I thought this would be a good place to start a discussion regarding the purchase of property and what that entails. Loans, surveying, septic systems, investment concerns…things that are important and some might have advice on if they have gone through the process before…
Exellent! I was seriously about to start this thread, and then here it frickin’ is. I just got off this site http://www.nwrealestate.com/nwrpub/index.cfm and thought about how bad I want people to by other parcels. That is the address to the site I found TrollSplinter land on.
Any how, I made a bunch off pretty substantial mistakes while buying land, and I definitely learned from them. I would be more than happy to share the knowledge that I have gathered on buying land with folks starting their own projects.
Rule 1: Real estate agents are often total scum suckers. They can lie to you, and they will do so rather regularly.
2: Look up the parcel number that you are buying on that particular counties parcel search tool online. They post the “list assesed value” of that parcel. Try not to pay tens of thousands more than that, like I did.
3: A buyers agent can be a good thing to have, but keep in mind they are also trying to get the best price for the seller, even though they are working for the buyer.
Argh, running out of time, stupid library computers. I will continue later.
Hey Kestrel,
A couple questions…
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How do you go about finding what is for sale that sits adjacent to public land?
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What are property taxed like in WA?
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How much did you spend for your land?
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Did you pay for it up front or did you get a loan?
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How hard was it to get a loan?
Blah blah blah. Seriously after spending time up at the Palace I really want to get my own land. Only, I’m broke and have no idea where to start.
It’s so true. I worked at a title company as my summer job during college. One of the main things I got out of it was the knowledge that realtors are impatient, money-grabbing freaks.
For this, I would get myself a buyers agent. They get paid if you purchase land that they find you, but their percentage comes out of the purchase price, so they are pretty much free to you.
Tell them what you’re looking for exactly and your price range. If you want it cheap, say you want forest land.
Recreational land is decidedly more expensive to purchase, and to pay taxes on, but, you don’t have to worry about potential legal trouble for having a cabin up and shit like that.
Forest and agricultural land is cheap, cheap, cheap. Taxes too. TrollSplinter taxes are about 18 dollars a year.
TS land was $65,000 for 23 acres, but that was the asking price, never pay the asking price, or sign anything with the asking price on it. Nobody expects to actually get the list price. Porcupine Palace was around $80,000 if I remember right. That’s for 40 acres.
We put a massive down payment on it, and never had to get a loan. In fact, I wasn’t even employed at the time. The owner was open to doing direct financing, that means we just sent our payments straight to an account they had set up specifically to recieve them. Every month we sent a check, there also was no penalty for paying it off early, that saved us from thousands in intrest.
Sorry, can’t speak to that… anybody else have loan experience?
I do know that Grimkin and I are paying David back a fat chunk of cash he loaned us, He was thinking about the possibility of loaning it out again for another land project… Where are folks interested in getting land? Eastern WA is dirt cheap, 20 acres for $20,000 asking price! West of the Cascades is a different story.
I think it would be rad if we could cover some main food sources and trade among each other. We have elk, clams, fish, mussels, seaweed and mushrooms on TrollSplinter. It would be awesome if somebody had land in Eastern WA for camas, nodding onion, and deer. Some where a bit south for wapato and acorns. The really cool thing is if we could find spots relatively close to national parks so we could hike through to each other. Like, down the pacific crest trail, or over the olympics, maybe paddle across the sound… online day dreaming. I must stop.
How do you go about finding what is for sale that sits adjacent to public land?/quote] why get it adjacent when you can get you own country?www.privateislandsonline.com But, most of the canadian islands are adjacent to public land. here's a bunch in BC http://www.privateislandsonline.com/britishcolumbia.htm
also, you can get some that are quite removed from Civ, in other places, like the philippines or micronesia.
[Edited to fix a quote code by admin]