Most countrysides look somewhat like that. At least the one i was forced to grow up in. Sure, there are lots of plants but nevertheless the land is ecologically dead because there's only a few species (mostly 3 different subspecies of corn). Sure there are some trees but i think the trees feel as lonely as i did when i lived there.
If you want to live in nature, go to the mountains or some place that has large bodies of water nearby (lakes, rivers, ocean). That's where the actual life is.
It's because of a mixture of landscape reasons. Large flat areas are attractive to farming, so that's what's being done. On the other side, mountains are unattractive for that because the big machines can't drive over uneven soil. Similarly, large waters host a ton of biodiversity because water is the origin of all life, and you can really feel that. Just give it a try.
Have you priced places near bodies of water and mountains? Out of my paygrade
Dead cheap where I live. Nobody wants to have to drive 30 km of hairpins to get to the nearest supermarket.
Bodies of water? Sure, that land can be pricy, although not in every case.
Mountains? Nah those areas are usually pretty inexpensive, at least in the US. Appalachia being a prime example.
That's because it's Appalachia. Try Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Montana
Or Cascades. My house was north of half a mill :(
It's mainly because of the ski resorts afaik. But yes, that's fair.
No, it is because building in remote areas is expensive.
If you're building a brand new house you're already outside the realm of affordability. In general, rural areas have an excess of housing stock due to the strong trend of urbanization over the past century.
Also, the fact that building in remote areas is expensive doesn't contradict the fact that ski resorts drive massive real estate inflation in the surrounding areas.
Ski resorts count for an extremely small portion of mountainous areas. It is like saying housing in cities is expensive because of golf courses.
Agree to disagree. Shutdown all the ski resorts in Colorado and see what happens to property values over the next 20 years. The proportion of land might be small, but the population and monetary influx is massive.
In order for housing to be expensive, people need to have the money to pay for it. If there's no high paying jobs within hundreds of miles, and there's no tourism money, the demand simply won't be there and prices will fall. Again, look at the Appalachians and the Adirondacks for example. Ever since the advent of air travel, they've been steadily depopulated and economically depressed, as people from the cities prefer to vacation in more remote locations, such as the Rockies.
I should also acknowledge that a lot of land out west is owned by the government or other major groups, and that probably also plays a role. I'm not as familiar with the real estate market of Wyoming as I'd like to be. But I can't help but dispute your assertion that prices are high because building is expensive. Seems like a tautology somehow.
In all fairness, there is a reason that Appalachian land is cheap, and that is that setting aside your neighbors, the geographic disadvantages are pretty bad for farming and development.
Absolutely. That's true for mountainous regions in general. Lack of navigable rivers, difficulty of transportation, lack of farmable land, harsh climate, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_people
In the modern world we have developed technology to mitigate these issues so you have some exceptions, like the Alps and the Rockies to some extent. But historically, wealth was always concentrated in the coastal and agriculturally productive regions.
Yep I realized there is a mountainous county in my state with only ~3,000 people, that is appealing to me. But I doubt there is internet and you are probably 1+ hours from a grocery store.
Nah, you'll probably have Internet, and the closest grocery store in a lot of places is like 20-30 min away. But mobile towers are pretty spotty, the closest grocery is going to be expensive (if it isn't something like a dollar general, which is also pricey), and the roads will be outright dangerous in some areas. There is a reason land in west Virginia and rural mountains of NC, VA, AND TN can be soo cheap.
Yeah me too, unless want to live out of a van.