Buy land or small acreage with house?

[Boyd]

Quote:
Not to be the negative nellie again but.........

Illinois/wisconsin border is still a ways off from where you are going. True enough you are looking at some of the same lakes, just a lot further north... Further north than Green bay..

I am from Central Michigan and trust me, it is beautiful up there.. but plan on a few things...

Shoveling snow..... it isn't 5-6-7 times a year, it's 2-3 times a day...... You will hit a deer a few times a year. Get a Truck/SUV with a heavy brush guard so you don't total your vehicle out..... Oh yeah, A homestead is good, but your growing season is 20% shorter than mine about 7 hours away... and work.. Realistically what would you and your boyfriend do for income? Honestly, there isn't a whole lot up there..

 

[ChicksterJo]

I can't plan for everything, so I give myself guidelines and take others' advice, have some faith in myself and try to accomplish what I set out to do. If I will have to shovel snow 2-3 times a day, then I will do it. Otherwise, I will get snowed in.
We have hit deer in Illinois before...not good...in fact, the deer was maybe "out of it" because the headlights were on but instead of running away from the road, the deer decided to run into the side of the car.

Snow tires is a must; 4x4 is also a must
The growing season is indeed going to be short. I will have to plan my garden accordingly and build cold frames or some kind of greenhouse. I will have to figure out what plants will do well in that climate. Escanaba's supposed to be part of the UP's "banana belt" which isn't much, I know.
Lastly, for income, we'll see. I will try to find a job in town for when we move there permanently. If I cannot do that, we will have to work doing odd jobs. My boyfriend is in the HVAC industry. I have a degree and I now work for the next city over. I know there aren't many jobs up there....
But this is getting ahead of my question, which was pretty simple. Even if I had planned all of these aspects, I do not know what will happen in the future that will change one or all of them.

 

[SillyChicken]

hun, your finances will never be in order. lol! Something always comes up, trust me!!

I think the only thing that bothered me was that you said your dad would give your BF the land... um NO, your dad should give YOU the land and it should be deeded in your name. Unless you both are married, you would have no legal right to that property, only he would.

Funny things happen to people when things in a relationship start to go bad... the person you thought you knew, and thought he'd never do that to you, have bad crap happen to them all the time. Always protect yourself.

 

[ChicksterJo]

Oh no it's not MY dad that's going to pay for half. It's HIS dad. My dad doesn't have land in this country, only in the country where we came from.

 

[SourRoses]

So... back towards your question, Joanne...
Which way are you leaning now?

We're land hunting too

Not always fun.... but sometimes!

 

[Dawn419]

ChicksterJo,

I know where you are coming from as I type this, while sitting in a 22' camper on 17 acres of woods!

When we came out to Arkansas (from TN) in June '09 to look at property, it was 8+ undeveloped acres. We were excited because Skip and I had been dreaming of owning a place that we could turn into our own from the ground up, if you will. So we met the realtor and found out it was actually two, 8+ acre tracts and he really prefered to sell them together.

At that same time there was a house and 5 acres for sale, closer to my family (in the same county). The guy with the house wanted $6,000.00 down and wasn't interested in owner financing.

So we went to the realtors office, crunched the numbers together and went for the land. Our down payment was half of what the house was and we have owner financing. We signed the papers that day and never looked back.

Boy, did I hear it from parts of my family about "not buying the first place you look at, shop around", "your buying nothing but rocks"...I'm a rock hound so I didn't see a problem there, plus rocks = building and project material. We fell in love with the property at first sight when walking it with the realtor and it just felt right.

We headed back to TN to make preparations for the move. We made several trips back and forth with moving (had money from a settlement and Skip was on unemployment at that time) some things out and helping with getting the driveway in and the clearing for living in/on. We spent several of the trips working on a cattle panel hoop coop for our chickens so that they'd be set up when we finally moved here for good. During on of the trips, we found out my sister went to look at the house that was for sale and told us "we did good" because the 5 acres was a solid hunk of rock and the house wasn't in the best of shape.

We made our last move at the end of September '09 and are having the time of our lives! We started out roughing it but we atleast had city water put in before we got here. Didn't mind going without electricity until this year as we had a generator so we could have "power" for a few hours in the evening (mainly for charging cell phones and recharging batteries). When the gennie wasn't running, we read by headlamps and oil lamps and ate most dinners with candle light. Nice evenings were spent outside by our fire pit listening to the whipporwills and owls and being amazed at all the stars we could see because our neighbors aren't right on top of us and no security lights.

There were some tight times, financially, but we love how we're living and survived them just fine. Skip has been working at a great job for almost a year now and we hope to start working on our cabin this summer. The 22' camper is perfect for us since we don't have kids but I'm definately ready for just a bit more living space. The cabin will be roughly 24' x 24' but it's gonna feel like a mansion to us!

Whew, did I get long-winded, or what?


Dawn