11184 Enos Road: Two Acres Near Lake Texoma for $55,000

Fifty five thousand dollars for two acres within about five miles of Kingston and a short drive from Lake Texoma. That is a genuine entry point, and it is the cheapest piece of land in this series so far. The listing is three sentences long, though, and two of the things it does say are worth slowing down over.

The land

Two acres in Marshall County, Oklahoma, listed as Parcel B and described as 185 feet by 470 feet. Zoning is rural, there is no homeowners association, and the parcel sits in unplatted county land. I checked the arithmetic and the dimensions come out to exactly two acres, so the description is internally consistent, which is not always true on listings this brief.

Those dimensions are the first thing I would think about, because this is a narrow strip rather than a square. A two acre lot laid out as a square would be about 295 feet on a side. This one is 185 feet wide and runs 470 feet deep. That is plenty of land, but it is land arranged in a particular way, and it changes what fits.

What 185 feet wide actually means

Take 185 feet, subtract side setbacks on both edges, and you are realistically working with something closer to 150 feet of buildable width. A wide single-story ranch plan with a three car garage can eat 100 feet of that on its own. Put a shop beside it and you are crowding both property lines.

The answer is not to give up on the shop, it is to stop thinking sideways. On a lot shaped like this you build down the length of it: house toward the front or middle, drive running along one edge, shop set behind the house rather than next to it. Done that way the depth becomes an asset, because you get real separation between where you live and where you work on things. Done the other way you spend the whole project fighting the lot lines.

The word to pay attention to

The listing says utilities are to be available at the road. Future tense, same as a few other listings I have looked at lately. That is not a complaint about the seller, it is just a fact you need to price. Right now there is no confirmation that water or electric is at your frontage, and “to be available” has no date attached to it.

Before I would put a number on a build here I would want three answers in writing: who is bringing utilities to the road, when, and what the connection cost is to the buyer. The listing also notes a septic tank under utilities, which on raw land usually means septic is the expected system rather than one already installed, so I would confirm which it is. And it mentions “some restrictions” without saying what they are. On a parcel with no HOA, the recorded restrictions are the only thing governing what you can build, so read them before you buy, not after.

None of this makes it a bad buy. At this price there is room in the budget to solve these things. It does mean the real cost of the project is not $55,000 plus a house, and anyone treating it that way is going to be unpleasantly surprised.

Why Oklahoma, briefly

Marshall County carries one of the lowest effective property tax rates in the region, roughly a third of what North Texas homeowners pay. I went through the county by county comparison in an earlier post. The tradeoff is that Oklahoma has a state income tax, which matters more for some households than others. I build on both sides of the Red River, so the move does not mean finding a new builder.

What I would build here

A compact single-story home or a barndominium oriented front to back rather than side to side, set far enough off Enos Road for quiet, with the drive down one property line and a shop at the rear. Two acres at this shape wants a plan that is deeper than it is wide, which is not a limitation so much as a different starting point. Keep the footprint sensible, spend the savings on the well, the septic and the envelope, and you end up with a place near the lake for a number that is hard to match on the Texas side.