As investment, I bought this, instead of stocks. Any ideas on what to do with it?
Location:
- 75km (1hr) to a big international airport. Airport has direct flights to most EU capitals (2-4hr flights)
- 50km to city center
- 25km from nearest large residential area (500,000+ population)
- 5km from massive organized industrial area (government supports factories here)
- 35km from a rich residential area
- 1km away from the village (its old and mostly depopulated) and animal husbandry area
Access:
- There is public transportation, but one has to walk 1.5km after leaving the bus.
- There is no direct road access to the land. You have to walk like 200m after leaving your car.
- 1km road to here is non-asphalt and its a bit bumpy ride. When it rains, it gets bad here. It rains rarely
It is quite peaceful and quiet there. You can hear interesting bird sounds sometimes. You see no buildings, no cars and no humans anywhere near you when you’re there, which feels great imo. You notice the air quality after you leave your car. I personally absolutely would want to live here for a while
Ideas
- Trying to clarify this rn, but I think I can make $120-160/yr/decare from leasing the land to a farmer. Land is 25 decares
- “Unique co-living opportunity with vegan food & yoga sessions” In other words, remote work / digital nomad village for people who want to work REALLY remotely :) I’d have to arrange electricity (solar panels and powerbanks), internet, toilet, shower, water, tents, mattresses/pillows/sheets, food, drinking water. (Though I don’t know what people will do when they’re bored here? Any ideas? Meditation would get boring after some point)
- Sadly location isn’t touristic, but it is 1hr flight away from extremely touristic areas. One of those areas, a city, was the most visited city in the world a few years ago.
- I’ve met a few volunteers and they seemed quite willing to volunteer for whatever I decide to do here (if I do anything). For those unfamiliar: WWOOF and Workaway
Also- Any suggestions on where I should ask this question on the internet?
Does leasing the land pay enough to make it worthwhile? Gives you time to think.
If it’s fertile land you should probably use it, or lease it, to grow food.
Farming is not easy. Until you learnt to be good at it you’ll put in a lot of hours into making not much money after costs have been paid.
Plant some dang trees for starters, unless it’s only going to be land used for farming.
Even then, dynamic agroforestry would be nice.
Orchard farming, just add more tree
I vote for the dang trees. I like trees.
Ain’t nobody speaking for them dang trees so lend a hand and give em a voice.
At least a wind block on the edges
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If I had this land, I’d grow food.
With all the rage about digital detox trips you could probably get people to grow food for you while paying you for the opportunity, if the marketing is done right.
get people to [ …do XY]
Doesn’t work unless they can drive right into it with their small cars.
Of course it does. The guided meditative walk is essential as every step helps you leave the toxicity of digital life behind and prepares you to open yourself up to the present.
Hey wanna be my marketer? :D
Holiday in Cambodia but unironically. Loves me some chorin’
It’s a hard life picking stones and pulling teats, but as sure as God’s got sandals it beats fighting dudes with treasure trails.
As in subsistence farming or trying to bring food to market? If the former, it will be a hard path, but possible.
If the latter, have you seen what is happening in the current food markets? For produce (quick spoilage) other nations are rejecting our produce either because of tariffs or because of retaliatory tariffs. For commodity grains like corn and soybeans, previous giant consumers like USAID, USDA, and other agencies are being cut or destroyed entirely meaning there will be a glut of production on the market for some time. Couple that with visa restrictions/deportations, the price of labor will increase substantially. Food prices are going to crater for a time because of this, and some farmers will go out of business. Those that survive will increase prices to cover all of the new expenses, but they won’t be earning more profit from their work.
Does that apply in Europe? OP says most European capitals have direct flights, that take 2-4 hours, so that probably puts this somewhere in Europe.
OP seems to be in Europe, so I’m not sure how much of your second point applies.
You’re right. I didn’t pick up on that. Thanks for that correction.
MMM, field lobsters
What about a campsite?
No yoghurt weaving digital nomad yoga shite.
Just a plain old campsite that people can stay on with their campervans, caravans, tents etc
You’d probably need a shower and toilet at least.
In the short term, leasing to a farmer isn’t a bad idea. It looks like a lot of your tentative plans will take time and money, so a short term land rental might be a good idea.
Looks like a whole lot of nothing. Farming is the only thing you can do if even that
Did you check that you’re actually allowed to build and live there? Depending on where that is (i guess left out on purpose), you can’t simply decide to build a house in a field.
Yes I can build 250m2 of house here but that would kill land’s future investment potential (organized industrial area expansion is the development play here)
So instead I plan to use tents to host people if I ever do something here
Though, I guess I can build sheds if they are easy/cheap to remove. I don’t know much about construction
That might be illegal if it’s not zoned for residential. That’s how it works in the USA.
250m2 of permanent structure is legal. Non-permanent structure (tiny houses with wheels, tents) of any size is also legal.
Hypothetically maximum residential development here might be something like 25,000 m2 of apartments, which can be sold for +$1000/m2. That would be very be illegal. Also, this area would be zoned as industrial, not residential (after 2040-2050)
I’m just dreaming. Let’s say I created a nice community here and offered cool activities like woodworking, gardening, meditation, yoga, massages, weightlifting, social dancing, soccer or some sport, community dinners. I don’t know the cost* of doing all that but say I get on Booking for $10/night. Hosting 1 person per 100 m2 means 250 people :D I think it would be a no brainer to pay $300/mo for all those activities and to be around nice healthy likeminded people. Depending on the quality of the community, people might be willing to pay up to $1000/mo imo.
*toilet & shower, sleeping tent, mattress & pillow & bedding, solar panel & powerbank, desk & chair, co-working tent, transportation costs, security, food, drinking water… I’d have to somehow transport poop out of here or make poop disappear
Alternatively, I might want to do this in mediterranean region. It would be easier to market, right? Idk if I can rent someone’s land to do this tho?
Did you ever see the movie Holes (2003)?
Are you suggesting they might have a no good dirty rotten pig stealing great great grandfather?
How close are you to high voltage transmission lines? This might be good for an commercial sized solar farm.
There’s a solar farm 1km away. I heard here it would require like $1m of investment and it pays for itself in 7 years but that’s above my pay grade AFAIK
YMMV. We’ve got a local solar farm & the operation has gone belly-up, changed hands twice. It’s got to be on its third investor/owner. Also depends on the quality of your build & your local weather; that solar field isn’t even fully operational yet. Got hit by a massive hail storm maybe almost 2 years ago, it had to have smashed a couple hundred solar panels.
If you’re interested in it, I’d be very careful. Insure everything. Ask everybody, people in the industry if possible.
There’s no natural disasters here but I’d have to have political connections and be rich if I wanted to do something like this without getting hurt in this country. I rather have less to lose and do something more modest
But out of curiosity, how would the investment numbers look like? They invest 1m on land and get 60% of the returns and I get 40% for the next 20 yeas for example?
I have no idea personally, I’m just telling you what I observe. And from what I’ve observed, it’s not this stupidly simple operation that anyone can do & it’s “basically a money printing machine”, as others on here are telling you.
If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense. As a general rule. That solar farm has gone under & sold ownership twice in idk 7-8 years.
I am pro-solar panel, and I was anti-wind turbine because the old fiberglass blade turbines filled with oil were dumb. But as I understand that technology, too, is improving & idk we’ll have to see how the new ones perform. Seems to me doing these things on a more commercial scale where you’re selling it to the grid can get a little fucky. There are reasons why it’s slowly taking off. There are reasons why people build, then sell, then the buyers sell. It’s probably a tricky endeavor with its own challenges.
You could get a smaller amount of panels at first, and later expand your solar farm. But I don’t know if that would keep the costs low enough to be manageable for you, as solar panels aren’t even the most expensive part of a solar farm. The biggest upfront investment would probably be all the electrical gear, e.g. the inverter, etc.
You could try getting a loan. Demand for renewable electricity is pretty high after all, banks might be willing to invest in something like this.Sounds like it’d be relatively easy to get a loan or investor with that kind of ROI. Seven years is nothing if it’s consistent and safe.
Is there a reason you’d have to go all-in, rather than starting with just a couple dozen panels first?
you wouldn’t pay for it all up front yourself… you’d set up a business and find an investor to provide the money you’d need. It’s a pretty easy sell for an investor as it’s a predictable money printing machine.
I mean…
So do 1/10th of that. 100k pays for itself in 7 years? Still have 9/10 of your land to play with.
Just a thought. turnkey operations are geist for land ownership.
No answer here, just wanted to say you inadvertently wrote one of the most interesting geolocation challenges I’ve seen.
Looks like Türkiye to me.
Are you interested in helping with this challenge? :D
I might try finding it later but still no idea what to do with the field, sorry :p
For now? Lease as much of that land as you can. Cover crop the rest. You do not want bare, tilled soil sitting there for a year+ as you figure out bigger plans.
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Mmmmm local grown food and a landlord!? 🍽️ 🍽️ 🍽️
:P
Ha. Anyone who’s farmed knows that ag leases are such a different scenario and very negotiable, especially if you are working with someone who wants to see the land in production or help young farmers etc. I WISH there had been more willing landlords when I was farming, it took me two years to find a place at all. Lemmings can hate once they’ve negotiated their own ag lease 👀 👩🏻🌾
As a yoga retreat site, what is your unique selling point? It’s a crowded market and that looks like plain old farmland to me. While peaceful and quiet, why would I stay there and not somewhere more scenic?
It is better to meditate in middle of nowhere (Total lack of distractions :D). Also lack of proper infrastructure enables people to feel more connected to nature which is not a lie. I have no great answer but I can try to make the community culture better than others by being there as owner and organizing events. I could keep it cheap or offer free stuff like free vegan food and free massages. If I can arrange a place to dance on, I could teach social dancing.
It does lack greenery but it felt pretty scenic to me when I was there. It is just kinda nothing in all directions. Nice breeze. Clean air. No bugs. I much rather be there than here (I’m in a normal apartment in a good location in the city) right now.
Wow that looks pretty desolate. Was it all farmland? Why are there absolutely no trees in sight?
Almost everything is agricultural land. There are some parcels with fruit and pine trees within 1km.
No trees maybe because of the climate or land owners want to protect investment potential of their land. There’s an industrial zone that’s expanding slowly:
It’s farmland, you see the plowmarks in front and in the back there are fields.
We really need forestland to bind C-atoms from the Co2 in our air. That would be the most heroic approach. Also wholesome since it creates habitat.
forest management resulting in slow money
