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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   4206 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 19, 2024

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What would you do with three hundred acres of desert?

I'm thinking about buying a lot of land because:

  1. It seems like a good investment. Extremely cheap ($100k) and in an area which might plausibly see good growth.
  2. I eventually want a "homeland" for my family, a place where we don't have to worry so much about land costs or neighbors, and can live close to each other. Ideally there would eventually be a business or two in the area (even if just farms) to support people who don't have remote jobs, but the point is to have a place to retreat to when life gets tough, and maybe a place to move to once you have kids.

I'm not all that wealthy though, so it doesn't make sense to get started with it right away unless I can make the land productive in the meantime.

A few ideas:

  • Rehab center
  • Farm
  • Fish/shrimp farm
  • Solar farm

None exciting enough to pull the trigger, though I'm researching solar farm subsidies and shrimp farm economics just in case.

EDIT: It's this parcel for those who are curious. I'm pretty much for sure not buying land for another few years but it's fun to think about in the meantime (and possibly prepare/plan).

I'll probably do a larger writeup on this at some point, but the dream would be to buy an enormous, fairly productive piece of land such as this one and then pretty much turn it into a colony for my friends and family. Alaska has its own major problems of course, but in the long run I'm trying to make enough money to get myself and those I care about out of the culture war entirely.

Ranching, farming, and aquaculture are a lot of full time work requiring serious expertise. The key to making money off of wind and solar is to have the company lease use rights to the land from you, not to actually do the job yourself. It’s unclear and not terribly likely that you can make the land pay for itself that way, even if it’s only $100k. I’m skeptical that there’s any economic use for land priced at ~$333/acre. Are you looking at someplace ridiculously deep in the Mojave?

Unless this is prime hunting territory for some reason, you can’t make your money back. And living off grid is very expensive over and above the cost of land.

Ha, it is on the edge of the Mojave. Still cheap enough that I wonder if there's some other thing wrong with the land--maybe a lack of water rights.

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