Agreed it's not particularly cheap at all. Average cropland per-acre cost is $4k per acre, which prices 122 acres at under $500k. If you want cheap acerage in the woods you can get it for around $1k/acre - expect to spend around $150k in total.

Hell, for $1,700/ac you can buy a 160 acre plot within driving distance of Silicon Valley out by Mt. Hamilton: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Newman/5-W-of-Hwy-95360/home/22910... These old 160ac homestead plots come up for sale periodically out there and they're quite cheap. Much, much less than a three hour drive from say, Palo Alto.

Now, about that water ...

Farmland fetches $15,000-20,000 per acre around here. $1M sounds cheap, if the land is any good.

Up in Vermont you can get timberland for $1-$3k acre. After you account for the lumber the dirt looks like it has negative value.

Sure, raw land is a liability to a degree - folks could go and hurt themselves on it and sue you, etc.

Tax liability as well. Holding land and doing nothing with it costs money.

The listing says "benefits from the Williamson Act" which apparently means that the property cannot be developed for some period of time - which probably explains the low price.

Good place for a radio telescope though. And you can probably sell observation of known radio sources to the Russians and Chinese for a bit of money; I imagine it is useful for something to know the site properties of a NSA listening station.

The people who do satellite SIGINT for non-five-eyes nations don't need to be told this, they already know. For listening to geostationary satellites it's fairly basic criteria, simply, be in a low population area that is RF quiet. The parabolic dish antennas at 9 meters+ are very, very directional.

The $5m a year is if you want to maintain the extensive grounds and can't beat the federal government on upkeep costs.

I imagine a savvy and well connected buyer could persuade the feds either to pay for demolition and clearing of existing facilities or to subsidize upkeep. All of this in exchange for this favor or that permission, etc.

Shit, I bet there are developers connected enough to lease or buy from Agency A and lease or sublease facilities to Agency B, creating an arbitrage opportunity.

Mark my words: the gov will end up, on a net basis, paying some rich guy to take this off their hands.

That's why it's so cheap. Just building 80 homes could easily be $8 million dollars.

Aside from the NSA, who would have a need to have 80 (likely very old) homes on a 122 acres on the middle of nowhere with an RF ban. Homes make the property worth less, not more. Demolition costs alone would likely be in the millions and quick search of comparable land prices in the area shows this is over priced.

That's what the GSA is tasked with figuring out.

The higher price than the surroundings makes it obvious that they are hoping the facilities make the property worth more to the buyer.

The people with "Electromagnetic hypersensitivity" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_questionable_disease...) living next door? http://theweek.com/articles/481731/west-virginias-colony-wif...:

The village of Green Bank — population 143 — has become a mecca for people who believe their lives have been disrupted by EHS. Until she moved to Green Bank, Diane Schou lived in a shielded metal cage to try and alleviate her EHS symptoms. "Living here allows me to be more of a normal person," says Schou, as quoted by BBC News. "I can be outdoors. I don't have to stay hidden"

A cult / survivalist group?