Spaceship said:

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I'm in the beginning stages of looking to buy land. My goal is 40-50 acres within 1.5 hr of DFW. Key to me is access to power, ponds/surface water, mix of trees and prairie and an ag exemption in place. Hunting or fishing isn't important.

My goal is to establish a long term family plot with bardominium down the road.

For those of you who have gone through the land buying process in the past, what surprises, lessons learned or tips would you share that are valuable?

Thanks!

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if you're married / have a family, then make sure everyone is on same page on costs. Get ag exemption. Everything is way more expensive and time consuming than you initially plan.

Surface water is a good thing, but make sure you have a reliable well or community system if housing is in the plan.

Any existing leases on the property, mineral, water, even grazing. And who has surface control.

I'll offer a counter point. If you look hard enough, you can find something wrong with every property out there. I've seen deals fall apart over buyer wanting new fences, and seller refusing out of principal, when the cost wouldn't be 2% of the total deal. Make a list of what you consider deal breakers and try to not get hung up on the things that don't really make a difference in the end.

I do not own land (yet). I perform real estate due diligence.

Look at all historical aerial photographs available on Google Earth, which is free. You can see all sorts of historical land use/development (oil wells, pits/dumps, etc.).

I purchased a place about 18 months ago. I would say be patient when looking and try to find something that checks most of your boxes.
There is a lot of work involved in managing land and the ag exemption. Is this something you'd do yourself or hire out? My place has a wildlife exemption, and there are certain requirements that need to be done. I've been doing it all myself right now. Have a vision for what you want the place to become.
As mentioned, costs will be more than you expect. And Mother Nature will throw curve balls at you. I had several 12-20 inch broken limbs to deal with from a storm last week.
My biggest headache/heartache was getting a letter in the mail a few months after closing that a giant transmission line would potentially cross the property and drastically change how the place would look. Fortunately a couple months ago an updated map was made available and we're no longer on the route. So I would say try to see if there are any proposed utilities, pipelines, windmill/solar farms, etc proposed nearby.

Completely disagree with buying land on an FM road. I'd highly discourage that if your purpose for this property is peace and country living.

Find a good FM road, and then get a few miles of county road and then another mile or two of a street with a sign that hasn't been updated in 40 years and then go down that until pavement ends and keep going for a few miles…..that's where you want to be.