Buying Rural Land for Long-Term Investment or Short Term Rentals

Everyone is familiar with house-flippers, who buy rundown houses in promising areas, completely rip through them in a matter of weeks to bring all the systems up to snuff, and then put these houses right back on the market for a profit (well, usually for a profit). There are probably ten or fifteen popular cable network shows which are now dedicated to this practice. rural-investment.jpg

Everyone is also familiar with developers, both commercial and residential. They scoop up land, and only months later it is developed into a mini-mall or into another housing community and resold for a nice profit (or so they hope). We see the whole building process going on around us, with the “For Lease” and “For Sale” signs already up before the ground is even broken.

What about one of the safest and most fulfilling land investments, one that you only hear about when it goes up for sale and someone compares what was paid for it vs. what it is now selling for? Long-term rural land investing is what I have in mind. It is more than just a way to hold an investment for its future value; it is something that you can enjoy and use even while it is in your possession.

Is there anyone who has owned rural land over time who’s had a BAD experience? Is it boring waiting years to turn a profit? Not according to the people I talk to. I never hear about a boring life; instead, I hear stories about the great life they’ve had during all the years they’ve owned the land, and often their hopes that someone else will buy their land to experience the same wonderful lifestyle.

If you just can’t relate to what I’m saying, listen to how Roberta Grimes sums up her experience.

Buying rural land when we were young was the best thing we have ever done. It gave us a great lifestyle, a place for our hobbies, a wonderful environment in which to raise our children; and now, as we reach retirement age, our rural land has made us rich!

My husband and I bought 160 rural acres in 1978. We had some trouble affording it, since we were only in our thirties; and then after we had bought the land we had to afford to build a house besides. But we scrimped and budgeted, and we made it happen. My husband developed a weekend vineyard, and for many years I grew our food while I dabbled in horse-showing and horse-breeding; over twenty years, as we could afford it, we built stables and barns and a swimming pool and a dock so we could boat on our lake. Our three children happily grew up with fields and woods and horses and the lake: living on our land was like living on vacation.

Time passed. Our children grew up and moved away to pursue their individual dreams. My husband and I retired and moved south, and that was when we realized that while we had been enjoying our rural lifestyle, civilization had been creeping closer. We had been saving for retirement, but it turned out that we needn’t have bothered. Our 160 acres of no-longer-rural land turned out to be worth more than twenty times what we had paid for it some twenty years before.

What we did in the seventies was tough. It required that we live and work in the boonies, and while we loved that, it did limit our employment options and therefore our income. Not so any more! With the advent of the Internet, more and more people are finding that they can work from home, so for them to choose a rural lifestyle is hardly any compromise at all. Having seen how our rural purchase turned out, we have only one piece of advice: going out beyond the edge of development and buying the best land that you can find is the smartest thing that any young couple can do to create a fantastic lifestyle and start upon the road to being rich.

Now, that’s the kind of thing that I often hear, and I can’t help but smile every time! There may be no 30-minute reality shows that take people from start to finish of a 20-year land investment. However, it’s a lifestyle that many people out there have lived, or are living now.

Maybe what is holding you back is the thought of being out in the boonies. You worry that it means poor internet options, or maybe a long commute to work. While that may have been a concern in the past, today it’s much easier to maintain a city life in the country. Baby Boomers are buying rural real estate all over the United States, and it’s stories like the one above that make it clear why it’s all worth it.