How much does it cost to clear land?

Land clearing is a reality of any development, whether you're looking at a small-scale residential project or a sprawling large-scale housing project.

But for property owners, the cost to clear land can be daunting. Thankfully there are a few ways of driving land clearing costs down by doing it DIY instead of paying a land clearing company.

While these professionals can do outstanding work and get your property ready for you, it's worth outlining the costs associated with doing a job yourself versus paying someone else to do it. Land clearing prices vary, depending on where you live in, and year over year.

A land clearing project shouldn't be prohibitively expensive to tackle, so here are some ideas to consider when doing it:

In this guide we will go into some of the ways you can save money, and whether or not it's the best option for you to clear land on your own or pay an industry professional.

However, it's not possible to survey your own land, and you may need to hire a professional, depending on the scale and goal of your project.

A professional land surveyor may be required when it's unclear exactly where the boundaries of your property lay. For heavily wooded, forested land, may be difficult to discern where the property lines lie, this may be required.

Furthermore, while you may have maps which indicate property lines, it's possible those maps may be incorrect. Some of them were drawn many years ago, and a mistake 50-plus years prior could come back to bite you now.

If a neighbor tries to dispute the property lines, it could potentially have costly impacts to your project and delay your land clearing, thus putting you behind schedule.

Depending on the size of your property, land surveying can cost anywhere between $500 USD to a few thousand, but at the highest end you could be paying $20,000+, and oftentimes these costs are required before project development can begin.

So take the time, do your research and see if a land surveyor is required for your job.

Dealing with standing or fallen trees is a reality for anyone looking to clear land for their future projects, and is also a key expense when developing land.

Paying a land clearing company to come in and clean up your wooded land can get expensive quickly. While it depends on the size of your acreage and the density of the greenery, you could be paying $1,000 an acre, or more if you have heavily forested land that will require expensive machinery. It can be hard to come up with an average cost though, since it depends on where you live, the time of year and how many acres you plan on clearing.

Some property owners will gladly take the time though to clear land on their own as part of a long-term construction project, and avoid paying the fees for an external contractor.

The benefit of clearing land by yourself is that you get to keep the wood afterward, meaning you could potentially use it, mill it up into dimensional lumber or sell it.

This task is also easier if you have lightly forested land and the time to do the task. Some acreage owners say they'd rather take a few months to clear a property than pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, depending the size and foliage density of the property.

All you need to start removing trees is a chainsaw. As mentioned above, a wood chipper, which could cost between $2,400 and $5,000 USD, will be key to clearing brush and small trees from your property.

Once you have felled the trees and cleaned off the branches, you will need a way to move the trees across your property. A tractor with a bucket or a grapple may be sufficient, or even an ATV or UTV equipped with a log arch could also work.

Stack your logs neatly and then come up with a plan, whether you want to keep them for your own projects or put them up for sale. Selling them could help recoup some of your development costs, but you could also keep them and use a portable sawmill to mill them into slabs or dimensional lumber, and then either keep or sell that. There's a huge market for slabs and exotic species like black walnut, so learn what species you're working with and see if there's a market for it.

Land clearing means you'll end up with a lot of tree debris to figure out your plan, your expenses and if there's a way to make a bit of money to make up for your costs.

Once you have felled the trees and cleared the brush from your property, you will now have to deal with stump removal.

Tree stumps can be a pain to deal with, though they don't have to be. Stump grinders are a relatively affordable tool to help deal with stumps quickly and painlessly.

There are chemicals which claim to help dissolve, rot or burn stumps away, but these often take time to work, and stump grinding is a much quicker way to do stump removal.

Woodland Mills offers PTO-driven stump grinders which attach to the back of your tractor. Simply start it up and begin grinding away the stump, moving back and forth and going deeper until you're left with nothing but wood chips and a hole in the ground.

Simply fill in the hole with some dirt, and you have a clear patch of land for your future projects.

PTO-driven stump grinders can range from $2,400 to $4,000 USD, depending on the model. They're a great tool for acreage owners who plan on doing multiple projects on their property, whether that's clearing land for new structures, to clean up forested areas for trails or to prepare land for raising animals or farming.

You could also pay a stump grinder owner to come in and remove any stumps, though the average cost will depend. It varies how much each person charges for stump grinding, either per stump or for each inch removed. If you're not sure whether you need a stump grinder long term for your property, see if anyone nearby owns one and ask to use it. You may find it more effective than you think, and you can see whether it will be useful to you in the future.

There may be other additional expenses and costs you'll have to pay for the site preparation for your future project. The question of 'how much does it cost to clear land' has a lot of factors involved.

Land grading is a big one, and often can be a big expense as land clearing companies use excavators and bulldozers to clear land quickly and get it level. Look at your property and see whether this is a task that can be done manually.

Look at what equipment you currently own or can rent and see if the cost to clear earth and other debris away is worth it. A larger tractor with a bucket may be sufficient to clear away smaller tracts of land and flatten it for building, thus letting you avoid paying expensive contractor fees.

Another thing which may affect cost is environmental fees. Depending on where you live, local laws may require soil testing or other studies to be done before building. Check with your local regulations to see if your project will be required to fulfill these conditions. Some areas will even charge a fee for tree removal, though again you will want to double check that before felling any trees.

Once that's all done, you're ready for your new construction project.

Site preparation can be an expensive process, and the average cost can vary wildly, but if you decide to tackle some of the tasks yourself, the cost to clear can rapidly go down, saving you a ton of money. Even just being able to take down large trees and save yourself the cost of an arborist can go a long way to save landowners paying to clear their land.

If you have more questions about land clearing costs, check out the Woodland Mills Product Owners and Community Facebook page, there may be community members able to share their own advice and how they saved money on their land clearing projects.