Homes on acreage in Highland.

In most Utah cities acreage is a niche you hunt for. In Highland it is the default, because the city zones large lots by law. Its three residential zones, written as R-1-40, R-1-30, and R-1-20, set lot minimums at roughly an acre, two-thirds of an acre, and a half acre, and there is no small-lot single-family zone at all. The result is a bench that looks and lives like an orchard that grew houses: predominantly half-acre-to-acre detached homes and custom estates, with the only small lots being the recent Town Center townhomes. So on this page acreage is not an exception to the Highland market. It is the Highland market, and the real question is which large lot, in which setting, with what attached to it.

Because the lot is the product here, the first thing to verify is the zone the parcel actually sits in, because R-1-40, R-1-30, and R-1-20 live very differently. An acre-class R-1-40 lot gives you room for a shop, deep garden ground, RV and trailer parking, and real distance from the neighbors; a half-acre R-1-20 lot is still generous by Utah Valley standards but is a different project to maintain and to build on. Confirm the exact zone and its real minimum in the city's Development Code before you plan an outbuilding or a build, rather than eyeballing the lot. The estate and acre-class tier runs well above the citywide typical value, which sits roughly $900K to $1M with estate properties past it, and value rides on the lot, the views, and the landscaping as much as on the house itself.

Here is the load-bearing fact in Highland, and it is the one that separates pricing a big lot here from anywhere else: water comes on two systems and two bills. The city delivers treated culinary water from six deep wells for indoor use, and a completely separate pressurized irrigation, or secondary, system waters the yards, billed as its own seasonal line item. That secondary line is how acre lots stayed cheaply green for decades, because it ran unmetered. That is changing. Under the state secondary-water metering mandate, the city began installing irrigation meters in the northwest part of town and the Viewpoint subdivisions in summer 2023, with installs expected through 2025, and has said metered billing is not anticipated until around 2027, with planning aimed at a level of service about 25 percent below current use. Translation: on a Highland acre you price the landscape, not just the house, because the cost of keeping that landscape green is set to change.

So the homework on a big lot here is the lot, then the water, then the use. Ask plainly how the secondary irrigation is set up for the address, whether the meter is in yet, and what the carrying cost of the landscape really looks like once billing changes. Then confirm the zone and what it lets you build or keep. If what you want is space and what you can do with it, the same large lots show up as luxury homes at the estate tier, as RV-parking homes with side-yard room for the trailer and the boat, and as single-story homes spread out across one level on a big lot. You can also browse every Highland listing, and when a parcel with the right land catches your eye, reach out and we will pull the zone and the water situation before you write a thing.