One of my dad's biggest regrets is that he didn't buy more land. He (we) had an opportunity where a neighbor was fixing to bail and went around offering all the neighbors a chance at parcels of land before put it on the open market.
At the time we were completely debt free, outside of tax liability, and despite the incredibly generous offer, my dad primarily, just couldn't get on board with putting us into debt. Mom entertained the idea a bit more than him, it didn't happen.
And now he's left with regret. None of us are mad at him, he's the only one mad at himself.
What was the offer? 500 acres at only $500 a pop. That was just what he was willing tk let us have upfront. If anyone else passed, he'd have been willing to lat any of us have a go at it.
This was forested, appalachian, new england land. Prime real estate to preserve. But 250k was a heck of a lot debt to end up in, practically overnight, so it's not his fault for passing on the deal. They'd busted their humps ensuring they were debt free for as long as they had been, and as much better off we'd be with the land, they're still debt free today, so it worked out in the end imo.
my dad bought 45 acres "in my name" when I was in middle school and sold it off right before I got married, lol. Now we're dealing with my family's farm and guess what, their generation wrote a deal to sell it off for huge profit (for them).
If it's forested land then most of it should require pretty much zero maintenance at all, other than whatever immediately surrounds any roads or buildings.
You'd be surprised. People love to illegally hunt, drink, and snowmobile on private land. It's not like a full time job, but there's a reason people end up selling land that they're physically far away from.
Mostly tax liability in this case. It was forested and would have remained forested and had no lines or roads through it. At most we'd have kept up with posted signs but that would have been it.
You need to ensure people aren't coming on it illegally to dump, destroy, "camp" until they can try to claim it as their own, poach, steal lumber, or tear up the place with dirt bikes and four wheelers.
None of this story makes sense. I don't think you got the full picture.
You generally can't go into debt buying land. Banks don't generally lend money for land unless you're imminently building on it.
Land is a notoriously mediocre to bad investment. Trace the price of Manhattan real estate to the S&P 500 and tell me where you'd rather put your money.
My friend, you've never heard of a home equity loan? I also never said it was about investment. It was about having the land secured as property. If it was just about raw property value my parents wouldn't be living in a place where a neighbor could just offer up entire parcels to his neighbors.
In my New England state land that was $500 an acre in 2000 was $5k an acre in 2013 (when I bought some) and is now going for $20-30k an acre. Depends on where, obviously, but the entire of the northeast is ground zero for the housing crisis right now.
Home equity loans became available sometime after 1986 and it sounds like the opportunity to buy was earlier than that. Getting a second mortgage on your house was generally a bad idea too
Born in 85 here lol. This was around 1995-2000, forget the specific year. It also would have been a first mortgage since my dad had the property paid off before he even met my mom.
It isn't really? But where we're at and where they live isn't really either buzzword as a "proper" location, so i figured the easiest route was use both and hopefully they'll figure out he's talking about where they meet.
The mountains themselves do reach from maine down the alabama, but technically "Appalachia" ends before it becomes new england.
Geography is hard lol. Especially when talking in broad terms lol.
my parents were well off enough that they had their house paid off by the time i was 3. and then they just saved / spent money. never once thought of buying a second property or land.
they also had a $250k house at a time when a house on a lake in our city was $350k. to then that $100k was waaay too much money for them. meanwhile their house is worth $900k now and the waterfront houses are all over $2M.
Heh. Thanks to dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time my dad snagged our entire property for only 65k, paid for it while he was still living at home, and then when he met and married my mom they rented a house in a nearby town and spent the first year of their time together taking the uninhabitable 1900s farmhouse and restoring it.
The value hasn't skyrocketed, but being debt free and staying debt free over as long of a time as they have, has put them in a much better position than many.
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u/thetavious 18h ago
One of my dad's biggest regrets is that he didn't buy more land. He (we) had an opportunity where a neighbor was fixing to bail and went around offering all the neighbors a chance at parcels of land before put it on the open market.
At the time we were completely debt free, outside of tax liability, and despite the incredibly generous offer, my dad primarily, just couldn't get on board with putting us into debt. Mom entertained the idea a bit more than him, it didn't happen.
And now he's left with regret. None of us are mad at him, he's the only one mad at himself.
What was the offer? 500 acres at only $500 a pop. That was just what he was willing tk let us have upfront. If anyone else passed, he'd have been willing to lat any of us have a go at it.
This was forested, appalachian, new england land. Prime real estate to preserve. But 250k was a heck of a lot debt to end up in, practically overnight, so it's not his fault for passing on the deal. They'd busted their humps ensuring they were debt free for as long as they had been, and as much better off we'd be with the land, they're still debt free today, so it worked out in the end imo.