I've been all over that area, and worked the land there, so I can respond to some of these.
A. WHY!?! Why do you want THIS piece of land? Is it as you love this piece of land, or that you want a piece of land and you can afford this one?
This is a typical piece of land in the area. The landscape is mind-boggling in how homogenous it is. The soil types are all the same, vegetation is all the same, etc. There's no substantial difference between this and any other piece of land within a 200 mile radius. Once you do get into other landscapes (parts of Payson, Sedona etc) the price of land goes up by a factor of 50. If price was not an issue, I'd say look at Sedona (a 200 mile daily work commute is actually not uncommon there).
C. Other than flooding what water source does it have? What is Plan B or C when that Main Source is hooped?
Excellent question. You need more than a well. The ground water is so hard, you can burn through well pumps quickly. The depth of the water (in most areas at least) demands a big pump to get the required head pressure. So if your well pump dies, you might need to come up with $2k on the spot and be without water until then. Reserve tanks are a necessity. You can use cheaper constant, low-flow pumps to feed to a water tower as well.
The ground there is almost impermeable (hence the flooding), but that makes it very easy to install ponds very cheaply. They need to be deep, but with a gradual down-grade, as the water will recede significantly throughout the year. That means a half-acre pond (in volume) needs a full acre of area.
• Well (inspected, get a backup pump)
• Tanks (20,000 gallons minimum in a roof-catchment system)
• Pond (I'd do an acre pond)
• Bottled reserve drinking water (20-30x 5 gallon jugs from the local bottle stop)
D. Swales will help soak up water. However, will they retain water in that soil? Are you working with a sieve/colander type of soil?
For all intents and purposes, the washes are swales. They are typically level, built to retain water. They don't follow contour, but they're built in areas where there functionally is no contour. Think of it as an inverse levy. As for the soil type, the top inch will be sandy, or powdered clay particles, desiccated organic matter etc. Beneath that, 5' - 20' of impermeable clay. Beneath that, the whole damn state is solid granite, lol. There's a chance the land rests on a rock fissure or void which will give you deep ground water and good drainage, but nobody surveys soils that deep so there's no way to know.
A small rain event will soak in instantly and disappear. A large event that can saturate that top 1" of soil will begin to flood. Less than an inch, you'd never know it rained at all, but exceed that inch and everything is in standing water.
E. Is there any topsoil and if you build topsoil will it get washed away by the next great flood?
Should be safe from flooding. Most areas don't flow (that's how flat the land is). It's more like the desert becomes a seasonal rice-paddy. The only place you get heavy flows are in areas people have screwed up the earthworks (like the Gila river). If there is a mountain nearby, you get some watershed, but the mountains are all granite as well, not good for homesteading. If a road divides you from any land slopes, the side ditches and storm drains isolate you from those periodic water flows.
Building the topsoils however is a painstaking task. There are two challenges:
• Finding enough organic matter
• keeping it from completely drying out
Remember, once you've made good soil, it can never go completely dry or it was all for nothing. You need to grow a lot of your own mulch, and use lots of manure.
H. Have you looked around the neighborhood to see what the neighbors are growing besides sand?
Anything can be grown there. The cost of growing it however is very high due to the required soil amendment and high cost of water. Not to mention you have California's fertile valleys about 6 hours away, so you can't compete with high-value food crops in a market (which is why most people out there grow cotton). There is a niche market for things like watermelon. They're too cheap per cubic foot of volume to effectively ship into the state. The cost of shipping cuts into profit margins. There's also a viable herbs market.
For the small homestead, it's subsistence farming, not market farming. Fruit, Vegetable, Grain, Meat and dairy are all cheaper to buy than they are to produce there, unless you operate on a large scale. There is however a booming population (insane growth over the last 30 years). Given the high population, you can find markets for high-end niche products. Medicinal herbs for example are very big out there. Grocery store fare won't be profitable, but things grown for dyes, perfumery, ornamentals, or unconventional food markets will do well. The area has some advantages, as it can grow things which you simply can't grow economically anywhere else in the US. If you're looking to start a business on the land, I would look into growing low water-usage landscaping plants and wholesale them to nurseries and landscape contractors. With the population growth, there are lots of new homes going up all the time, more demands on water, more pressure to conserve water... seems like you could meet those needs with relatively little overhead cost, as your product inherently doesn't need that much irrigation.
My Advice:
The area is in a housing boom right now, and homes are highly over-valued. For example, the house I lived in, built new in 1989 was $80k. Now it's listed at $480k. Homes don't gain 600% of their value in under 30 years while new construction is going up on such a large scale (from a population of 20,000 in my county to 500,000 in 27 years - 2500% growth). Only a fool would bet on that trend continuing over the span of a 30 year mortgage. That bubble will pop very soon (there already aren't resources to support the population, food and water are being brought in from thousands of miles away...) AZ has it's share of ghost towns just for that reason. The only difference this time is the recent boom didn't build a town, but a metropolis. Optimistic predictions are about 80% of people in the area losing
everything when the bubble pops, a mass-exodus of industry... But that can be a good for you as long as you're not holding a lot of debt. Buy the land for cash (no mortgages) and just drop a trailer on it. Build a home when home sales start dropping and the contractors go begging for work (or buy a foreclosure for pennies on the dollar when everyone bails).
At this point, if you buy land, consider yourself stuck with it forever, paying taxes on it forever. You won't sell it and get what you paid for it. If industry pulls out of town, you may find yourself starting over in a new field, at lower wages than you're accustomed to. In this region more so than most, zero debt is the biggest advantage you can have. The region is an economic time-bomb, and mortgages are the shrapnel that will cut down most of your neighbors. You can use this to your advantage, but don't make any hasty decisions or take on debt to buy the land. That's not to discourage you, I like the area, and the land looks very nice, and I believe you can prosper there. But to make it work, you need to be very conservative.
