What About Land?

I need a place to put my house, and that means land. (I'll set houseboats aside for the moment.)

There are two basic strategies for securing land: I can own land, or I can rent it. But if I look a little closer at land ownership, I see that I never actually "own" it since I must forever pay property taxes to the county. So in effect I can only sort of "rent" from the county. The fundamental arrangement for securing land for my home is therefore to pay a certain amount per year, year after year, for the right to stay on that land. If I stop making payments, then I must leave the land. Okay, that's fair.

Another consideration is the relationship of my home to that land. Again, there are two basic arrangements: my home can be physically attached to the land, or it can be "mobile". If my home is attached, then my home and the land become one. Lose the land, and I lose my home. If I want to relocate to a different piece of land, then I must leave my attached home behind and find a new one.

And finally, there are economic considerations. I would like to have the perfect piece of land for my home based on my particular needs and desires. At this stage of my life that means a large piece of property near where I work that's quiet and peaceful. It has a river, nice views, and plenty of wildlife. A place for a garden, and maybe some chickens. But buying that kind of land can be expensive! And I don't really want to *own* the land anyway, I just want to *live* there. So the question becomes: how can I live on the perfect piece of land for the least amount of money per year?

Having framed the problem of land in this way, I decided to rent a spot for my home from an individual that already owns my perfect piece of land! (Of course this approach requires a "mobile" home that is not attached to the land.) Viewing my problem in this way transformed it from a land search to a person search. So now I had to find a person who:

• Owns land that meets my needs and desires. Such as the right location, rivers, mountain views, garden spot, and so on.
• Could use some extra income. Maybe I can help someone else make *their* property tax payments!
• Are open minded. This is not a typically arrangement!

The last point of being "open minded" is perhaps the trickiest, because for all the people that meet the first two criterion, only a small percentage will be open minded enough to allow me to rent a spot on their land. That means advertising!

In October of 2011, I ran a Craigslist ad that was something like:

WANTED: Land to lease - $150/month (Rappahannock or Culpeper county)
Do you own land in Rappahannock or Culpeper county? Would you like to make an extra $150/month? I'll pay you $150/month to lease your land where I'll set up a platform wall tent (sort of a small, canvas house). This will be my home for the next 1 to 3 years. I want to live a simple life, close to nature. And I need your help!

I got a lot of responses from that one ad. And even though I didn't find the land I was looking for at that time, I'm convinced that Craigslist or similar advertising would yield results. In the end, a friend of mine offered to rent me a spot on his land, which I moved to in April 2012. It's very close to the $150/month that I was looking for, and I paid him a full year in advance so he got a decent chunk of money up front!