How did you afford your land?

First, my hubby had perfect credit.

Second, we paid off the house we had in TX so that when we sold it we'd have cash in hand. That cash was more than enough to pay for the new house we built on our property.

Third, we found property in a very cheap area (Mississippi). We first began our search in TN, just outside Memphis. When the realtor showed us property selling at $25,000 per acre we decided to search south of Memphis where we found property selling for $2,000 per acre.

Fourth, the small local bank here was more than happy to do a land loan.

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I'm running so far behind I thought I was first!

http://hickahala.blogspot.com/

We exited south Florida just before the market collapsed there. The inflated value of the home there allowed us to get our land in Alabama. We knew the crash was coming and had been looking for a few months to get out of Florida and back to AL. When we found what we wanted, we bought using a HELOC, and I made a brochure and website for our house. The third offer was a charm and we sold it within a month. Ours ended up being the last house that sold in the neighborhood.

I'm of the opinion that people who buy for the house, or value of the house, are missing the boat. Houses eat money and increase taxes. A house can easily go down in value for any number of reasons. Land may not be as glitzy, but it can usually retain or grow in value, especially if you are willing to wait. Fortunes have been made on old drive-in movie theatres and golf courses that were built on the edges of cities.

The “front” 40 acres we bought in 2005 and put down 70K and paid the balance off in 2 years when we bought the “back” 40 acres. For the back 40 acres we put down 35K and will have the balance paid off summer 2010. We could have had the land paid off this summer, but the wife wanted a barn more, so we paid cash for that.

The biggest issue we faced was finding the right land within a decent commuting distance to work, then finding a place to finance raw land. The 2nd 40 acres was a breeze and the financing was handled via Email.

One thing that did come as a surprise is that the interest rates on raw land are higher than a conventional home loan.

Chuck

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Might does not make right, but it sure makes what is.

It was for us, also.

We ALSO had to take an ARM because thet was what was offered on bare land. At the moment that is in our favor, but, we would be wise to do something about that before interest rates go up again.

I live in Sacramento, by the way, but I'm looking north of here, maybe Redding area. All the land around here in Sacramento is pretty much spoken for. I'm specifically looking at forest land in the hills east of Redding.

I don't have perfect credit unfortunately, I tried starting an internet business with credit cards that launched during the financial crisis and failed, leaving me forced to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Other than that, I have no other blemishes on my credit report-I've always paid my utility bills and my student loan payments on time. (I had been reading "become a millionaire" books for a few years, and like an idiot I took their advice. I should have just skipped right to the PC repair business.)

You guys all have advantages that I don't. Since I've spent most of my life battling autism, I really don't have a conventional work history. By the time I decided what I wanted to do with my life, AND graduated from community college, I was already 26, and I had no work history, AND it was right after 9-11. So I decompressed for a few years, then got a PC tech's certification in March 2006. By then I was 30, an old man by tech standards, and there was no way in hell I'd get hired. I tried too.

So, I tried several things, teacher's aide, putting together a website which took me 18 months by which time the economy had crashed, and finally PC repair. By 2009 it was too late. I wish I would have started earlier, but I didn't, and in many ways couldn't. Autistics mature and grow up a lot slower than regular people.

So, I live with my parents who are almost bankrupt themselves, and I really have no way to get out. I'm worried that when their waterloo arrives, they'll drag me down with them. That's why I want to get out. I don't have a few years to wait and gather savings, because my parents worry constantly about money, and about losing the house. They are responsible for their own problems, but I don't want to suffer along with them. This isn't whining, just a statement of fact. I don't have a whole lot of options.

Many of the people here have had similar problems. Life happens.

During the last 2 recessions we followed the jobs because there was nothing available in our area. Life happens, to us as well as to Autistic people.

My son has Aspergers syndrome, and I know that different people show different difficulties. Forgive me if I mention something that you have already tried!

1. Out here they have "Hire a geek" services. Basically, a computer person comes out and de-bugs your computer.

2. You write exceptionally well. Have you ever considered writing SHORT articles and publishing them at ehow? I only get perhaps $20 a month from them, but then I have only given them 33 articles. I only have time to write every couple of months, as disasters have been hitting with monotonous regularity. Basically, if a do-it-yourselfer is doing something and gets stuck, he googles his question, in the hopes of getting a SHORT answer that he can implement in a matter of minutes. Next to the articles are ads offering services, and the writer gets a small amount of money every time someone clicks on an ad. There will be ads for parts on automotive articles, ads for weight-loss pills on chicken recipe articles, and so forth.

Some people with a couple of thousand articles get a couple of thousand dollars a month: MOST of us only have several articles out and get less than $100.

3. Are you making car payments? If so, when will your car be paid off? Can you put the payments into the bank for now?

4. Some people hire caretakers for their property. There is a magazine out that I THINK is called the caretakers gazette.

5. It is easier to get a job if you have a job. Washing dishes looks better on a resume than watching television. There was a recession on when I got out of school also. I mopped floors. Then I got a job on an assembly line snapping the bottom of the flower pots onto the top of the flower pots. UGH! It was all I could get at the time.

Lastly, your parents cannot take you down with them as long as your money and debts are separate from theirs. Of course, you might have to move with them if they move elsewhere.

Can THEY declare bankruptcy?

Dave Ramsey is a lot better.

Don't beat yourself up. There are a lot of corporate heads, with genius IQ's and an Ivy League education, who are in pretty much the same fix that you are in. Living with family, in debt, unemployed, and counting pennies. To a large extent, your problems AND theirs are due to the economy.

They will keep trying, looking for that break, and so must you.

Hire-a-geek is what my business is, or is supposed to be. I've had so many other expenses that I haven't been able to advertise, so I haven't had much business. My money and debts are separate from theirs, but I live on their land. I suppose I could always rent in a less expensive town. My car is paid for, it was inherited from my great grandfather (I hope I can buy a new car when I'm 90!). My parents are still in denial, they won't act until the single AmEx credit card they're living on gets canceled. I don't know where I could move that has any more jobs than where I'm living, or people more willing to spend money. People are leaving California, Nevada, and Arizona as fast as they can, I don't know where they're going, maybe they're just abandoning their lives and driving into the sunset (ok, sunRISE is when you drive east). I looked at the unemployment figures by county on a map, and the only places that have low unemployment are agricultural counties in the midwest where everybody is a farmer. Everywhere else is sort of in the dumps.

My, how times have changed. When we decided to buy land we looked around until we found a 120 acre place being sold off in 10 acre tracts.

We looked it over and liked what we saw and decided to buy 30 acres, big mistake, we should have bought it all.

We went to the bank asked if Dale was busy, went to his office and told him we wanted to buy some land "sure, how much is it and how much of it do you want"? But, he knew we both had good jobs and were dependable.

Whats different now than then: it was a small town locally owned bank, Dale was the president and co-owner, we had lived neighbors to he and his family for many years, and we had dealt with that bank exclusively for 20 years, never missing a payment.

We bought a good many new cars and trucks, equipment, houses and lots, etc, by just going in and tell him what we wanted and he always said "sure just write a check and come in next week and sign the papers" we had loans of up to $10,000 on our signatures. We never filled out an application and I had never heard of a credit rating, of course not everyone could borrow money like that, the bank knew was good for their loan and who wasn't.

This was 25 years ago and regulations were much looser then, there was much less greed and connivery in the world, and people took pride in paying what they owed and did it on time.

Unconventional situations require unconventional solutions. Loquisimo, do you get any sort of other income other than your PC repair business? Myself, I have a rather crummy work history. I tried applying for jobs a month ago, not so much as a call back even. The last job I got with an interview was in 2005 and all the jobs I have held since then have been for people I knew. I have done a lot of odd things for money. One day I might be fixing a computer, the next cutting down trees and bringing them into a sawmill, and the day after fixing someone's car.The weirdest thing would be collecting pine cones for tree nurseries. I figured I averaged 20 bucks an hour out in the county forest collecting Tamarack cones. I have no idea what your driving ability is but maybe you could become a truck driver. Seems like that is a pretty wide open field.

Another thing I have learned is not to expect much and live with much less. I lived for three years in a mobile home with no running water off-grid. My main vehicle I bought for 350 bucks 7 years ago and stuck about 400 bucks into it since. I live life for the experience, not the stuff.

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http://www.xanga.com/shackman A blog about whatever

We had invested a lot during my 20+ year Navy career, so I had some cash set aside.

We bought 42 acres for $900/acre and 105 acres for $300/acre; and paid with a check.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

My wife and I are young but we both work and I have a pretty good paying career. We had some money from the sale of our first house, put that down on a house + 20 acres, financed through a conventional 30 year fixed rate mortgage.

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Check out my Blog to see what's happening on the homestead!
Automatic Chicken Coop Door Plans

When the family started tlking about selling my grandparents place because grandma was needing to go to a nursing home Imade them an offer for part of it. They turned down the offer but countered with selling me the intire place for what I offered. Yes I am very thankful they did that.

I was able to drain my retiement accounts to pay cash for it. So I've always said it would either be my retirement or pay for my retirement.

P.S. Kmac15, yes I can beat that.

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If the grass looks greener it is probably over the septic tank. - troy n sarah tx

Our existance here is soley for the expoitation of CMG

I can't imagine how people pay for decent sized tracks of land. I was lucky because an ancestor thought land was a good investment 180 yrs ago when the price was a might bit lower.

I was fortunate enough to inherit 80 ac. (split w/ my sister) from my parent's estate. This is pretty much unimproved except for a 24 x 24 pole barn. I hope to buy my sister out of a couple acres to build a home there soon. For now, we split the taxes and installation of electricity. I am pretty much the caretaker though as she is not really interested in it except a couple visits each summer.

If it weren't for my parents I don't think I'd ever be able to own a good size chunk of raw land. The jobs around here aren't what they used to be, not even counting the recession. In fact, I was looking at my SS statement last week. I have grossed the same amount of income each year for the past 10 yrs. +/- 10 percent. Still, my taxes and other expenses don't seem to do anything but go up!

Here in Canada, banks will still lend on land, but only up to 75% of the value of it. Lending hasn't contracted quite as much here as in the US, and land values are actually still rising (slowly). We had the 25% down from the fortunate sale of our house (almost at the peak of the bubble, yay!) and we could do that.

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Go Big or Go Home!!
1 Tim 3:2-3 "Preach the Word. Be ready in season and out. Convince, Rebuke, Exhort with all long-suffering and teaching."

“Moberly Lake land is for sale,” Sig Paul said
.
“No, that’s not what we’re looking for,” I said, according to the book.

Sig Paul’s Moberly lake land has power, a road, and a house already built right at the lake – with people all around: that’s not what we wanted.

“Do you know of any other land for sale . . . more remote . . . away from neighbors,” I asked?

“Well . . . yes . . . I do have some land on a road you can’t always get in on . . . and there is no power . . . no water . . . and only four or five people live on the Boucher Lake Road, four miles past the reservation,” he said.

“Perfect, how much is it,” I said without being too excited?

“I’d sell it for $3,000 . . . only it’s illegal for me to sell it to you . . . and I don’t really own it yet.”

We were stunned.

“A non Citizen cannot lease government land,” Sig said.

He was leasing the land from the crown for $44 per year: he was homesteading it! He had to prove-up about sixty-four-acres and build a house, then he could buy it for $8 per acre.

“How many acres do you want to sell,” I asked?

“It is a Quarter”

“What’s a Quarter?”

“One-hundred-sixty acres.”

“Well let’s go look at it,” I said.

It sounded great: one-hundred-sixty acres, no power, $3,000!

A handshake to Buy

Simple and easy, and a handshake was how we sealed the deal. With a handshake, we promised to be back in one year. A handshake to buy one-hundred-sixty acres, when a handshake meant something, when it was your word; then there would be no question of buying or making any deal, but in these days of lawyers and lawsuits was this possible?

Homesteading was our plan: Go away and then come back one year later and start. Prove up thirty-four more acres, thirty acres were already in hay, then we could buy from Sig, after he bought form the Crown. The process was set-out by the Canadian Government for homesteading.

That's our true, long, story, and we're sticking to it,

Alex

btw We were from The Bay Area -- Woodside, CA

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Thou art That

I realize we're all in different shoes financially here. But in my case I was able to get a break in life when I was eighteen and buy 2.5 acres of unimproved land for $2000 that I was allowed to pay out to the owner. I built a small home on it myself with the help of my wife as we got the money and time. Two years after finishing it, (total of $19,500 in the land and completed house many years ago.) I sold it for $35,000. I took that money and paid $18,000 for 40 acres with a recently burned down totalled out house. I used the extra money to rebuild the house over a couple of years while I lived in an older mobile home on the property. After living there for two years we were approached by a couple Californians who thought this rocky Oklahoma ground was worth millions and offered us a pretty good penny for it. (They were going to be "ranchers" and raise horses they said!) We took that profit from that house and bought 80 more acres of Oklahoma rocks and ravines and moved in a double wide mobile home and built a shop building right smack dab in the middle of it. I've never been more happy. It's three miles down a dead end road and the only cars I see are those coming to visit me.

Now, as to how we afforded building those two houses out of pocket over time without a loan: We ate beans, fried potatoes, grits, and garden food for literally every meal. Literally, there was no "box" meals or out-to-eat meals purchased period. We didn't go out. We didn't buy one another gifts. We didn't drive nice cars. In fact, the car I drove back and forth to work 250 miles one way didn't have AC and it's defroster was a towel I used to wipe the frost off the inside of the windshield. It's amazing how much you build up in a hurry doing without what we as a society have deemed to be "essential"!

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Francismilker

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" James 5:16

This doesn't answer your "how to afford land" question, but as for doctors, is it possible that you could move somewhere more affordable that's farther away, and maintain your doctor as a consulting doctor? You could talk to your doctor and ask if he'd consult with another doctor if you choose to move. Find a doctor in your new location, explain your situation, medication regimen, take him/her all your medical history, and only work with a doctor who's willing to share information and get advice from your original doctor.

My brother has a rare disease and has had to do something similar. Both doctors were willing to work together on his treatment.

We had abysmal credit and not a whole lot of money saved up.
Our landlord was looking to sell the place we were renting and we were interested but unable to get anything going with a bank.
After a year of good payment history he offered to raise the price a bit, front the down, and take some kick back on the side to cover the extra capital gains tax.
He hooked us up with a mortgage co and we did it on an ARM with the first rate at 7.9.
We worked hard for 2 years, got our selves straightened out and got a 30 yr fixed before the ARM rolled and dropped our interest a few points.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.