Real Estate In Alaska

  Such a HUGE topic.  Such a small post.  This will be the first of many posts discussing interesting differences about buying and selling property in Alaska.  I have been in Alaska pretty much all my life and have been a Realtor in the Matanuska Valley for 16 years.  Since I have only worked in Alaska, I have only recently become aware of how different it is to work here. I talk about my local area in my online newsletter. 

Alaska is huge.  At it's widest point it is about the same distance across as is the continental United States.  It is more than twice the size of Texas.  With all that land compared to the population, there is a little less than one square mile per person.

Interested in waterfront property? There is a lot of water in and around Alaska.  Alaska has more than 33,000 miles of shoreline on two oceans and one sea.  In addition, there are over 3 million lakes.  Rivers run through out the state, the Yukon alone is 2,300 miles long.  This does not count the many square miles of ice fields and glaciers in the mountains.

But for all that land, it is very difficult to find a large parcel on which to build your dream home.  This often is a surprise to people moving from rural areas of the lower 48.  Less than 1% of the land in Alaska is in private ownership.  This does not count the 37 million acres owned by Alaska Native Corporations. 

When you add to the small amount of land in private ownership the fact the most of Alaska is inaccessible by car the available land is further restricted. Then if you can drive to that large parcel of land, there is a good chance that it has no utlities availabe at all.  The power grid is concentrated around the few population centers and the main highways.  

Even if you are a hardy soul willing to hike or boat a couple hundred miles to your piece of paradise, you will discover that a large portion of Alaska consists of steep mountains or boggy wetlands.  Of course it is those mountains and wetlands that make Alaska a wilderness paradise. 

On the other hand, there are places in Alaska that really do seem like small slices of heaven.  I'll write about some of those places later