Ep 22:Homestead Startup - How you can get more land for less money

hello everybody this is Troy and Kelly from red tulle house we wanted to take this opportunity and dive right into our topic of how to find land for your homestead and how to get the best deal on land so we wanted to talk about that land prices obviously are going up they're really expensive the per acre price just seems to keep climbing and climbing no matter where you are in the country and of course they don't make anymore land so it's not like there's new land coming available so we wanted to talk about and we will speak from experience what we did there were three key steps that we implemented in finding our land and we were able to get this hundred acres for a net out-of-pocket expense of twenty thousand dollars so that's two hundred dollars an acre that we were able to to get this land for so how did we do that we did well we did that in three key elements ultimate number one was how we looked for the land we didn't have we want to be as broad as possible with how we look for land and then be as creative as possible when not just using reelers in fact we took realtor's and got completely out of the scenario there step number two we had a vision we wanted to look at land maybe land that wasn't very was was raw or what would be the proper term was maybe a diamond in the rough needed some work we were going to trade sweat equity for money savings when it came to per acre price so we were looking for things that were maybe run down or or in bad shape had some issues there and step number three we wanted to utilize any natural resources that the property had in a responsible manner of course but look at that as an opportunity to help us with our goals of financial getting fun something that we could financially afford okay so step number one how we went about looking for land so back in 2000 we moved up here from Florida and we decided we wanted to find land rural but still had to be a commutable distance from the town that we worked in killing I both were working we didn't have kids at the time so we wanted to be able to commute a logical distance I think we set that to what what was our time that we said 45 minutes no more than an hour yeah we said I mean a we could we could probably tolerate driving we five-minute drive to work so so we had these certain parameters it took as hell it took us how long to find we were looking for about a year yeah so I guess it was so so yeah we looked we looked for about a year driving around and we we kind of took the map and we worked in Charleston West Virginia which is a capital of our state so we kind of drew this circle around the the map and said okay we're going to look in these County surrounding the capital but we're not going to go beyond this point so so what did we do you know obviously the logical thing you want to do is obviously just just call a realtor or look in the newspaper to see land for sale but we know that wasn't going to work a the reason why we suggest maybe avoiding a realtor is when a realtor lifts a piece of property especially raw land Realtors really don't like to mess with raw land but even once a piece of property was listed it was already listed at a maximum price there there was no deals to be had because realtor had gotten in there and said okay if I'm going to make this worth my while I want to make sure this property is listed at the maximum per acre that we can find around here so we wanted to avoid that and of course we were taking our time I wasn't going to tie up a Realtors time for a year as we were trying to find the perfect piece of property for us so what is that step of just looking around so in our situation we literally just drove around so driving around the countryside looking at different places and and our plan was okay if we see what looks like to be a large tract of land something that's maybe abandoned has an old abandoned farmhouse on it it's overgrown and all those type of things then then we'd make a little note okay look at that where how does it lay where's you know what's flood issues all those type of things that would kind of make in these criteria and so we found this piece of land and how would you describe this piece of land that we found when we found it Gilly scary yeah scary was definitely get a good word yeah it was not something that you would have gone searching for yeah I mean I think I found it first and then brought you down to look at it and what was your initial reaction when you when I drove you through the creek to access the property we thought it was a joke [Laughter] yeah yeah I guess it would seem kind of like that so the the original property when we found it in 2000 had an old farmhouse on it that probably was the neighborhood party hangout it was a house was completely gutted it was no world you could restore it garbage everywhere and what we discovered that this land had been abandoned had literally been forsaken for 20-some years so not only had things just fall into ruin but some of the local neighbors realized that hey there's a whole bunch of land here that nobody's using we can party on it we can dump a garbage on it we can take our tires and dump it on and all that type of stuff so yeah to say to say this property needed some work with is a bit of an understatement but but that's kind of the key to this so we found this piece of property and believe it or not this was the one that that rose to the top out of all the other ones we looked at and we knew this was going to be a balance of okay this place is trashed so we're going to spend a lot of time and money getting this place fixed or getting it cleaned up but what can we get a price for so so that becomes mind of next step is okay you find a piece of property like that's not listed how in the world do you find out who owns it so what we did is in our scenario we just started knocking on doors around the area hey do you know who owns this big piece of land up here that's called the trash on it and after three or four door knock knock sweet we found actually found the sister of the lady that was that was taking care of her dad that owned it says a long convoluted story but we were able to get the contact information started talking to him made an offer on the property of 55,000 and they jumped all over that's one of the things I could have probably have gotten for cheaper added a little bit more but we knew it had garbage we knew it had all those issues but also I knew it had from walking the property I knew it had a lot of timber on it and where we are in the Appalachian Mountains timber a hardwood timber is is obviously very it's everywhere but it's a very good resource and obviously a very good source of income so that was something I really wanted to check out that was why we we we liked this piece of property so so that's what we recommend obviously if you can't knock on doors give back in 2000 we didn't have the benefit of Google Earth we didn't have the benefit of being able to go to the County County website and be able to bring up the tax map and see who owned that but that's another good tip I'd like to give you if you're looking for a piece of probably especially if it's something that you can't just drive around say if you're going to try to homestead out of state where you live now is look at use Google Maps and just look at okay I want to try to homestead around this small town and Washington State or Idaho or whatever wherever you're going and you you find you look at the the satellite view of that and you just start to look around those areas and see what's developed what's undeveloped what looks like farmland or homestead or whatever you're looking for wooded mountainous flats whatever criteria fits your homesteading needs and then you can obviously find out what county that's in and start looking at County Maps and all that stuff is now public record it's always been public record at the courthouse but now it's online in public record so you can see the tax lay out you can see what people are paying in taxes on that property and you can see who owns it so if you see it you know it's owned by so-and-so and has been for so many years and there's a house on it and chances are they're probably not gonna sell but if you find hey there's 30 acres that have nothing on it the guy that owns it address isn't in the state that the properties and it's somewhere else and here are the taxes and are they delinquent are they in tahrir is is there an issue there so you may be able to find an opportunity where somebody's got a piece of land but don't anything to do with so that would be my recommendation and you can reach out to them specifically and say hey I'd like to talk to you about your property so that's what we recommend with step one is avoid the realtor do your homework drive around utilize technology look at the county tax maps those type of things and find land that looks like it's it's been abandoned or not used and then again reach out to the property owner there well as we've already mentioned our next step was of course was realizing that this property had some potential to it but also needed work so how would you describe the the condition of the property when we when we got back here past where the barn is now Kelly were aware that looked like somebody had tried to have a mechanic shop or a towing facility what what do you remember from all that well once we really started to dig into the property we saw there were a pile of tires where we discovered we think they must have had a mechanic's shop here they obviously never used to trash service here and just took all of their trash and threw it outside and appliances back in the valley there's appliances that still get unearthed as storms moved through so yeah I was Aran's appliances quite a challenge yeah I believe at that time we took 220 tires off the property so so we realized okay the trade-off was to get this property for fifty five thousand dollars so that's five hundred and fifty dollars an acre that the trade-off was to get it for that low price we had to do some work when we first bought it we couldn't come in and start building our house we couldn't come in and start homesteading or doing whatever we wanted to do at that time we were going to have to spend a lot of time cleaning it up as we were doing this cleanup one other good tip to give you if you find that you have a piece of property that you that you purchased and it has a lot of trash on it what we did is we kind of reached out to people to find out it were there any any scrap metal haulers any junk haulers and we found a couple guys that that was there that was their livelihood was to haul recyclable material so we had all these appliances we had old cars we had car parts like I found a 65 Chevy pickup cab inside a big multiple or rosebush I mean stuff that we unearthed and so fortunately we found these guys that would haul as long as I would bring it down close to the road then they would come and hold it all well what about natural resources well again depending on where you are homesteading obviously if you're out out in the desert you're not going to have timber options and I can only speak from the experience that I have but being in Appalachia being in the Appalachian Mountains there's tons of hardwoods you can see the camera behind you there's a whole hillside of hardwood so I'm no timber expert I'm not of them I'm not trained forced or anything but you can walk around a piece of property and see are the trees straight and are they big yeah that's that's way oversimplifying it but that's kind of what we looked at okay that looks like there's a lot of timber here and we even asked the property owner when's the last time you had a timbered and they said you know we had one small portion of a temperate and it was 20 30 years ago the thing I can't stress enough is you gotta hire a timber broker you got a higher Forester who knows what he's doing because there's all kinds of horror stories that you hear people getting messed over not only did I get taken for their money but their land was left in bad shape they did them together took more than they're supposed to they even went over on the neighbors property and took some sand now you're liable for that situation so timber broker is going to be your advocate to keep that from happening and to make sure your property's put back the proper way so so what we did with our timbering process is we hired a broker and that broker comes through and he actually walks the property and he inventories everything on here and literally makes a have a spreadsheet that he gave me of all the wood that he marked that would be marketable and we gave framers he said we don't want anything less than 16 inches in diameter cut that's what's called selective cutting and the specific hardwoods nothing small in 16 inches in diameter and that's what's available so he calculated a hundred and forty seven thousand board feet of timber he managed all that put it out the bed the loggers had specific details they had to follow they had to put it back a certain way long story short we sold one hundred and forty seven thousand board feet of timber for thirty-five thousand dollars so you look at the cost of the property fifty-five thousand he sold thirty five thousand dollars worth of resources off of it immediately and so we were only out twenty thousand at that point so that was a really good way for us to offset the cost of the property I'm not to mention that we still have quite a bit of timber left yeah yeah and that was the whole point of selective cutting again what we had each each piece of property is going to be unique as far as timber available but what we had allowed us to be that selective and still sell one hundred and forty seven thousand board feet but now fast-forward to today seventeen years later and I've got marketable timber standing here again so they could go back and cut the exact same spots that they cut and still put that same parameter in place and I could make maybe I wouldn't do thirty five but I can easily make tens of thousands of dollars ten again if I wanted to one thing to consider as well they're selectively cutting and there's also clear cutting or pulp wood cutting where they come in to cut everything now again that's a slash-and-burn another thing that people freak out about but you can do that you can manage that in a way again utilizing a broker imagine if you bought a large tract of land that's wood it has some flat areas but it's all under under timber you say well no I want this to be I want this to be pasture I need this cleared because I want to have animals on my homestead I want to have cattle goats pigs whatever well then you come in and say okay broker I want you to make manage the sell of this timber and we're going to clear-cut every bit of this and they're going to come in and obviously cut it take it all out and it's going to look a little rough initially but you'd be amazed how fast with the consultation of a good timber worker how fast that could be put under pasture here within a year you could have really good pasture land very quickly those are the steps we want to recommend and granted everyone's situation is going to be unique this isn't a one-stop shop to fix everything but I think you can learn from what we experienced and what we were able to do to really help maybe broaden your search if you're just going to real estate pages or lands of broker pages on the internet and looking for land that way you're just not allowing yourself to get access to as much property out there as there is it's just so many pieces of abandoned land that nobody wants to mess with and that was a situation with the lady that we bought their selves he said we talked about selling that years ago we knew there's no way in the world isn't bad shape it is nobody would ever want it so when we came to offer our money they were super excited and jumped all over it so ours is not a unique story there's gotta be hundreds if not thousands of pieces of property out there that are the exact same situation you don't mind rolling up your sleeves you don't mind getting a little dirty you don't mind moving a bunch of junk you don't mind waiting through other people's trash or or having to look through trash to see the vision of what the property could be then you can really get that land for a good price and really allow you to reach your home setting dreams way sooner than you think [Music] okay one more point I'd like to make about timbre you can see this is our property this was tempered 17 years ago it is a very thriving very healthy forest right now because of our selective cutting we're able to take out thin it out but not not totally destroying of course I have these awesome roadways through the to the woods and that gives me an opportunity for food plots and obviously access to the property where I normally wouldn't have had it I'm really a big fan of timbering if it's done responsibly this is a renewable resource it does grow back but we obviously have to be good stewards of what we're given and not trash the land but a temperate forest can be a healthy forcibly vibrant forest really get a lot of wildlife in will give you an opportunity to to build that type of habitat so I encourage you if you've got the opportunity look at that use that as a resource use that as a revenue for your property another thing as well is there's specialty markets look at specialty markets when you get into white oak per se right now a barrel stays market is really high because of all the craft beer industry so there's a lot of demand for barrel stave wood and that's primarily white oak a certain diameter with not a limb up to a certain point a nice straight tree no limbs certain diameter consistent looking trunk and that's really bringing in a premium so again that's why I always encourage hire a broker broker is going to be able to give you that insight obviously it since he gets a commission he's got some skin in the game as well so he wants to see you get the maximum dollar for your gender so check that out I think that's a great opportunity also don't forget to sign up for our e-newsletter if you go to read tool health.com there's just a link down at the bottom big red box that encourage you to sign up each month again we're giving stuff away we have a little gift we draw from our from our email knit lists randomly this month for the month of April it is a storm tech multi-tool really nice multi-tool I like it very sturdy it doesn't it's it's not cheap it's it's not flimsy it's a very sturdy tool I like it as much if not more than a Leatherman so we're giving that away and obviously be sure to check us on Facebook go to facebook.com slash read tool house farm and give us a thumbs up to give us a force on this video and subscribe if you haven't again we're trying to release a video every Friday dealing with topics of homesteading and we appreciate everyone watching take care [Music]

Channel: Red Tool House - Homestead

Views: 798,859

Rating: 4.8961291 out of 5

Keywords: buying land, how to find cheap land, red tool house, how to find cheap land to build on, how to find cheap land for sale, buying land cheap, buying land for homesteading

Id: Si_O1cq1lkA

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2017