We are not printing a dollar-per-acre number here, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. Rural land prices move unevenly, and a figure written in September is a liability by spring.
What does not move is why one acre costs more than another. Here is how these four counties, plus their neighbor, differ.
First, the thing that shows up on no listing
Two parcels. Same acreage, same frontage, same pine timber. One has a favorable soil evaluation and a septic permit, a driveway permit, a known distance to the power line and a zoning district that allows what you want to build. The other has none of that.
The second is cheaper for a reason, and the savings vanish if the soil comes back bad. When you compare land prices across these counties you are usually comparing parcels at very different stages of proof, and that gap is often larger than any county-to-county difference.
Richmond County: the metro, and its rural south end
Augusta consolidated with Richmond County in 1996, and Hephzibah and Blythe kept their own charters. So Richmond holds a city of about 200,000 people and a genuinely rural southern end running toward McBean and the Burke line.
The economy is the metro's: Fort Gordon, renamed Fort Eisenhower in October 2023 and renamed back in June 2025, now honoring Medal of Honor recipient Master Sergeant Gary I. Gordon rather than the Confederate general. It is home to the Army's Cyber Center of Excellence and Army Cyber Command. Add Augusta University and the medical district.
Two Richmond facts matter to a land buyer.
Zoning is narrow for manufactured homes. Augusta permits them in "A – Agriculture or R-MH - Manufactured Home Residential," with a Manufactured Home Permit, a plat, the size, make and year of the home, and a $75 fee. It does not regulate manufactured homes by age in relation to zoning, which is unusual.
USDA is largely off the table. When we queried USDA's mapped ineligible-areas layer in September 2026, points across Richmond County, including Hephzibah and Blythe, returned ineligible. That does not make the land worse. It changes who can finance it, which is a price input whether anybody says so or not.
Burke County: the biggest, and the most specific rules
Burke is the large rural county south of Augusta, county seat Waynesboro, which calls itself the Bird Dog Capital of the World and has hosted field trials since 1903. Population is around 24,000, roughly flat to slightly down since 2020.
The anchor is Plant Vogtle, where Unit 4 entered commercial operation on April 29, 2024, completing the expansion that made it the largest nuclear plant in the country. Around it, agriculture and a lot of open ground.
Burke is where the acreage math usually works best, and where the rules are most specific. Two things to know:
Manufactured homes are restricted by district. Burke's Land Development Code allows single-family dwellings "including manufactured homes" in the rural districts, then states that "conventional built dwellings shall be required in residential zoning districts, with the exception that only manufactured homes shall be allowed in the R-4 district." So a single manufactured home on your own lot is an A-1 or R-4 question. If your parcel is R-1, R-2 or R-3, the answer is no.
Lot minimums are keyed to your water and sewer situation. Burke's Table 4-A sets three different minimums depending on whether you are on well and septic, public water and septic, or public water and sewer. On well and septic, R-1 and R-2 are one acre and A-1 is five acres. Shopping A-1 and looking at a two acre tract is a problem no amount of negotiating fixes. There is also no county-wide Burke water authority: Waynesboro runs its own system, and outside it, expect a well.
McDuffie County: Thomson, and the most process-heavy permit
McDuffie runs about 21,000 people, basically flat since 2020. Thomson is the county seat, with a manufacturing and distribution base, and Dearing sits on the Columbia County side.
What makes McDuffie distinctive is procedural. Per the county Planning Commission's Mobile Home Procedures, the driveway permit comes first: "no mobile home permit can be issued until the driveway permit is approved by the county road department." You must connect to municipal water and sewer if they are "available to any part of your lot or land (even if it is located across the road)," with availability determined by the Planning Commission, not by you. And you need a complete surveyed plat with the surveyor's stamp.
Then the one that costs money: masonry skirting is required on a private lot. Vinyl is "approved only for units placed in an approved mobile home park." Same home, different county, different finish budget.
McDuffie is inside USDA eligible territory, which for many buyers offsets all of it.
Lincoln County: the lake county
Lincoln is the smallest of the group at roughly 8,000 people, and the one that has been growing rather than holding flat. County seat Lincolnton.
The reason is water. Lincoln fronts Clarks Hill Lake, known federally as J. Strom Thurmond Lake and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District, plus Elijah Clark State Park, 447 acres on the western shore. That splits the market: some is recreational and second-home land priced accordingly, some is ordinary timber and farm ground an hour from Augusta.
The county regulates appearance rather than location, applying design standards to single-family dwellings that reach eave overhang, enclosed gables, roof pitch, siding and roofing materials, and landings at exterior doors. And the utility out here is generally Rayle EMC or Georgia Power rather than the Jefferson Energy co-op that covers most of the rest of this footprint. Lincolnton returned USDA eligible when we checked the map.
Columbia County: the expensive one, for reasons
Columbia is the growth story, going from about 156,000 at the 2020 census base to roughly 169,000 by mid-2025, the largest gain of the five by far. Its legal county seat is the hamlet of Appling, but the government and the population sit in Evans, with Grovetown and Harlem alongside.
It is also the most regulated: a long list of zoning districts plus town center, node and corridor protection overlays, a county-wide water utility, and the deepest buyer demand in the region. For one to five acres with a manufactured home it is the hardest of the five, and the price reflects competition rather than buildability. Note too that when we ran the USDA map, Martinez, Evans and Grovetown came back ineligible while Harlem came back eligible.
The tax question, answered honestly
Georgia assesses property at 40 percent of fair market value under O.C.G.A. 48-5-7, per the Department of Revenue. The millage applied to that differs meaningfully across these counties, and between incorporated and unincorporated territory inside one county.
One thing holds across all of them: the school levy is generally the largest single line on a rural tax bill, larger than the county's own operating millage. When somebody compares "taxes" between two counties, make sure they are comparing the whole stack. DOR publishes an annual millage compilation, and the current number for your parcel beats any figure in an article, including this one.
What we would tell you on the phone
Most land for the money, comfortable being further out: Burke. Shorter drive and you can live with the rules: McDuffie, or the McBean side of Richmond. If the lake matters: Lincoln. If schools and resale lead: Columbia.
But the parcel matters more than the county. We would rather sell you a proved one acre in Burke than an unproved five in a county you liked the sound of. What we currently have, county by county, is on our home sites and packages, and our homes page shows what has actually been set.
This article describes general market and regulatory conditions as of September 2026 and contains no price representations. County ordinances, utility service, tax rates and USDA eligibility boundaries change, and several county documents referenced here carry older revision dates. Verify everything for a specific parcel with the county and with USDA.
Sources: US Census Bureau QuickFacts; US Army, Fort Gordon history; Georgia Power, Vogtle Unit 4; USACE, J. Strom Thurmond Dam and Lake; Burke County Land Development Code; McDuffie County Mobile Home Procedures; Augusta manufactured home FAQ; Georgia DOR, Property Tax Valuation
