private developments

[wildbil]

As I said before, I have been looking for a reasonable piece of land around my area. The only thing is that the price of land isn't going down, its going up! and to top it off, a lot of the area has been swallowed up by several separate private developments, chopped into several "lots", and sold at outrageous prices. I mean they want over 10,000 for less than an acre of wilderness in some of these places. I live in a town of maybe 13,000 people, but it seems all of these rich downstaters think its all right to come up and build these two-week-a-year cabins(mansions), and zone off huge chunks of beautiful wilderness as "associations' or "developments".

This area is a backwoods, economically depressed, small farm, closed-plants area with a few yuppies in the city. There is huge expanses of forest and empty farmland everywhere around us. Why can I not find a few acres of non-deveopment land for a price that won't sink me too much deeper in debt? seems like I may be making a 40 mile trip to work every day if thats all I can find.

I read the "rules" for one of the developments: no way I could ever do what I want there. 

[MountainDon]

Buying land in any developments like those subjects you to more restrictions than you find in some sunbrban city areas. We looked at one near where we bought our mountain ridge lot. The first thing that was wrong was the minimum building size. It got worse from there.

When my wife suggested we should look for land in the Jemez Mountains the first thing that crossed my mind was something like, "why bother, we can't afford anything up there". For the most part I was right. Then we got lucky and stumbled across a low key listing. It did take a year and a half to work through the deal, due to incompetencies on the parts of the sellers, the surveyor and the county officials. But it did work out and we made a few thousand in interest on the money we were holding for the purchase. We also worked out a deal with the seller and camped on the land for a summer before we owned it. In all that time we never came across another deal that would have worked for us.

G/L   

[rwanders]

Don, your experience supports my opinion that patience is the cure for most of our problems----now if I could just convince myself to actually act like that!

[diyfrank]

I purchased mine through a land company. They buy up logged off timber land or anything they can buy a chuck of, break it up and sell it. they offer financing but the rate is a little higher. Theres a few different one's around here. I only had to look at a few places to find what I wanted.  I wasn't looking for something close to work tho.

The right piece will come up. Good luck with you search

[Squirl]

My land was a forced sale.  I am coming across them.  Keep an eye on the foreclosure listings and the tax sales.  I am seeing a lot of prices come down in the past 3 months.  In the beginning part of the recession there was a huge upswing in energy prices.  This kept real estate prices high and even pushed a few higher.  With oil and gas prices going through the roof and the dollar falling at the time it pushed up the value of land (trees, pasture, gas rights).  I was bidding against investors.  After the energy market tanked and food and fuel prices came down, people are being forced to sell and the investors have disappeared.  You just need to be ready.  Know your market well so when you see a good deal you can move.  Cash is king in today's world.  If you are looking to finance this will push the price up drastically in today's environment.  Risk of default is extremely high and that will raise the price.  Looking for land with improvements (perc, well, electric)  will also push up the price.

[ballen]

You rarely find the parcel of your dreams in a for-sale ad.
You have to be creative.  In my case, I found the area I wanted to own in and used google earth to find a few spots that looked nice.  I cross referenced that with the county land records to find the owners.  I wrote letters, lots of letters to the owners.  One of them worked out and I now own my dream land.  It wasn't easy and took a lot of time but I now own something I hope to have in my family for generations.
Keep looking and try something different.  You will find it.