What started you on investing in land?

[John C.]

Just curious if there are any good stories out there...

I'll start -

Around early 1990's still in college and had some time to burn, was browsing books at Tower Records down in Marina Del Rey and saw something like "how to buy government land for pennies per acre." It was a small pocketbook and all yellow, government hand-outs of land sounded good where does one sign up?

But it turns out that homesteading was ended several decades earlier so I was out of luck. However, the topic of tax deed sales was briefly discussed and that stuck with me. Technically, you weren't buying from the government per se, but rather the local county tax collector.

Two years later I had graduated college and had a fine part-time job paying $7.08 hour, and, had moved out of Los Angeles and into the sticks. Luckily my new mortgage was $189/month, and I had enough left over to buy a subscription to the bi weekly newspaper. In the fine print there was noticed a tax defaulted land sale with properties ranging from $25 to $3600. (in my price range!)

Now fortunately I already had a savings of a few hundred dollars, and was able to bank a couple more pay checks before the auction. Drove about 80 miles and took my seat in the back of the courtroom on an early Monday morning. The first property up was 7.15 acres somewhere a few miles out of Lone Pine, CA. $1300 minimum bid, I squeaked out a bid, the entire room turned around and looked at me and there were no challengers - which was good because I had only brought $1400 cash. Sold for the minimum asking price.

Drove right out to take a look, liked what I saw - Mount Whitney, Lone Pine Peak, and views across the Owens dry Lake. Then a fighter plane from Ridgecrest made such a low level high speed pass that I thought the pilot was going to crash - scared the heck out of me for a second.

I really liked the fact that the land was bought and paid for in full. Taxes were reasonable about $24 a year. But above all, the gut feeling that the land was far more valuable than it cost convinced me that wealth was being built. Still have that property, but have bought and sold many more like it since.

Well that's it in a nutshell, anyone else have a story please share.