The short answer: before you go under contract on a lot in the Pikes Peak region, verify seven things: the location as it will be in ten years, not just today; the setbacks, easements, and the buildable area they leave you; how you will get water, sewer or septic, power, gas, and internet to the house and what each one costs to bring in; which rights come with the dirt and which do not (water, mineral, timber, access); who maintains the road and plows it; the zoning and covenants that govern what you can build; and the soils. Almost all of it can be answered with a week of phone calls during your due-diligence period, and a $5,000 lot 45 minutes from town can turn into a $100,000 lot once utilities are priced. We do this homework with clients before they buy, and it is the single cheapest insurance in the whole project.
This list was first published in 2014 as a guest post from a Colorado Springs real estate agent who had helped many families buy land to build on. I have rewritten it from the builder's side, with current El Paso and Teller County specifics and one addition at the end that has cost more of our clients money than any of the original seven.
1. Location, on the map and on the lot
Location decides the macro questions: school district, commute, distance to a hospital if you are retiring, and whether you want Black Forest ponderosa, Monument views, the Teller County mountains, or an in-town lot on the west side. It also decides the micro questions people forget to ask. In a subdivision, which side of it is yours? The side with the view and the greenbelt, or the side that backs to the arterial that has not been built yet? What is the sun doing in January on that lot? Where does the snow drift? Spend an hour on the lot at a different time of day than your first visit, and drive it in weather.
2. Picture the neighborhood in five to ten years
The agent who wrote the original called it house fever: falling in love with a feature of the property and forgetting to ask the big questions. The biggest one is what is going to be built around you. In Colorado Springs we have watched this happen repeatedly along the Powers corridor and east on Highway 24 toward Falcon and Peyton, where the first buyers in a new filing had open prairie across the back fence and a shopping center or four-lane road there a few years later. Pull up the county or city master plan and the zoning on the adjacent parcels, not just yours. Ask the planning department what has been submitted nearby. A treed five acres next to twenty vacant acres zoned commercial is a different purchase than it looks.
Rural lots have their own version. Is the hay-bale berm at the end of the neighbor's property a shooting backstop? Is that smooth dirt loop a motocross track? Is there an oil and gas lease on the section? None of these are reasons not to buy, but they are reasons to know.
3. Know the setbacks, and what is left after them
Setbacks are the distances from each property line inside which you cannot build. On a five-acre lot in the county's RR-5 zone they rarely constrain the house. On a half-acre lot in a covenant-controlled community, or a sloped mountain lot, they can decide the footprint. Setbacks are only the start, though. Add the utility and drainage easements recorded on the plat, any floodplain, the septic field and its required separation from the well (100 feet in Colorado) and from the house, the driveway grade the fire district will accept, and defensible space, and the "buildable envelope" on a lot that looked huge can get tight. Before you buy, have your builder or a surveyor sketch the envelope on the plat with the house you actually want to build inside it. The El Paso County Planning and Community Development office and the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department will both answer setback questions over the phone.
4. Ask how every utility gets to the house, and what it costs
This is the one that changes the price of a lot. Before you close, know exactly how you will get each of these and what the connection costs:
- Water. Municipal tap or a well. Inside Colorado Springs Utilities' territory the water and wastewater development charges and taps on a new home run well into five figures; confirm the current schedule with CSU for your lot size because it changes annually. On a well lot, call a driller with the legal description before you buy. We wrote a whole article on what a well costs in Colorado; the short version is $20,000 to $55,000 depending on the aquifer, and a low-yield well adds a cistern.
- Sewer or septic. If there is no sewer main, you need an on-site wastewater treatment system permitted through El Paso County Public Health, which requires a soils evaluation and, increasingly, an engineered design. Permit fees are under $1,000, but a conventional system is a five-figure line item and an engineered system on poor soils or a small lot can be a large one. Get a feasibility opinion from a licensed installer before you buy.
- Electricity. The utility will extend a line to your meter, and it charges by the foot after a free allowance. On a rural lot a long run from the nearest transformer, or a required upgrade to it, can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Call Colorado Springs Utilities, Mountain View Electric, or whoever serves the parcel and ask for a line-extension estimate.
- Gas. Natural gas if a main is nearby, propane if not. Propane means a buried tank, a supplier who will deliver to your road in February, and appliances spec'd for it. All manageable; all better known ahead of time.
- Internet. This used to be the afterthought. It is now a dealbreaker for anyone who works from home. Fiber is spreading through the county, but plenty of beautiful lots are still on satellite. Check availability by address, not by neighborhood.
The original article's example still holds: there is land within an hour of Colorado Springs that is cheap for a reason, and the reason is usually that it costs more to get water and power to it than it costs to buy it.
5. Natural resource and access rights are more complicated than you think
In Colorado, owning the surface does not mean owning what is under it, on it, or the right to get to it.
- Water rights. A creek or pond on the property does not mean you can use the water, and a well permit in the Denver Basin comes with limits on what the water can be used for. A "household use only" permit does not allow irrigation or livestock. Read the permit type, not just the fact that a well exists.
- Mineral rights. Frequently severed from the surface decades ago. If someone else owns the minerals, they have a legal right of reasonable access to develop them. El Paso County has seen exploratory oil and gas activity on its east side. A title commitment will show the severance; ask your title company to explain it.
- Timber rights. Less common here than in the mountains, but a recorded timber contract gives a third party the right to come onto your land and harvest.
- Access. Vacant land can be legally landlocked. If the only way in crosses someone else's property, there must be a recorded easement, not a handshake. Lenders will not lend on a lot without legal access, and a conservation easement on or next to the parcel can restrict what you build and where.
All of this is in the title commitment and the recorded documents the title company will give you during the contract period. Read the exceptions schedule, and ask about anything you do not understand before the deadline to object passes.
6. Find out who maintains the road
If the lot is on a county-maintained road, the county plows it, eventually. If it is on a private road, which describes a large share of the rural lots around Black Forest, Peyton, and Teller County, maintenance and snow removal belong to the owners along it, and your lender will usually require a recorded road maintenance agreement before closing. Ask for it. Ask what the annual assessment is and when the road was last graded. In a metropolitan district, which is how many newer Colorado subdivisions are financed, roads come with a mill levy that can add meaningfully to your property tax bill; the district's service plan and current levy are public, and worth reading before you fall in love with the lot.
7. Zoning, covenants, and the architectural committee
Zoning tells you what the government allows; covenants tell you what your neighbors allow, and covenants are usually stricter. Before you buy, read the recorded Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions, find out whether there is an Architectural Control Committee, and ask what it has turned down recently. Minimum square footage is the one that catches people: several communities north of Colorado Springs require homes well above what many families want to build, and no amount of good design gets a 2,800-square-foot ranch through a committee with a 4,000-square-foot minimum. Roof pitch, exterior materials, color palettes, fence types, and outbuilding rules are all common. We have written separately about how HOAs, ACCs, and CC&Rs work and how to read them.
On the zoning side, confirm the zone district allows a single-family home (not every "residential" parcel does without a plat), and if you want a barn, a detached shop, horses, or a guest house, confirm those specifically. El Paso County treats accessory living quarters as a special use in rural zones with size limits and a hearing, and the city of Colorado Springs rewrote its accessory dwelling rules in 2025. The answer you want is in writing from the planning department, not from the listing agent.
One more we would add: the soils
The original list did not include soils, and in twenty-five years of building in El Paso and Teller counties it is the item that has cost our clients the most money after closing. Much of the Pikes Peak region sits on expansive clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and parts of the east side have collapsible or sandy soils with their own problems. The building department requires a soils report and an engineered foundation on every new home, but by the time you commission that report you already own the lot. A bad report can mean a deeper foundation, drilled piers, overexcavation, or a structural floor over a crawlspace, and those add real money. If the seller or a neighbor has a soils report, ask for it. If not, and the lot is a large purchase, a preliminary soils boring during the contract period costs a small fraction of a foundation redesign. We explain the construction side of this in our article on floating walls, which exist for exactly this reason.
Most of this comes down to using your due-diligence period for diligence. If you have a lot under consideration, we will walk it with you and make the calls before you commit; that is part of how our process works, and you can see the areas we build in for what we already know about the ground there.
