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Originally Posted by ar0ck
I researched this as well a while ago. Its high risk for banks, for instance if someone purchases land, and abandons it, its difficult for the banks to recoup their money. What I gathered was it was best to buy parcels privately. I know for the VA Loan, in order to receive money for plots of land you need to have house blueprints on hand.
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This ^^^ is pretty accurate info. Banks don't like lending money on undeveloped land, especially if its far off the beaten path. It sounds like you would need to investigate a construction loan, which may be one way to secure some cash from a lender, then convert the construction loan into a typical mortgage. I do surveying for a living and we deal with this sort of stuff all the time. Ideally, you would be best served to find a piece of land, owned by a small spot builder, and go through the builder initially, then convert to a typical mortgage. Builders sometime have financial relationships with banks and lending institutions to get project started.
Look for land that already has approvals to build, and make sure those approvals have not expired. Sometimes, perc tests, well tests etc all need to be updated or sometimes, the regulations change and what was once acceptable, no longer is. Land with approvals will cost more, but is also more attractive to a potential lender for obvious reasons.
Be wary of land with lots of environmental restrictions (flood zones, wetlands, etc.) as this is just more headache you want to avoid.
To buy a random piece of land, outsource the engineering, architecture, surveying, get approvals etc from planning board, then act as your own Construction Manager takes a decent amount of liquid cash up front and whole bunch of time potentially. Depending on the land and where it is, it could take years to get through an approval proce$$.
Good luck, do lots of homework.