Selfish or Smart?? To buy or not to buy??

[Greg Massey]

I own my land and it's paid for, I looking at my yearly taxes as my lease payment ... My suggestion is buy it . It's nice some days just to drive up to your own land and get that piece of mine , by just looking and walking around the place. Kids enjoy it also.

[randy6471]

  I'm all for owning your own property...if you can afford it. But where you live may impact how important it is to own your own ground. Most of the property in the area where I grew up was made up of small family farms and there isn't much public land available. Although I had permission to hunt and trap on several large farms with hundreds of acres to roam, I could see that eventually, if you didn't own your own hunting land...you might not have a place to hunt.

  Around 30 years ago, my father and I went together and purchased a piece of property that was located across the road from his house. Two years later, I purchased a house that was about 1/2 mile away from his house and our property. Over the next 15 years I was able to purchase 3 other properties that were located between my house and the original piece of property. By doing this, I was able to tie everything together to create one large piece of property.

  We do 100% of our deer hunting and 50-75% of our spring gobbler hunting on our own property. I can literally walk out my back door and hunt. I never worry about someone stealing a tree stand or trail camera and will never need to worry that I might not have a place to hunt, fish, hike, ride quads or just enjoy the outdoors.

  We spend a ton of time on that property, pretty much year round year round doing...foodplots/habitat improvement, cutting firewood, maintaining the roads, riding quads, fishing (we built a pond) and just enjoying the property.

As a family, we have spent many hours together, building memories on that piece of ground and I wouldn't trade it for anything...it will be passed down to the next generation!

  On top of everything else, real estate makes for great financial diversification!!!

  Hope that helps!

[guesswho]

I was faced with a similar situation 30 years ago.  Bought the property (184 acres) and made a few minor sacrifices.   One of the best life decisions I've made.   For the hunter or timber companies its a highly desirable piece of property.   Now it's paid for and valued over 8 times what I paid for it.   Loaded with deer, and the turkey hunting ain't to shabby either.  My advice, if you can afford it, don't hesitate.  Buy it before It slips away.   You can get a pretty good deal on money right now.

[buzzardroost]

I'll offer my perspective. At least in my area, where timber is generally the only expected income(and that's only every once and a blue moon and you won't buy good timber because a mill owner will beat you to it 9/10 times), land is just not much of an investment unless you plan to sell it later. I own 9 different tracts for hunting that I started buying when I was 18. I don't have much in them but they certainly aren't an investment for me unless I sell. Had I put that same amount of money in the stock market, I would be much wealthier. Not to mention, it's easier to liquidate into cash in the stock market. You can't buy many groceries with your land or pay bills. I understand there are different situations where you may have crop leases, oil/gas, etc. Now, because of the memories made, the desire to leave it to my kids, etc, I wouldn't sell unless I had to. So, the best I can expect short of a miracle, would be to maybe double my investment on timber and that's best case. I'm okay with that but I do think often of how much better I could have done with the money. I don't even hunt my places much because I enjoy hunting public so much. Those private tracts get mighty small when your a run/gun hunter. Yes my properties are worth quite a bit more than I paid for them, but that amounts to nothing unless you sell.

[bear hunter]

land will only go up in value buy it if its possible and does not hurt you financially.

[MK M GOBL]

So a few things I'll add, I'm on 210 acres, half is tillable (rented to neighbor for crops), there is some pasture as well and another neighbor has cattle on it for a part of the year (June/July/Aug). Timber Value and had CRP too. I have a 40 acre piece in northern WI that I did a timber harvest on through MFL tax program and saves a bunch there too. I would guess property you are looking at has some of same "values" too. And then yes investment too, your kids


MK M GOBL