this FREE eBook. Click here

You Also Might Be Interested in...

Hydroponic Systems

Want to know more about hydroponic? systems???? Start here.

Aquaponics

Aquaponic is a marriage between fish farming and hydroponics. Protein and vegetables in one unit

Urban Farming

With urban gardening you can transform even the smallest piece of land into a food farm for your family.

Solar Systems

Want to know more about solar systems? Start here.

Wind Generators

Wind generators are becoming popular. Find out here.

Generators

Generators are the quickest way to get power off the grid. But don't buy the wrong one.

Biofuels

Biofuels are in our future, sooner or later. Find out if it is right for you.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel: Take waste oil and make your own diesel fuel

Bioethanol

Bioethanol, AKA "moonshine". This fuel can run in your car.

In 1993 our family decided that we wanted to start living off the grid. It was a major decision in our lives, and the lives of 3 small children, but we knew it was time to give it a try.
Back then we knew nothing about our new choices, or how they would affect the rest of our life.

The best part is that looking back over the last 16 years we would not change any one of those decisions. We use wind generators and solar panels to generate our power for our home, and we built them all ourselves from scratch.

Our garden is the nearly an acre now producing a substantial amount of food for our family. And we have time and freedom now to help others do the very same things we have accomplished.

Over the years we have had quite a few visitors to our home, all seemingly asking the same questions, "Do you think we can do this ourselves?"

Our answer is usually the same, "Do you think you can?". It is really up to you if you want to do what we have done.

What does it take to start?

• You first need a good plan
• get some experience living off the grid even if for only a short period of time
• make sure all family members are included in the decisions before you begin

Let's start with family planning first. Including everyone in the decision to live off grid is tremendously important. Even small children should be included. Remembering back to the time of our move, the kids viewed it as a giant adventure. And it truly was to them.

They had a huge back yard to explore now, new things to investigate and new experiences seemingly everyday. A dream come true for a child.
They all contributed in their own way to the building of our home too.

The oldest, Andrew was only 8 years old when we moved but he worked as hard as I did when it came time to lay block, pour concrete or cut beams for the construction of our off grid home.

We built the house ourselves from material that was on the place, preferring to use dead and damaged trees, and local native field stone in our construction as much as possible.
Gaining the experience can be a hard won bit of knowledge. Buying a weekend retreat or country property that you would like to spend some time on (and eventually move to living off the grid is a great first step.

Installing a few solar panels at your 'camp' is a great place to start.

Back when we started we did not have a ton of money at our disposal, so we made due. This included making our own solar panels and it was a great decision to do so.
It is a simple matter to find solar cells and put them all together in simple solar panels to run everything we needed.

Of course we did buy a few solar panels too, but after we learned how to make our own we did not bother with that any longer. You can choose which option is for you.
Our next course of action was to learn about wind generators and in the course of doing that we learned that we could build a wind generator of our own too, just like we did with the solar panels.

It was not a very difficult process to learn but it did require us to make a lot of modifications over time. The plans that were out there were mostly junk in our opinion, so we set to work to make them better and added our own experience to the mix.

Off grid living has been much easier since we learned what it took and because we were diy people we made some real advances that could help other people do the same thing.

What we discovered next was that our little experiment had a lot of people watching us, and wanting to do the same things.

Back when we first started we were known as 'those people who live down that road without hydro'. Kind of funny now that we think back on it. Because we moved to a new area, with a very strong rural and local flavor to it, our 'new' ideas were not well received at first.

But now, as we drive down the highway we see our influence as there are many homes with solar panels and wind generators installed.

Jane and I were constantly in demand to help our neighbors (and people who just showed up to ask for help) to install their own renewable energy system. And then we discovered that these same people would pay us to help them, and it developed into quite a nice little installation business for us for quite a while.

We still do the odd installation, but mostly we have set to work to outline the basic steps that these people need to take to start with living off the grid and help them succeed by themselves.
It has been a wonderful journey and we are sure that we can help you with your own journey, so just ask.

For many years we were under the impression that gardening was something that you did only in the summer, but living off the grid has taught us that is not the case.

The fall garden is now our favorite and this year is no different.

The sun of fall is still strong enough to mature broccoli, cabbage and our personal favorite chinese cabbage (or napa).

Of course all of the root crops are still growing nicely too... carrots, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips (which we overwinter and eat in the spring, they are best this way). Our homestead off grid garden is best described asyear round.

For the past week we have been rejoicing in the fact that it has not froze our more tender crops yet, a new record for us.

October second and it still has not froze our peppers, some nice hot hungarian peppers here.

Our usual frost date has been around September 11 each year with an earliest of September 1.

It's not hard to figure out why we have embraced the fall garden with such a short frost free growing season.

Watching everything blacken, wither and die in September was not our idea of fun so we have experimented with lengthening the growing season with hardy crops. In our area if we are to eat fresh food from the garden it is a must.

Off Grid Living has its benefits, but it does come with a cost. Getting tuned into the weather in our area has been a real cost for us, but has had tremendous benefits too.
It has cost us time and energy, and a few good crops of vegetables too. Like all parts of North America we have seen our fair share of extreme weather in the past few years.

Is it just me or did this just not happen 40 years ago? Our climate is definitely on the change, and we subscribe to the theory that it will be more 'extreme', not necessarily hotter or colder, but extremely variable as we have seen recently.

Our summers have seen tornadoes, hail, torrential rains where we could not even 'walk' in the garden let alone harvest crops. It has been pretty unbelievable but we have learned to cope... no, not cope but thrive with the extremes.

Too hot, too wet, too cool, too dry... we have it covered by using variety, succession plantings and using the available water in our stream.

Jane and I don't take much time for complaining about the weather, it is one of those things that you 'can' complain about all the time, as it is rarely perceived as perfect

Why rail against something you just can not change? Years ago we tried to figure out what to grow, how to grow it and when so that we always had something to harvest. That is where variety comes in.
Some crops we call necessities and some are purely for enjoyment- like growing big pumpkins. This has been a good year for the Atlantic Giants Jane loves to grow so much.

Living off the grid like we do offers up some unique opportunities for some interesting hobbies and experimentation. This is one that Jane really loves.

We are never able to grow real record pumpkins because of our really short growing season but she does pretty good. Way to go 'sweetness' , you did great this year.
It was also a great year for some honeydew melons that we grew too. Melons in the north? Yes, each year we grow a variety of new plants to test. And finally we have a consistent producer for our area.

That is what the variety is all about. Plant a number of different species in your garden, and different varieties too. Keep planting new ones each year until you find some that work, and stick with those... but don't be complacent. Just because you have one carrot variety you like does not mean you should stop there. Keep buying new carrot varieties to test, and retest.
Each year we are faced with some new weather phenomenon that we can not explain, only cope with. And each year we find new ways for our garden to thrive. One method is succession planting- that is planting seeds throughout the growing season so that you have produce right up until winter. It really works.

One of our goals at the Off Grid Living Homestead is to eat at least one meal every day all year from our own efforts. For months on end we actually eat at least 2 meals per day that we produced ourselves. Succession planting and proper storage methods allow us to do this.

Find plants that you can grow in the fall, you will be glad you did.

When we first moved to our new home here, we had no cleared land for a garden, and work on our home had to take priority from sun up to sun down... but we did take time to clear a small piece of ground near the house that first summer and our first planting was a meagre little patch of radishes.

After having grown a garden every year for most of our lives, this was the first year we had none. That little patch of radishes held all of the promise of our new venture. They grew slowly having been planted in early september just before frost, but they did grow.
Right up until it snowed in November we ate those little radishes, each promising a new beginning, a new start for Jane and I, here living off the grid. The promise of the potential of the fall garden was shown to us that first cool fall in the form of tiny little radishes that refused to die with the first frosts. Wilted and fragile, yet resilient enough to bounce back each afternoon they taught us what it meant to really give it your all.

That was just the beginning of gardening off the grid in the fall, each year we learn more about some new vegetable or technique that keeps us eating fresh food here at the off grid living homestead.