I found a peice of rural land 25 years ago......

[Doorman63]

Well, if you were looking at it as an investment, yeah, you could think of it as a mistake.

I prefer to think this way. For example: build a $200,000 home in the early 90s or a $500,000 home in the early 90s?

What were you able to accomplish with that money that you didn't spend on that $500K house over the last 32 years?

So don't wonder about coulda-woulda-shoulda, as you cannot change the past. All you can do is take lessons from it and move forward.

My wife and I had gone through this a couple years ago.
Buy 1 expensive house
Buy a second rural home.
Went went the second home route.


We are the “new” neighbors in our southern Illinois town.

Our 12 acres is one of the smallest near us.

I’d say population in our area has declined over the past 10yrs.


Wife brought home a pizza Saturday night……..it wasn’t hot when she got home!!

 

[grsthegreat]

Good God, that is $100k in ties

Ha ha… the whole property isnt lined in rr ties…just the backstop.

 

[JasperFrank]

"All you can do is take lessons from it and move forward." Yes, and my cautionary tale here is to buy raw land in areas that you know, and best if they are adjoining.
And have liquidity to follow though with the down turns. I could have bought an adjoining 20 acre home site, in 1999, but I was star struck and stupid, with the Tech Boom stocks that seemed like free money. And followed that bubble too close to the edge and didn't know as much about how stocks work, as I do now. A very painful learning experience.

If I had done the far less complicated thing of just buying land property, as my grandfather suggested to "buy it and let the weeds grow," and not being caught up in what these tech stocks were doing, and their collapse, I would have still owned something significant, and be way further along. But buying more land, just wasn't exciting at the time.

We live in a paradise, by most people's standards, but you can never escape the fact that money matters. And the more you have, the better your life is.

It is somewhat tragic to have Grad students over for a picket, knowing that they mostly will never have what we have. The uphill scale is exponential right now. They are yoked to insanely high rents, and can't save any thing to use later. The fingers of capitalism have figured out how to reach in to everything, and execrate what it can with no moral or social consideration.

In this, we are not a United Country with an ethos, it is everyone out for themselves.

How did we get there? Too many people reading "Atlas Shrugged?"

 

[ljjhouser]

Same here. I have 30acres, was extremely rural. 25 miles to town to shop . Now houses popping up everywhere. Was 20 acre minimum. Now 5 acre minimum. Some idiot tried to put 27 houses on 3.5 acres but was turned down …finally.

The sewer district here requires 5 acres or NO septic tank. I was taught in my college architectural class several rules when considering where to build. 1. Everyone complains about the noise but likes the view when the airport is built in the country. So, don't design a sewer project and no one will want to build there. Otherwise, they will build houses at the ends of the runways and wonder why there are low flying aircraft making all that noise.

 

[orezok]

If you want peace and quiet, come to the desert. No one wants to live here

 

[dirttoys]

"All you can do is take lessons from it and move forward." Yes, and my cautionary tale here is to buy raw land in areas that you know, and best if they are adjoining.
And have liquidity to follow though with the down turns. I could have bought an adjoining 20 acre home site, in 1999, but I was star struck and stupid, with the Tech Boom stocks that seemed like free money. And followed that bubble too close to the edge and didn't know as much about how stocks work, as I do now. A very painful learning experience.

If I had done the far less complicated thing of just buying land property, as my grandfather suggested to "buy it and let the weeds grow," and not being caught up in what these tech stocks were doing, and their collapse, I would have still owned something significant, and be way further along. But buying more land, just wasn't exciting at the time.

We live in a paradise, by most people's standards, but you can never escape the fact that money matters. And the more you have, the better your life is.

It is somewhat tragic to have Grad students over for a picket, knowing that they mostly will never have what we have. The uphill scale is exponential right now. They are yoked to insanely high rents, and can't save any thing to use later. The fingers of capitalism have figured out how to reach in to everything, and execrate what it can with no moral or social consideration.

In this, we are not a United Country with an ethos, it is everyone out for themselves.

How did we get there? Too many people reading "Atlas Shrugged?"

What is a picket? I always thought the world would be a better place of Atlas was required reading?

Best,

ed

 

[Alien]

We have been on our 40 acres for 18 years now. Plenty of our own quality bore water. No neighbours close by and they have all been here many years before us. Great folk and never any bother. We have done and are still renovating the house. I built a large metal barn recently that added great value to the property. We only paid $205,000 and could probably fetch $600,000 reasonably easily now. Water is gold here and we have plenty. Would we sell up? No. We are 15 klm from local town and 25 klm from the city.
I did think of halving the property once as it is mostly bush and not used. Seeing as land is short I thought it could be helpful to someone and we could have fetched a lot more than we paid for the entire lot. The local council would have considered it but the State Government says no. They class it as rural and require a minimum of 40 acre lots. Our local council regard it as rural residential but government over-rules them. Would have been nice to have a bigger bank account but not going to happen. At least we own it.

 

[JasperFrank]

A picket is a protest. I wanted to say a picnic. But my brain inserted the right word.
Our gatherings, of students off site, are "off the record." And they do become pickets.

 

[MossRoad]

"All you can do is take lessons from it and move forward." Yes, and my cautionary tale here is to buy raw land in areas that you know, and best if they are adjoining.
And have liquidity to follow though with the down turns. I could have bought an adjoining 20 acre home site, in 1999, but I was star struck and stupid, with the Tech Boom stocks that seemed like free money. And followed that bubble too close to the edge and didn't know as much about how stocks work, as I do now. A very painful learning experience.

If I had done the far less complicated thing of just buying land property, as my grandfather suggested to "buy it and let the weeds grow," and not being caught up in what these tech stocks were doing, and their collapse, I would have still owned something significant, and be way further along. But buying more land, just wasn't exciting at the time.

We live in a paradise, by most people's standards, but you can never escape the fact that money matters. And the more you have, the better your life is.

It is somewhat tragic to have Grad students over for a picket, knowing that they mostly will never have what we have. The uphill scale is exponential right now. They are yoked to insanely high rents, and can't save any thing to use later. The fingers of capitalism have figured out how to reach in to everything, and execrate what it can with no moral or social consideration.

In this, we are not a United Country with an ethos, it is everyone out for themselves.

How did we get there? Too many people reading "Atlas Shrugged?"

I don't know how people get in so bleak. We are visiting one of our kids in OK. Talking about their friends' futures. Most of them have really good jobs 2 years out of college. Most are pushing 6 figures. Here's the key.... all of them are engineers. Chemical engineer. Civil engineer. Electrical engineer. Etc. Two are going back to school for masters. One is going for PhD. One is a history major working in a factory making around $45-50K, but that one is not too driven, yet he is content. He uses his money to pursue his hobbies. He'll probably live with his folks the rest of his life, and all of them are OK with that. Some kids are just like that.

Anyhow, the great majority of this one's friends are doing just fine 2 years out of school, and so is our older kid and most of their friends at 7 years out of college.

So I don't want to guess as to why young people aren't able to get jobs and pay their bills with a college education, as most of the young one's we know are doing just fine.

 

[ultrarunner]

I do believe each generation has to make its way…

Opportunities vary to be sure…

One that stands out is how easy it was back in the day to buy a home but back in the day just about every in the neighborhood earned the right to buy with VA programs.

The funny thing is the same program is in full force today but only know one smart young lady to use her benefits to buy her home and pay for RN education.