Buying Land As A Long Term Investment? What to Know Before Buying Land in Forsyth County, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia: More families in Forsyth County are buying land as a long term investment. Some want a few acres to hold for ten or twenty years. Some want a future homesite for their kids. Some have watched tracts near Peachtree Parkway or Highway 20 sell to builders for several million dollars and want a piece of that.

Land is a good asset in a county growing this fast, but it is not a house. There is no inspection report that tells you what you are buying, no comparable sales down the street with the same floor plan, and no bank appraisal to catch a mistake. Two tracts of the same size a few miles apart can be worth $50,000 an acre and $500,000 an acre, and the difference comes down to things most buyers never check.

My firm works only on land, and in Forsyth County we have looked at hundreds of parcels and tracked every development land sale in the county. In the 2025 sales we reviewed, prices ranged from about $43,000 an acre to more than $1.4 million an acre. Here is what drove that spread, and what you should know before you write a contract.

Zoning decides what the land is really worth

The first question on any parcel is not the price. It is what the county will let someone build on it. That is set by two documents: the current zoning and the county’s Comprehensive Plan, which includes the future land use map. Zoning is the law today. A tract zoned agricultural (A1) in Forsyth generally allows one home on a large lot, and that is it. A tract zoned Res 2 or Res 3 allows a subdivision at a set density.

A tract zoned commercial allows retail or office. The zoning label tells a builder how many lots or how much building a site can support, and that number is what they pay for. Most land in Forsyth is priced per lot or per buildable square foot, not per acre, even when the contract shows a per acre figure.

The future land use map is the county’s statement of what it intends to approve down the road. If your parcel is zoned agricultural but the future land use map shows it as residential at four units an acre, a builder has a real path to rezone it. If the map shows it staying agricultural or rural, that path is much harder and you should not pay for density that is not there.

Two things trip up new buyers. First, the zoning label is not the whole story. Forsyth has rewritten its Unified Development Code several times, changing lot sizes, buffers, and how density is calculated. A parcel zoned Res 2 today may yield fewer lots than the same zoning did three years ago. Second, the county has been converting older zoning districts from before 2003 (R1, R2, R2R, R3) into the newer categories through county initiated rezonings.

Those conversions have not added density. They have reset properties under tighter standards, and in our experience the landowner comes out with less value every time. Before you buy, pull the zoning and the future land use designation yourself through the county’s GIS map, read the current code for that district, and ask a land professional how many lots the tract would actually yield under today’s rules. Do not rely on what the seller or the listing says it “could be.”

Sewer is usually the biggest single factor

If I could only ask one question about a Forsyth parcel, it would be whether county sewer is available at the property line. Sewer, more than acreage, more than road frontage, often decides whether a tract is worth $75,000 an acre or $300,000 an acre. The reason is simple. Without sewer, every home needs its own septic system, and septic needs land.

Soil conditions, setbacks and drain field requirements typically push lots to an acre or more, which caps how many homes a builder can put on the tract. With sewer, that same tract can support lots a fraction of that size, and the lot count, which is what builders pay for, can double or triple. Sewer in Forsyth is far from universal. Much of south Forsyth and the corridors along the major roads have it. Large parts of the north and west do not, and the county has been deliberate about where it extends service.

A sewer line a mile away does not help you unless someone pays to extend it, and that extension can cost more than the land. Also check the capacity, not just the pipe. Some basins are near their limit, and a line in the road with no available capacity is not much better than no line at all. Ask the Forsyth County Water and Sewer Department for a sewer availability letter before you close. It is a simple request and it tells you what you are actually buying.

Moratoriums and the current rezoning climate

Forsyth County has spent the last two years working to slow residential growth, and that has changed the land market more than interest rates have. In May 2025 the Board of Commissioners stopped accepting applications to rezone property into any residential district, and separately stopped accepting residential sketch plats and land disturbance permits on certain residentially zoned land.

Both moratoriums have been extended more than once. Check the current expiration date before you buy, because it has moved several times and may move again. The practical effect is a split market. Land that already has residential zoning in place, or development rights that predate the moratorium, has held its value and in many cases traded well.

Land that needs a rezoning to be worth what the seller is asking has been stuck. Rezonings that would increase density are approved rarely in the current political environment, and we have seen very few Res 3 approvals in recent years. For a buy and hold investor this cuts both ways. If you buy agricultural land hoping to sell it to a builder after a rezoning, you are betting on a political outcome, not a market one, and that bet has been losing lately.

On the other hand, the moratoriums have made commercially zoned land and already entitled residential land scarce, and scarce assets appreciate. In our 2025 review, commercially zoned land sold at a materially higher price per acre than residential land, and the gap widened as residential density was cut. The lesson is to buy what the land is today, not what a seller says it will become. If the upside depends on a rezoning, price that risk in or walk away.

Due diligence before you close

A land contract in Georgia normally gives the buyer a due diligence period, often 30 to 90 days, during which you can walk away for any reason and get your earnest money back. Use every day of it. The work below is where most land mistakes are caught, and skipping it to save a few thousand dollars is how people end up owning land they cannot use.

Survey: Get a current boundary survey from a licensed surveyor, and if you plan to build or sell to a builder, ask for a topographic survey as well. Tax records and old plats are routinely wrong about acreage. We have seen tracts sold as 20 acres that surveyed at 17, which is a 15 percent price error on day one. The survey also shows encroachments, fence lines that do not match the deed, and easements running through the property.

Wetlands and Streams: Georgia and the federal government regulate wetlands and streams, and Forsyth County adds its own stream buffers on top. A creek through the middle of a tract can take 50 to 100 feet on each side out of play, and wetlands cannot be filled without a federal permit that is slow and expensive. A wetlands delineation by an environmental consultant will tell you how much of the land is actually usable.

Floodplain: Check the FEMA flood maps. Land in the 100 year floodplain cannot be built on in most cases and should be priced as open space, not as buildable acreage.

Access: Confirm the parcel touches a public road, and if it does not, confirm there is a recorded, permanent easement that gets you there. A verbal agreement with the neighbor is not access. Also look at the road itself. Frontage on a two lane county road with a steep grade may not meet the county’s sight distance requirements for a subdivision entrance, which can kill a project no matter what the zoning allows.

Title: Order a title search and buy owner’s title insurance. Land in Forsyth often passes through families for generations, and heirs’ property, missing signatures and unreleased liens show up more often than you would think. Read the exceptions in the title commitment. Utility easements, pipeline easements and old mineral rights can all limit what you build and where.

Soils and Septic: If there is no sewer, get a soil scientist to evaluate the tract for septic suitability before you close. Some Forsyth soils will not perk, and a lot that cannot support a septic system is not a buildable lot.

Holding costs and the tax break most buyers miss

Land produces no rent, so every dollar of carrying cost comes out of your return. The main costs are property taxes, insurance, maintenance such as mowing or clearing, and the interest on any loan. Land loans are also harder to get than mortgages. Expect a larger down payment, a shorter term and a higher rate than you would pay on a house, which is why most land investors in Forsyth buy with cash or a large equity cushion.

Property taxes are where you can save real money. Georgia assesses property at 40 percent of fair market value, and in a county where land values have climbed the way they have here, the tax bill on vacant acreage can run into the thousands a year. Georgia’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment, known as CUVA, lets qualifying land be taxed on its agricultural or timber use value instead of its market value. On the right tract the savings are large, often cutting the bill by half or more.

The catch is the covenant. You agree to keep the land in a qualifying use, such as hay, timber, pasture or crops, for ten years. If you break the covenant early, for example by selling to a builder in year six, the penalty is generally twice the taxes you saved plus interest. That penalty is usually paid at closing out of the sale proceeds and is often worth it, but you should know it is there before you sign.

Also note that a buyer can continue an existing covenant rather than starting a new one, which matters if the tract you are buying is already enrolled. Talk to the Forsyth County Tax Assessor’s office and your accountant before you apply. While you hold the land, keep it in productive use. Leasing it to a local farmer for hay or cattle generates a little income, supports the CUVA covenant and keeps the property from growing up in brush, which lowers its value when you go to sell.

How developers look at your land

If your exit plan is to sell to a builder or developer someday, it helps to understand how they decide what to pay, because it is not how a homebuyer thinks. A builder starts with the finished product. They estimate what a home on that site will sell for, subtract the cost to build it, their profit, and the cost to put in roads, utilities and stormwater, and whatever is left is what the lot is worth to them. Multiply that by the number of lots the land will yield under current zoning and code, and you have the land price.

This is why a tract’s value jumps with sewer and density and falls with floodplain, steep slopes and stream buffers. Every acre that cannot hold a lot is worth very little to them. A commercial developer does the same math with building square footage, traffic counts and visibility. Corner parcels on a signalized intersection along a major corridor trade at multiples of what the same acreage brings a half mile back.

Developers also pay for certainty. A tract with zoning already in place, a sewer letter in hand, a current survey, a wetlands delineation and clean title will sell faster and for more than a tract where the buyer has to discover all of that at their own expense. Most of the due diligence described above is work you can do once and hand to a future buyer.

A few things that help position a parcel for a future sale: buy where growth is heading, not where it already is, and look at the county’s road improvement plans as a guide. Keep your frontage clean and visible. Hold onto any entitlements or permits the land already has, because once they expire they may be impossible to get back. And if a neighbor’s parcel comes up for sale, consider it, since assembling two or three small tracts into one larger site often creates more value than either piece had alone.

Summary in Short

Land in Forsyth County is still a sound long term hold. The county is growing, buildable land is getting scarcer, and the county’s own policies are making entitled land more valuable, not less. But the margin for error is wide. Know the zoning and the future land use designation. Find out whether sewer is there. Understand what the moratoriums mean for your exit. Do the survey, the environmental work and the title search during due diligence, not after. Enroll in Conservation Use Valuation Assessment (CUVA) if the land qualifies. And buy what the land is today, with the upside as a bonus rather than the plan. Do those things and you will avoid the mistakes that cost people the most.

Luke Crawford is the owner and qualifying broker of Crawford Lands, LLC, a land brokerage based in Cumming that works exclusively on land in Forsyth County. He and Justin Mizell publish an annual review of Forsyth County land sales and are hosting a free seminar on buying land in Forsyth County. The date is still being set. If you are interested, visit crawfordlands.com/seminar and join the email list to be notified as soon as it is announced.

– Luke Crawford, Owner & Qualifying Broker, Crawford Lands, LLC