Is Buying and Holding Land a Good Idea?

[Michael Richardson]

Hi everybody. I'm totally new to all of this, but I've been a fan of the BiggerPockets podcast for a few years now. I'm wondering if I can get some advice. I am a school teacher who is looking for a way to afford a 2+ acre lot for my family to live on some day (hopefully soon). We only have about $5,000 to invest right now, but I'm wondering if that's enough to get started. One idea I have is to start buying and re-selling smaller lots of land in super rural areas of Utah, and using those smaller properties to build up enough money to afford 2+ acres in a more expensive area like Utah County. Is that a reasonable idea? Is there a better way to use $5,000 and turn slowly build up to, say, $100,000 through buying and selling land?

In the future, I would like to do more with real estate, but for now, my first goal is to own my own chunk of land in the next few years or so. My wife has MS and she's dying to get enough land for a horse someday soon, but I decided to be a teacher ... so that may be a ways off if I don't get my foot in the door with real estate soon. Ha ha.