Costilla County is one of the cheapest places to buy land in the country, and a documented history explains why. In 1979 the FTC found developers had sold thousands of local lots as homesites that mostly lacked water, sewer, or electricity, and legal access is still no guarantee today. The same checks that would have caught it then still apply to any lot there now.
What did the FTC find wrong with land sales in Costilla County?
The FTC concluded that lots sold by three Colorado developers were worth little to nothing to the people who bought them, and approved a settlement requiring refunds after investigating how the lots were marketed. According to High Country News, which cites a September 1979 account of the case, developers behind San Luis Valley Ranches, Rio Grande Ranches, and Top of the World had falsely claimed their lots were comparable in value to mountain resort or recreation property and suitable for homesites. The FTC’s own conclusion, as reported by High Country News, was blunt: the lots were “of little or no value to purchasers as investments or homesites.”
The settlement covered roughly 7,600 buyers across six Colorado developments, most of them in Costilla County, who recovered 70 percent of their principal and interest, adding up to as much as $14 million in refunds and cancelled debt according to the same High Country News account. The underlying problem was physical, not just promotional: most of the platted lots had no delivery of water, sewer, or electricity, and few sat anywhere near a hospital, police station, or school.
According to the same High Country News reporting, one purchaser, identified only as Chuck, bought five acres sight unseen for $2,200 after seeing it advertised as a “horse ranch.” That is the pattern the FTC’s finding describes at scale, a marketing description standing in for anything a buyer could verify on their own before paying.
Why were lots in Costilla County subdivided and sold this way in the first place?
Land in Costilla County was cheap and remote in the 1960s and 1970s, and developers carved large ranch tracts into thousands of small lots sold sight-unseen through mail and phone marketing faster than the county could regulate them. That gap between selling and oversight is what let brochures describe rabbitbrush prairie as mountain resort land in the first place.
The scale of what got platted is part of why the problem outlasted the FTC case. Costilla County contains 21 platted developments totaling more than 40,000 lots and at least 3,500 miles of roads across roughly 500 square miles, a footprint that could theoretically hold 200,000 residents against an actual county population that was around 3,800 in the late 1990s, according to High Country News. Colorado passed its own subdivision regulation law, Senate Bill 35, in 1972, but it did not undo lots platted before that date. One developer marketing 25,000 acres of hunting and second-home land in airline magazines as “heaven on earth” with “schools and shopping nearby” told the same publication that land-use planning wouldn’t touch his project because his lots were already platted before the law took effect.
The county’s own officials later acknowledged the lasting effect. As reported by High Country News, a county commissioner conceded that his predecessors had “maintained a relaxed stance toward development,” and the planning commission chairman said the county was still “paying the dues” for that inaction nearly two decades after the FTC settlement, prompting the county to commission a formal land-use plan. Other large tracts nearby were subdivided on a similar model around the same era, with marketing that leaned on the land’s rugged, wide-open character rather than on what services a buyer would actually have once they owned a lot.
What does Costilla County require today before you can build on a lot?
Costilla County requires you to contact the Planning and Zoning Department before you buy or start any land use activity, and it will not assign a physical street address to vacant land at all, which is itself a signal that a lot isn’t yet treated as buildable. Building permits are annual, renewable, and limited per owner unless you go through the county commissioners.
| Requirement | What it means for a buyer |
|---|---|
| Contact Planning and Zoning first | The department says to reach out “prior to purchasing land or commencing any land use activity” in the county, according to Costilla County |
| No address for vacant land | A physical address costs $20 and requires a legal description and assessor record, but is not issued until the parcel is no longer vacant, per Costilla County |
| Annual, renewable permits | Construction permits must be renewed each year, and the Land Use Administrator can issue up to three per owner before a fourth needs a variance, per Costilla County |
| Building code | The county has adopted the 2018 International Residential Code, with a 30 lb/sq ft snow load and 115 mph wind load standard, per Costilla County |
None of that tells you whether a specific lot has legal access. It only tells you that the county expects you to find out before you buy, not after.
How can you verify legal access and utilities before buying?
Verify access and utilities the same way a title company would: with a title search, a survey, and direct contact with the county and utility providers, not with a plat map, listing photos, or the seller’s description. This applies to any rural lot, but it matters more in a county with Costilla’s specific history.
Start with a title commitment and ask whether it lists a recorded easement or public road frontage for that exact parcel; an unrecorded dirt track crossing someone else’s land is not legal access. Costilla County requires its own Road Access Permit before you can legally use a driveway or road to reach a structure, issued through the same Planning and Zoning office, so ask specifically whether that permit is available for the parcel rather than assuming a platted road is enough on its own, per Costilla County. The county’s GIS property search tool lets you look up a specific parcel before making an offer, which is a faster first check than relying on a seller’s plat map. The Colorado Division of Real Estate has separately warned buyers to verify a seller’s identity through public records before wiring money for vacant land, flagging red flags like out-of-state sellers, pressure for a fast cash closing, and communication limited to text or email, all common in remote land sales.
Due diligence checklist for an older Costilla County subdivision lot
| Step | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Order a title search | Confirms whether a recorded easement or public road frontage actually exists for that parcel |
| Call County Planning and Zoning | The county says to contact them before buying or starting any land use activity, per Costilla County |
| Confirm utilities with the provider, not the seller | Water, sewer, and electricity were exactly what earlier buyers were told existed and did not |
| Get a survey | Identifies the parcel’s actual boundaries and any physical obstacles to the platted road |
| Check the due diligence period terms in your contract | Gives you a documented window to walk away if access or utilities don’t check out |
Does federal law require developers to disclose this kind of thing now?
Federal law can require it, but only for developers who are actively registering and selling new subdivided lots, not for someone reselling an individual lot out of a decades-old plat. The Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act was built for exactly the pattern the FTC found in Costilla County: subdivisions marketed across state lines with promises buyers couldn’t verify from a distance.
Under the act, a developer selling a qualifying number of non-exempt lots must register the subdivision and give each buyer a formal Property Report before they sign, along with a statutory cancellation window, according to Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and Greenstein, a Colorado real estate law firm. The catch for a modern buyer is that the law targets developers selling new inventory, and it carries exemptions for smaller subdivisions and improved lots. A single resale lot inside San Luis Valley Ranches or a similar 1970s-era plat generally isn’t covered by a fresh disclosure requirement today, which means the burden of checking access and utilities falls on the buyer, not on a report the seller is legally required to hand over.
Is it still risky to buy land in one of these old Costilla County subdivisions today?
The lots themselves are the same decades-old platted parcels the FTC investigated, and buying one now doesn’t come with any protection carried over from the 1979 case. Some of these lots do have legal access and could be developed; others still don’t, and the only way to tell the difference is to check the specific parcel, not the subdivision’s reputation or its listing photos.
These plats haven’t gone away. The same lots keep changing hands on the open market decades after the settlement, often at low prices that make skipping due diligence tempting. A platted road on a decades-old map is not the same thing as a maintained road a title company or a builder will recognize, and with thousands of miles of paper roads spread across a county built for a fraction of its platted population, “the road is on the plat” is not a substitute for confirming that a specific lot has a permitted, usable way in, per High Country News. If you already own one of these lots and access never materialized, curing it is possible but not guaranteed: you can pursue a negotiated or necessity easement with a neighboring owner, or you can sell the lot as-is. Selling doesn’t require fixing the access problem first; some direct buyers, including AMM Land Sales, make cash offers on land in Colorado after evaluating access and title themselves, and every purchase closes through a licensed title company, though the price will reflect whatever the access issue is worth discounting for. For a broader look at what an access problem does to a lot’s value, see our guide on what land is worth or our piece on selling landlocked property.