Land Prices ..

[surfivor]

 A couple of years ago I was looking into land near Skowheagan Maine. My sister had bought land in Idaho near Jackson Hole and the land prices went way up so that she seemed to make alot of money from that. I thought I should look into investing in land, but my mother told me that land in central or northern Maine if it's not near the coast is not going to appreciate very much, so I forgot about the whole thing.

 I am considering looking into this again since land might be a good way to preserve wealth and have a place to go in a bad time situation, not really as a way to make money over time through the investment.

 
I don't like the idea of having land I have to keep going to look after just because I own it. I like staying at campgrounds near the coast. The most I might do is erect some kind of primitive cabin or shed on the property for starters where I could store a few things I'm not worried about and go there to camp once in a blue moon.


 The other idea that I always had for my retirement some day, is that I could own a small parcel of land in Maine, and then a similar parcel some place like Georgia where I could spend a few months in the winter, I'd have a tent camper or something to stay in on the land which would be out in the sticks someplace where you could camp on your land no problem. Each property would have some kind of shed for storage or extra living space. I wouldn't necessarily live in these places, but the idea is that I could if I had to, and if Maine was woo cold in the winter I could go to the place in Georgia.

 



 I'm not sure I would want to spend a whole lot of money on land when I am not totally sure I'd want to live there and it's not going to go up in price, maybe 10k or 15k. I saw about 9 acres for 10k on realtor.com about 1/2 mile from the interstate and about 5 hour drive up. Then I saw some other places that looked like 1.5k to 2k per acre in a really back woods section of Maine where I did a canoe trip last summer and it seemed like a nice area, but it's 6 hour drive. I'd be hard pressed to live up in a place like that maybe in the winter, but it's where land is the cheapest ..

 Does anyone else think land appreciation issues is a big deal or not ? I'm starting to think, maybe not ..

[Stein]

Well, my take is that it depends on why you are buying the land.  I try not to confuse investments and leisure or future family plans.

We live in a house that fits our family but likely won't go up in value as fast as a place closer to the metro area.  That is fine with me because we bought the house to live in, not to make money from.

Resort areas go up much faster, but they go down much faster too.  If the economy continues south, what will be the first things people dump?  Motorhomes, boats, second homes, vacant land, etc.

I wouldn't mind buying some land if the price was right with the expectation of building on it at some point, but if I was just looking at camping I would likely keep the money in the bank and camp somewhere different all the time.

If things get truly ugly, camping places will be easy to come by.  Just fly over the US in an airplane and you will see we have plenty of open space.

[surfivor]

>> If things get truly ugly, camping places will be easy to come by.  Just fly over the US in an airplane and you will see we have plenty of open space.

 Id like to believe that, but I'm not totally sure that the govt would just let people camp out even if it seemed to make sense. They might prefer to keep them in a FEMA camp, or getting kicked off private or public land seems like a possible scenario, especially if you are trying to live there sort of permanently. There are some strange stories I heard relating to Katrina that are along those lines. People where not even allowed to return to their slightly damaged houses that where no longer flooded. Some one also claims some people where in a FEMA camp and no one was allowed to bing in food as it could start a riot, so they had to just eat the FEMA rations. Volunteers where not allowed to take people to church either. That's just what I saw on the internet, I'm not totally sure how true it is, but the camp I think was called falls creek, and if you google here there seem to be a bunch of stuff on this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fema+camp+falls+creek&btnG=Search

here is one of the articles I skimmed through, but the above google search seems to turn up a bunch of stuff as well:
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2005/09/08/inside-a-fema-concentration-camp/


 I figured at first I could head south in the Appalachians where it's warmer and do some hunting and camp in the woods, but then I figured I might have to at least move camp a few times as some back country folk might think I was on their hunting grounds.  Anyone else have an opinion on this ?



 Also, if you don't own the land, I'm not sure how farming would fit in or being able to claim those vegetables belong to you etc.

[Stein]

I was talking about Jericho type situations where land ownership is not an issue.  In our part of the country, you could easily just disappear into the woods for as long as you want.  Most of the land is state or federal and large enough to hide both Bigfoot and DB Cooper.

Land is useful for growing stuff provided you have the resources ahead of time and are set up.  I often read about people who buy 5 gallon buckets of heirloom seeds cryo packed and assume they will just spread them out somewhere and have an instant farm.

A garden to sustain your family takes quite a bit of work, materials and knowledge to get up and running.  If you are going that way, best bet is to start it now.

[surfivor]

 I can only plan one step at a time, as it is I'm not sure when I might be able to get up to northern Maine to look at land, maybe if I do a vacation in the spring. If I have to drive 5 or 6 hours one way, its not the kind of thing I'd do on a weekend typically, not even a 3 day weekend. I don't like to drive that much for just a couple of days, it kind of stresses me out.

 It's all just an idea, I have no definite plans, but owning some cheap land in northern Maine that I could camp on if I wanted to or possibly build a rustic structure has some appeal.

 If the economy get tough, I'll be spending more of my vacation time in New England instead of other places. As it is I used to go to Mexico, CA, Costa Rica, after 9/11 I cut back to mainly places I could drive to for surf/camp trips like Nova Scotia or North Carolina (13 hour trip one way). If things get worse I'd probably stay even closer to home. 


 As far as what you're saying, if you're going to go someplace where there are no roads, or limited, then either you have to pack everything in on your back, or have a 4 wheel drive ATV or something. If you have a vehicle, youll still need to get gas. Packing everything in seems to mean a minimalist life of hardship. Where do you live ?

 I kind of like the idea of canoe travel, in parts of Canada there are so many interconnected lakes and rivers that you can easily paddle and portage between them. A canoe allows you to carry more gear than a pack potentially, but that's just a fantasy of mine at this point living that way ... then there's lama, mules and so on, but that is a big different kind of life than where I am at at the moment




 

[Stein]

I fully agree that permanent camping isn't my idea of fun.  If the only plan I had for the land was camping, I wouldn't be able to justify the cost.

I live in the Pacific NW and grew up in Montana.

I would like to pick up some land, but would plan on developing it into our future home paying cash as we went.  For me, 1 acre would be the most I would need.

We are pretty rural and don't see the need to move from here except for some massive volcano eruption or a biblical disaster of some sort.  We are the bug-in type I guess.

[surfivor]

 I like camping, I date this girl, she often lets me sleep on her couch so I don't have to drive home. I often sleep on her screen porch because I like the fresh air, in the winter I bring my winter sleeping bag over there so I can sleep on the porch.

  If I bought a house in the suburbs, I'd make sure it had a nice porch as they might not allow me to camp in the backyard all the time.

  I don't own any land, I just have a small condo that is 470 square feet, but my truck camper is like my second home. The condo is near my mothers house, and mostly I need to be near the city for IT type work.

  If I bought some land and the dollar collapsed, maybe the land would still be worth something. I have enough money invested in other places that a piece of land might be a place to put some money, and it it's 10k or under 20k, it's not so bad.

 A financial adviser called me once and tried to tell me he wanted to meet to talk to me about my retirement plan, I told him I might be living out of a tent camper and fishing for salmon, something like that is sort of the best idea I have so far.

[DarkEyes]

I know someone who lives in Maine and the winters in northern Maine are treacherous.  They also have short growing seasons.  If you are going to invest in land, try to find something that you could make improvements to the permaculture, plant fruit trees, nut trees, leave a spot open for a garden, because I'm betting in 10 years you may feel differently about camping and cold weather.

[DeltaEchoVictor]

Owning land is never a bad thing.  Land will always be worth something. 

No one is making more land after all, so as the population increases & more & more people look to get away from the hustle & bustle, land prices will increase.

[surfivor]

I know someone who lives in Maine and the winters in northern Maine are treacherous.  They also have short growing seasons.  If you are going to invest in land, try to find something that you could make improvements to the permaculture, plant fruit trees, nut trees, leave a spot open for a garden, because I'm betting in 10 years you may feel differently about camping and cold weather.

 I would not choose to spend winters in Maine if I had the choice, but survivalism seems to be about preparing for limited choices to some extent or finding a way to live which is less comfortable in some sense though doable. I could be comfortable with Maine most of the other seasons, or with a wood stove probably 9 or 10 months out of the year at least. I like vacationing in Maine, I think northern Maine might actually be more quiet than I would prefer even. I would have to go to some churches and all, but still I don't always like being by myself in the middle of nowhere for long periods, though if I had to do that, then that's what I'd have to do. I do like Maine for vacationing and such.

 There is a story about a man who lived to be 86 years old with no heat in a small cabin in Canada, watch a couple of videos on that:


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6993127768428359932

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftapLFtzGpw

[BoatDriver]

Maine while I would love to visit it backpacking and kayaking seems a bit too cold for my southern bones.  This Arkansas lake house is my dream home.  I have the cash to buy it now but I'm too far away from retirement to move.

http://www.unitedcountry.com/search06/SearchViewProperty.asp?SID=64183563&Item=672032&Lcnt=&Page=1&Office=03098&No=03098-55150&AU=N&FT=P

[surfivor]

 I ran two wilderness rivers in Maine this year in my roylex canoe:

 The Saint Croix which has many class II rapids for about 30 miles  and is runnable all summer. Quite an adventure and there was a moose outside my camp at 3:00 AM splashing around. I got out of bed and shone a light on him.

 I did the Sebois river and into the East branch of the Penobscot, 35 miles of rapids. The sebois has continuous class 1 rapids so that I covered 18 miles of river in a few hours averaging about 7 mph the whole way and hardly having to paddle at all. It was high water otherwise it only runs in very early summer.
 
 Other rivers get more traffic, and far northern Maine has been heavily clear cut.

[surfivor]

 I had been looking farther up in Maine as the prices are cheaper up that way, but then I found several acres in a part of Maine that is less than a 2 hour drive that averaged a little over 4K per acre.

 According to the info I saw, there are no restrictions on building and the taxes are something like $450/year. I was talking to my mother about how I could build a cabin or something there, and a few issues came up:

 If I spent money on a prefab cabin, I would want to insure it. Insurance for fire would probably be tough to get if the cabin is not near a fire hydrant which is the case. There is no water/sewage/electricity.

 Owning several acres seems really cool, unless the property taxes where to increase at some point. In that case, you might end up paying a good deal.

 I mentioned to my mother that I'd like to have a cabin, and then I could build a storage shed and store a bunch of my stuff up there like my canoe, maybe my drumset and various things. I live in a small condo and my mother doesn't like all the stuff I have stored at her house. She said however that with the increase in the use of snowmobiles, theft and vandalism of property in the backcountry areas seems to have increased. She mentioned how several huts on the Appalachian trail had been vandalized. She thought if you are near a larger town, maybe that increases the possibility. This town is about 60 square miles and has a population of maybe 5,000 people, the next town over however which is maybe 5 miles to the downtown has a population of around 23,000 people and is 50 square miles in area.


 Lots to think about it seems like to me ....

[ejsandstrom]

Excuse me if I missed it, but where do you live now?

That is my concern with buying land to bug out to. If its a 6 hour car ride now, what will it be like in a panic? I dont really think of land as an investment because if you pay 10k for some land and super inflation hits or the like, your land may have a 10 fold increase. But the trick would be trying to find someone to pay 100k for it, and with the whole country struggleing to buy a gallon of milk for $10, your pool of avalable buyers goes down.

I say avoid the shed. To me its says hey there are valuables here lets steal stuff. Bury it. Sure it creates as many probles as it solves, but your stuff will be there.