It's not the Cost of Land, it's Cost of Land Plus Siteworks

For what its worth - our site was so steep, the guy was honest to say would have to load the $$ if he quoted fixed price. We agreed the cheaper way would be to pay the digger a daily rate, cost of trucks to take dirt away $75 /hr + $60 a load to dump. This work great for us - the landfill was only 10 mins away. You need an honest worker - ours was gr8.

I tend to disagree, it's not really the fact that if you're further away (I'm assuming you mean further away from the city) you pay more on site cost, it just depends on what type of soil and fall that area has. You could be close to the city and have bad soil, hence high site cost.

I'm also getting fixed site cost and you are right, if the cost is cheaper than they had fixed, I wont get a refund of the balance. However, this is the risk I'm willing to take to have piece of mind knowing that this is the price I'm paying, rather than sweat it out waiting for the soil test. Besides, as my land wont settle until months from now, I need a fixed price contract to go for my loan and and eligible for the grant, if I didnt get fixed site cost, I would probably miss out on the grant.

However I do agree that before people buy land, they should also research about site cost around that area before making the decision to buy.