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?
Put, like, three single family homes on it.
Take a tupperware container set and test the water supplied to the field for PH value using a pack of litmus papers, then test the four corners and center of your field by scooping up some dirt, adding some water, and testing with litmus paper. Next, drain out the water and let it evaporate and look for signs of crystalization or condensates. Seal some of your soil samples to see if a healthy soil biome blooms in the sample, fungus and such.
A good healthy soil will have a strong biome. It and its water supply should be close to PH 6 to 7 for most tall grass and similar crops. There should be little to no saline in your soil, signs of that might indicate a brine pit forming in the water table near your land.
The most valuable single-season crops are crops that you can process yourself rather than selling to a granary. For examples: milled flour, corn byproducts, alcoholic ingredients, beets for sugar, bamboo, or switchgrass fermented into propionic acid biofuel. The major downside to being your own processor is that you’re also you’re own distributor which is very difficult.
Make sure to join up with any farming groups in your area and get insured for any farming you do.
There’s some great ideas in this thread but sadly I think most of them are fairly high risk.
Doing anything in this kind of scope is going to cost a lot of capital. If it goes wrong all that money is gone.
I would lease it to a farmer.
Maybe reserve a corner where you can build up some basic facilities. I’m not sure what’s popular where you are but here in Australia you can find places like this on hipcamp where you can camp for a few dollars a day.
Use your income to build basic facilities over time. Toilets, showers, kitchen, solar.
are you leasing it to a farmer? or are you building a poop resort? i can’t tell which one it is because you listed both
Pine trees for pulp wood? Pickle ball court?
Tbh, starting a sustainable timber operation seems like a pretty good idea if you can afford to wait 15-20 years for the investment to start to pay off. Idk, I guess you could offer it as a camp/hunting ground in the meanwhile.
You could look into rewilding the land
as an investment
Edit: but, also:
Edible forest
If I had this land, I’d grow food.
Idk the yours or OPs situation but the start up costs of running a farm are pretty high. Not to mention the actual farming work part of it.
MMM, field lobsters
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.
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.
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
You wouldn’t want that and I wouldn’t want that. Trust me. :D
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As in subsistence farming or trying to bring food to market? If the former, it will be a hard path, but possible.
OP is not in the USA
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.
That seems like far too little rain to do much farming without totally draining local aquifers.
I might be wrong but this area is relatively wet despite little rain. There’s even a small swamp in middle of my parcel. There’s a big river 1km away
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?
It’s farmland, you see the plowmarks in front and in the back there are fields.
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:
Dirt farming
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
You could use it as a camp or festival ground with very little upfront cost, especially if you plant some trees.
That might be illegal if it’s not zoned for residential. That’s how it works in the USA.
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?
Make poop disappear? You’re thinking of a porta-potty or like the toilets they have in national parks that are basically just giant pits that get pumped out by shit trucks every so often.
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)
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.
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.
