Stories of how you came about your property

   / Stories of how you came about your property #51  
My wife and I had been married for 5 years, renting an apartment when we decided to look for land in CT. My wife grew up on a horse farm, and we wanted something similar with 10-15 acres. Home prices were sky high, so we were mainly looking at raw land with the plan to build a small home with the plan to expand as time and funds allowed. Over the course of a year we visited over 50 parcels for sale. Over time I realized any land we could afford was not build-able - wetlands, cliffs, steep grades etc. Good build-able land was expensive as developers with deep pockets would buy them up and sub-divide.

Over the year, I had seen 1 listing that had a modern looking home on 14 acres. I always passed over it, as we were not into modern homes. One day I called my realtor and said we wanted to go visit it. It was winter, with 12" of snow on the ground. Turns out the "modern" home was a log cabin with a front porch of sliding glass doors. The pictures on the MLS website did it a huge dis-service! It had a log home, large barn, large shed, 2.5 car garage, but the land was what we fell in love with. 2 acre pond, 3 acre lawn, 2 acre field and 7 acres woods. The farm had been on the market for over a year, so we went in low and after a few back and forth negotiations had a deal.

We have been here 9 years, and every year we take my annual bonus and we invest time and money to improve things - stripping and staining the log house, new windows, new boiler, replacing boards and painting barn, building workshop in garage, converting shed into chicken coop, trails in woods, landscaping, gardens, planting orchards etc. We have many more projects on the list! This will be our forever home at least until I retire. Then I hope to cash in on all the sweat equity and retire to a log home someplace out West with breath-taking views of the mountains!
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #52  
A 10,000 sq ft serviced building lot in my neighbourhood will start at around $850,000. No views, nothing special.

Farmland (protected and with building restrictions) starts at $100,000 per acre.

Huge amounts of Chinese cash flowing into BC. ???
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #53  
Huge amounts of Chinese cash flowing into BC. ???

No more than normal. Been like this awhile now. It’s NO WAY/NO HOW in my area for first time buyers, young families and pretty much anyone else.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #54  
I wonder - what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre. It would have to be a pretty valuable crop to even pay the interest on $100K loan.

In my neighborhood - if I can see you - you are trespassing - and from my front porch I can see well over a mile. I would have to be able to see four and a half miles to see my nearest neighbor. My nearest friends are called Hereford and Angus.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #55  
I wonder - what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre. It would have to be a pretty valuable crop to even pay the interest on $100K loan.

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The simple answer: nothing. Farmers have a hard enough time when using existing acreage from previous generations.

Blueberries and cranberries are a couple of the higher valued crops though.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #56  
I wonder - what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre. It would have to be a pretty valuable crop to even pay the interest on $100K loan.
Nobody is making a living on farm land around here, an hour north of San Francisco. It's all city people who bought their place for the 'ambiance'. There's a high proportion of retirees, me included. I think the ratio of family total income, to wages and income actually earned in this county, is a higher percentage than nearly anywhere.

I can afford it because 1) I inherited Dad's 'Prop 13' artificially low property tax rate, fixed at mid-70's rate + 3% per year increase. I pay less tax on 11 acres with an old house and outbuildings, than newcomers pay on a tract-style house on a hundreds of square feet lot out on the county highway that I'm set back away from. I think they are paying 3~4 times what I pay. I voted against Proposition 13, I think its another example of the 'me' generation ripping off their kids, but I sure have benefited from it. And 2) We lived below our income and saved for years to buy the other half of this inherited farm out of Dad's estate. Paid cash so no payments. No debt of any kind, so we can continue to live simply.

As for the apple orchard crop, its contracted to a neighbor who operates total 200 acres of various vineyards and orchards for people like me, whose land is too small to economically operate as a real farm. The contractor is making a decent living but he's working his tail off to do it. I do everything I can to keep him happy. An orchard will turn into jungle if it isn't maintained and he's one of the last real farmers around.

I'm probably the last generation to keep this in orchard, most everybody else around here has bought recently and has planted grapes (contracted to others of course). To exaggerate only a little, they are all now fenced out of the country land 'ambiance' they paid too much for.

Remember the Windows XP hill? A gorgeous view for the landowner! One of many such views in Sonoma County. I used to drive by this all the time.

Vineyard, now. I expect the current owner looks out and sees dollar signs when he visits for a weekend.

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Added: I went back outdoors after posting that and went back to trimming the oaks that are chafing the power drop to my house - to avoid the Camp fire scenario.

Off in the distance there's a big tree shredder running continuous. Converting still another orchard to vineyard.
 
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   / Stories of how you came about your property #57  
I wonder - what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre. It would have to be a pretty valuable crop to even pay the interest on $100K loan.

In my neighborhood - if I can see you - you are trespassing - and from my front porch I can see well over a mile. I would have to be able to see four and a half miles to see my nearest neighbor. My nearest friends are called Hereford and Angus.

"what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre"

WEED ???

Besides: $100,000 CAD is ONLY $75,937.37 USD at this exact point in time on the currency exchange.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #58  
"what are folks growing on farm land that costs $100,000 per acre"

WEED ???

Besides: $100,000 CAD is ONLY $75,937.37 USD at this exact point in time on the currency exchange.

They’re growing weed indoors on cheaper land and making 20-40 times that amount per acre.

Anyone only making $100,000 per acre growing weed would be considered a LOSER around here.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #59  
Wow, I’m shocked at land prices in other areas. Cities, I understand. But rural farmland at $100,000/acre?? Holy heck.

While I don’t like our political climate here on the west coast, land is still affordable in most rural areas. I paid $6K/acre for 85ac. Not to mention it has $200k of harvestable timber.
 
   / Stories of how you came about your property #60  
I should type my whole story, just for posterity, and someday I will because I want my grandsons to know how amazingly this happened.

Briefly, in 1976, my new wife, my two children, and a dog, and I set out on a journey to southern Oregon, our new home. After spending six weeks camping, we were finally able to secure a rental home.

Before leaving southern California, I prayed God would lead me to a home with a lot of trees. And it happened, yet not in a way I could ever imagine or even begin to obtain my land with my own scheme. In fact, I was quite poor at the time, and was content to just rent a place in the country, with a few trees, not even thinking about ownership.

We rented for a year an adequate little little place in the country, with one tree. But, I could see lots of trees, and so believed this was where my prayer led me. However, the landlord needed to sell, so we had to move. Ugh! It was a horrible thought, and I was beginning to wonder just what God had in mind for us.

At the time, my wife was babysitting four sisters who lived up the road from us. The father of the girls was co-owner of a gravel pit on a year round creek, not far from where we were living. When his wife heard we were moving, she was devastated because her girls loved my wife, and she did not want to lose her as a sitter.

The wheels started turning, and we were offered the opportunity to move into a single wide mobile home on ten acres owned by the pit operator. Of course we couldn't refuse such an deal as it allowed us to remain in the country with a year round creek.

Until the operators went out of business four years later, week days were quite noisy, dusty, and at times so loud when the rock crusher was running, I tried to psyche myself out into thinking I was just hearing a waterfall. Just 50 feet from our front door, dump trucks ran up and down our road, all day long. We seriously considered moving away.

But, because God knew better, we felt inclined to stay here because when operations were shut down on the weekend, the peace and quite, the massive amount and the variety of trees, and birds, and wildlife, made it worthwhile compared to other offerings in the area.

In 1986, after occupying the land, with no landlord to pay space rent to, not knowing from day to day what our status was, I received a call from the FDIC in San Francisco. The notified me the bank who held a $10,000 mortgage on our property had gone belly up, and the FDIC owned the land, and did we want to buy it? Of course we were totally surprised to hear this.

We were asked to make an offer. There were delinquent taxes due on the land in the amount of $3,400. To keep the land from being seized by the county, the FDIC paid $1400. Being almost broke as a joke, I mulled my options, and made the ridiculous offer to buy the land for just paying the $2000 due to the county.

They refused my offer, and asked for a counter offer. My late father-in-law said he would just give us 5K, all he could do. Therefore we offered FDIC the 5K, not knowing somehow other interested parties offered more than we did, but they wanted terms, and FDIC just wanted to get rid of the property.

Here I am, widowed for 30 years, living the dream with my cat, the birds, the deer, and no joke, I'm on Antelope Creek. There just aren't any antelopes, though. But, there are thousands of trees.

The land has an appraised value of around 210 K. The property tax on my EFU land is right around 1200K. The tax on my 1973 "Flamingo single wide was $28.00 this year. It went up about 50 cents over last year.

Praise the Lord. Never in a hundred, never in a thousand, never in a million years could I have imagined how blessed I would be when I left North Hollywood for a place I'd never seen. Eagle Point is somewhat of the gateway to Crater Lake. Two miles east of me is the Veteran's National Cemetery where my late wife, and son are buried, and where I will rest someday. A mile and a half south is Camp White, once called the VA domicillary, a place where homeless, mostly alcoholics came to dry out. Now it is a full blown in patient/out patient facility with every service imaginable: teams of doctors, physical therapy, dental clinic, optometry, and hearing clinics, and more. But none of it I knew about when I moved here.

I hope there are others here with great stories. I believe obtaining my land was preordained, and one would be hard to convince me otherwise. How many people do you know who bought ten acres on a year round creek for $5k, and 2k in back taxes?
 
 
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