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[Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

At 10/28/2006, you wrote:
> I'd think housing prices will affect land prices.

In some ways I am hoping so but in the area I want to look I do not expect 
much.  There is also the balancing act of my investments, if land prices 
were to drop by say 15% and my investments were to drop by 20% the net 
affect would be a decrease in purchasing power against land prices.



Don Bowen              Awl Knotted Up                       KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com
My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

I am omnivagant.  
> From Clansgian AT wmconnect.com  Sat Oct 28 12:37:23 2006
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Buy a house. If you have a house, buy land. Pay for the land with 
city jobs, prepare your family for a rural lifestyle, accumulate 
tools and skills. When the land is free of debt sell the city house 
and go make a good life.

This perennial advice is still more or less sound ... with this proviso, buy 
land or house three years from now.  As is abundantly clear from the stats 
now, this isn't a ho-hum typical cycle, it's the makings of a major crash.  It's 
easy to determine by playing this game, find a piece of land where you'd want 
to locate and pretend you are buying it today.  Then three months from now see 
what a similar parcel is going for, and six months and two years.

Current conditions are a great opportunity for homesteaders,  PATIENT 
homesteaders.

Also the paradigm we are used to is shifting.  City jobs ain't what they used 
to be!  With people bailing out of speculative real estate (that's why the 
stock market has gone to record levels of late, people pulling money out of real 
estate and needing a place for it to go) rental digs are getting scarcer and 
more expensive.  Sitting tight in the city agaisnt using the savings to by 
rural land might get dicey!

(Don)
> In some ways I am hoping so but in the area I want to look I do not expect 
> much.  There is also the balancing act of my investments, if land prices 
> were to drop by say 15% and my investments were to drop by 20% the net 
> affect would be a decrease in purchasing power against land prices.

A couple of factors that affect this are that even if the net effect would 
decrease your purchasing power, once one parks oneself on homestead land, the 
relative value game is largely moot.  The land will grow the same vegetables, 
support the same livestock, and proved the same wood fuel (as examples) as it 
would no matter what the relative market "realities" are.

Similarly, there is the psychological effect homestead holding has on the 
holder.  Investments might well be a significant lower and thus not as effective 
a coin to purchase homestead property, by investments will always fluxuate in 
value.  Once the turnip seeds are in the ground, the real value, the realized 
value to the holder, ceases to fluxuate.