This Is the Most Expensive County to Buy Residential Land

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 15, 10:30AM EST

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This Is the Most Expensive County to Buy Residential Land — © Sundry Photography / iStock via Getty Images

“Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff,” said Will Rogers. The famous actor and comedian was right, if the cost of real estate today is any indication. Housing prices have soared in the past year. According to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index Reports, nationwide home prices rose 19.5% in September, compared to the same month in 2020. In Phoenix, the figure was 33.1%.

The housing demand frenzy is not over. Home prices in many regions and cities continue to jump. Historically low interest rates are one of the factors driving this. They have stayed low, despite inflation. Another factor is the migration of people inland from the expensive coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles, where housing prices can be more than double the national average. Places like Boise have grown considerably. People can relocate more easily because of the working from home trend due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Land prices usually are measured by geographic area, which most often includes cities, states and counties. For Lawn Love’s recently released 2022’s Most Expensive Counties to Buy Residential Land, it considered home prices and property taxes. Its yardstick was “per acre” prices. The universe examined was the 300 largest counties as measured by population. The two sources used were the Federal Housing Finance Agency and SmartAsset.

Counties that Americans are leaving because of high real estate prices topped the list. In first place, San Francisco County had a score of 90.12. Next, Kings County had a score of 57.46. Most of the top 10 are near San Francisco and New York.
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These are the 10 most expensive counties in American in which to buy residential land:

San Francisco County, Calif. (90.12)
Kings County, N.Y. (57.46)
Hudson County, N.J. (33.99)
Santa Clara County, Calif. (28.6)
San Mateo County, Calif. (28.22)
Queens County, N.Y. (27.3)
Washington County, D.C. (25.12)
Bronx County, N.Y. (18.93)
Nassau County, N.Y. (18.51)
Arlington County, Va. (18.11)

Click here to read about the most expensive cities in which to buy a home.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.