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Hey Kamikaze

I saw so many properties around Ottawa, I would say 95% of which were where you describe, down the 416, south/west of Ottawa. I found the price to be much cheaper there, but I also found there was much more bedrock and wetlands there. i ended up finding a place in north stormont.

I did use a realtor, but I did 99.9% of the work myself. Realtors can't be bothered to help you out searching 50+ properties when their return on commission is around $1k. They have 400-, 600, and $800k houses to sell.

I was lucky because I was still a 'fighter' and that was a nice way of saying unemployed. I spent almost ALL my time searching online - mls, private websites, kijiji, craigslist, I would search and research the same areas twice a day, for all new postings. They would drop prices, and good property in that area would be sold IMMEDIATELY. There would be house foreclosures on huge properties being sold for just the back taxes owed, we are talking 15k here, for big pieces of land with a house already on it. By the time i would get out to the property (2-3 days) the properties were always sold.

One problem I had was I was living in montreal for 75% of my property hunt. I also didn't have a car. So I would schedule 1-2 busy days of travel per week and see as much as I could.

Again, the realtor can't be bothered with going with you or anything, so I would just contact the seller myself, schedule a visit (for land nobody will meet you, you just go and walk the land yourself), and if I was interested, I would let my realtor know.

I used the realtor purely for negotiations, and helping out with little minute details i might not be aware of. In all honesty, I could have easily done it without the realtor. For the ~1000$ that went to the realtor, though, I found it useful. They helped with negotiations, recommendations, etc.

My focus was on finding the land, the right land. This you should 100% do yourself, not even with them. They just put your 'specifics' into a database and email you what comes out. Most of which isn't even close to what I was looking for.

Land/property/house purchases will probably be the biggest purchase you will ever make. I am glad that I had 24/7 to dedicate to the search. i learned alot about the process, land valuation, the geography of ottawa and the outlying towns,pros/cons, etc. It was a very worthwhile experience.

If you only have a couple of hours a day to search yourself, well, just means you will be searching longer.

Don't get impatient and settle after a week. I searched for like 5-6 months. there were properties that I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED, but had to pull away from. I tried to convince myself that I could make them work, or that it was a good idea, because i would be in love with one amazing aspect...but make sure you don't ignore the bad, because the bad can be quite bad.

i was use mls, and I would search using the map function, and I would zoom over the entire city area. that way i could look for specific price ranges and property types for each specific area of the ottawa area. That worked out best for me.

Hope that helps. I am sure I was all over the place and rambling quite a bit, as I always do. But yeah, best of luck!!