[dylan604]

My family bought one of the very first lots in a new lake front property development way back in the 60s. After a very slow sale of these other lots in the development, the developer halved the size of the lots and opened them for mobile homes. The lots sold, the mobile homes moved in, and my family's property valued plummeted.

There were more than a few neighbors that fit the very stereotype you imagine, and they were the ones that lived there full time. Most of the direct neighbors were just weekenders (as were we).

[pasquinelli]

sounds like a good outcome to me. more affordable housing and all it costs is a drop in the resale value of vacation homes, (that also comes with a drop in property taxes for those same vacation homes.)

[hollywood_court]

It's attitudes like this that have caused my wife and I to build our forever home in the middle of a a huge plot of land. The house will not be visible from the road and I'll be able to fire a gun in any direction without worrying about hitting anything or anyone. We've both grown weary of allowing our comfort to be dictated by neighbors and however they decide to behave on a particular day.

[bombcar]

Talk to your lawyer - if you do it right you can use your Roth IRA to buy even more land outside that boundary as an “investment property”.

[hollywood_court]

We’ve already bought the land fortunately. I’m just building up another nest egg before I start construction while I clear out a home site and improve it with trees and a road and such in the interim. We don’t take on debt so it’s going a bit slower than one would expect.

[dylan604]

Don't make any modifications to the land until you are ready to build. I don't know what the full definition of "unimproved lot" would be, but clearing land for construction site, adding roads, etc definitely sound to me as improvements. Those improvements will have a not friendly affect on your taxes. If your plot is big enough, add the minimum number of head of some sort of animal to possibly qualify for ag exemptions.

Lots of games to be played that you might be unaware of to keep from slowing the growth of that nest egg.

[robocat]

Concentrating your risk: the absolute opposite of investment diversity. The usual advice is to spread your risks with your retirement funds.

[bombcar]

The goal isn't to use it as an investment, it is to abuse the Roth IRA rules to get a larger buffer.

[robocat]

A Roth IRA is a long term retirement investment for when you are 60. “A Roth IRA is an Individual Retirement Account to which you contribute after-tax dollars. While there are no current-year tax benefits, your contributions and earnings can grow tax-free, and you can withdraw them tax- and penalty-free after age 59½”.

For many people, their home and their retirement funds are their two biggest assets. If most of your retirement fund is tied up in real estate next door to your home, then the risk profiles are interlocked. That could be worthwhile for other benefits (avoiding bad neighbours), or because you want to chase the rewards of swinging for the fences (concentration also has the chance to win big), but that needs to be weighed up against the financial downside risks of severely concentrating your asset portfolio (a big loss on both the home property asset and retirement assets would be horrid for many people).

[xani_]

Well, unless you're a sucker that saved whole life to buy that home and now half the value is worse and neighbourhood is shit...

But maybe we shouldn't let private companies decide on things like land usage in the first place...

[ReactiveJelly]

Who has the right to live and move where is a problem older than humanity

[colinsane]

older than humanity?

i guess in the sense that we aren’t the only animals to enforce territory. on the other hand we probably are the only animals to have conceived of “rights”.

[john_the_writer]

I'd say a wolf has the right to eat a "visiting" wolf.

[hollywood_court]

That sounds like Lake Martin in Alabama.