Poor Man Survival
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A Digest of Urban
Survival Resources
Prepper Real Estate: How to Buy Land with Little or No Money
Saved
You probably have
considered buying acreage and thought it well out of your reach financially.
Well, that would put you in a boat with many others who think that owning raw
land is only for the rich. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s talk
about how you can become a landowner with no money saved.
Still,
having a good piece of land sets you up with freedoms that most other people do
not have, particularly in a suburban sprawl.
Skill
Work
If
you are currently living in a tight-knit neighborhood in suburbia, doing things
like shooting arrows, making bow drill fires and building wilderness shelters
might bet you some strange looks. If you get into things like trapping, you
will likely get animal control called.
You
are also limited in how well you can get to know the natural world. Great wild
edibles like dandelion, wood sorrel, and common plantain are probably in your
yard but beyond that, you could struggle to get to know different species of
trees and wild edibles.
If
you have your own plot of wooded land, you can do most anything you like on it,
if it’s big enough. You can even manage it to have the plant and tree species
that you prefer for survival needs.
Leisure
Sometimes
its just nice to go take a camping trip. It doesn’t have to be about survival
skills or methods, it doesn’t have to be about anything but getting out and
enjoying nature. During peak camping season you might struggle to reserve a
campsite at the more popular locations.
This
won’t be the case if you have your own plot of land.
Bugout
Location
The
bugout is hardly about a bag or a location on its own. Its one of the most
misunderstood skills in all of prepping. A well thought-out and practiced
bugout plan is something that you should be very proud of. It takes a lot of
thought and a lot of work.
All
that said, one of the first things to consider is that bugout
location. Where is the goal? If you own land that means you are
going to have access to that location without question.
Bunker
Location
Though
the bunker has been synonymous with preppers the reality is that most of us
don’t have the money or the space to accommodate a bunker. Furthermore, many
preppers want no parts of going into a hole in the ground to escape the dangers
above.
Still,
if it’s a goal of yours and you have the means, having raw land is the best way
to bury a bunker and keep it a secret. It will be near impossible to keep OPSEC
in mind while burying one such bunker in your backyard!
Profits
By
going through the raw land buying process, you might find that you have a knack
for finding and buying properties for very little or even no money. This might
become a side income or a method of making all your income from buying land.
I
am sure you have never thought of yourself as a land merchant, but it can be a
great side income or even a new career!
The
year before I quit my job and started working freelance in the prepping and
survival niche, I was exploring becoming a realtor in raw land. As an
outdoorsman, it held a lot of appeal. I spent about 3 months really working
hard and learning as much as I could about the business. However, my first sale
went sideways, and I decided it might be better to wait for this career.
I
was working a full-time job and I started the deal in a hurry and used some
methods that the pros did not recommend. I didn’t follow the process and, well,
it didn’t work out in my favor. Through that journey, I learned about some
interesting ways that people make dirt cheap offers on raw land and walk away
with their own land or properties for resale.
To
get started you are going to need to understand what tax liens and tax deeds
are. So let’s start with that.
Tax
Liens
If
you don’t pay those horrendous property taxes that come each year, you can
incur a tax lien on your property.
A Tax Lien is the first major step
the IRS takes against individuals to collect back taxes. A Tax Lien gives the
IRS a legal claim to your property as security or payment for your tax debt. It
is used to protect the government’s interest in your assets. – www.irs.gov
Tax
Deeds
If
you decide to ignore the tax lien the government can take ownership of your
property for not paying those taxes that caused the lien.
A legal document that grants ownership of a property to a
government body when the property owner does not pay the taxes due on the
property. A tax deed gives the government the authority to sell the property to
collect the delinquent taxes and transfer the property to the purchaser. Such
sales are called “tax deed sales” and are usually held as auctions where the
minimum bid is the amount of back taxes and fees owed. – www.irs.gov
The
interesting thing about all this tax deed and tax lien business is that our
intrusive government will not only take your property if you don’t pay the
taxes on it, it will also make your financial woes public to everyone around
you.
Just
by contacting or visiting your local county treasury you will be able to get a
list of tax liens on properties in your area. You can do this for any area, as
well. While it might seem a little predatory, you will be able to sit down and
really get a grip on who is going to lose their property to the local
government.
If
capitalizing on another’s misfortune makes you a little queasy, let me give you
a little background on how many of these properties wind up in lien status and
beyond. Every day people die. We are facing a wave of retiring baby boomers and
that the aging population is leaving behind money and property.
Sometimes
those who inherit land don’t want it. They may live states away from the land
that was given to them. The last thing they want is an annual bill, and some
can’t even afford it! They would rather it just go away. This land is often
what gets eaten up by these tax deeds.
You can
play the middle man and get between the government and the property owner. This
comes down to present a cash offer to the owner for that land.
Your Tax Refund
About
this time every year, even Americans who don’t save a penny, get a little bump
in the finances. It comes in the form of a tax refund. This amount of money
varies for every person but with the new tax laws, most everyone should see
some sort of a return.
This is
how you make your cash offer for that raw land. This is the money you use to go
after that special piece of property that someone may just be trying to unload
anyway.
Imagine
having a burdensome piece of land that you want nothing to do with. Imagine you
are letting the taxes pile up and then someone comes along and offers you $500
bucks to take the burden from you. Maybe they owe $200 in back taxes so you
walk away with a property for $700! I know there are people who are gonna say:
“Even
with a tax return, I don’t have that kind of money!”
Well,
offer what you can for that land and maybe they will bite. The worst case
scenario is that you go into an offer with no land and you leave with no land.
At least you are back where you started.
Tax Deed Auctions
Another
great way to get the most out of that tax refund, if you don’t want to make an
offer directly to a landowner, is to attend local tax deed auctions.
When
the government takes possession of a person’s land, they don’t want to keep it.
The last thing they want to do is upkeep a piece of land and not collect taxes
on it. So their motivation is to find a new owner of that land. Move it to the
highest bidder and get it back on the books as taxable property.
They do
this with tax deed auctions. You can get a list of the properties that are
going to be auctioned from your local treasury. These auctions happen on
varying basis depending on the locality but you can take your tax refund and go
bid on some properties.
If you
go this route be sure you show up with a set of properties that you already
know, from the provided list, to assure you have clear goals and budgets for
bidding. You don’t want to come home broke with a new property either! So you
have to do some research and set hard limits on your purchase amount.
Researching your Land
Probably
the most important part of this whole process is the research you do before
contacting an owner or before attending an auction. You have to know what
you’re after or else you are just shooting in the dark. Don’t wind up thinking
you got a great deal and finding out you bought 5 acres of mosquito-infested
swampland abnormally high in radon.
Property
Type
If
you are in the market for true raw land you are going to be looking for
residential/agricultural land or just agricultural. These are the tracts of raw
land that you want to buy and will be listed among other types of properties
like residential and commercial.
Property
Size and Lines
While
the paper might say 15 acres you need to what the property lines look like.
What is the shape of the property? What if its 15 acres but its only 50 yards
wide. Just a pencil-shaped property that is very hard to take advantage of.
Some
properties have no road frontage either or access! I know that sounds crazy but
it’s true. You have to be aware of that or you might wind up owning one and
having to invest in an easement to even get to your property.
Flood
Zone
Is
your property in the flood plain? A very important and very simple question to
answer.
Location
Be
sure that your location matches up with your needs. While you might get a great
deal on a property that is 200 miles from your home, can you get there in an
emergency?
Owner
This
is one of the trickiest parts of the process and you might need to call the
city or county to get more information on a property. A property location is
not going to give you the address of a property owner. As we mentioned the
property could be in Virginia and the owner might live in California
However,
having a direct mailing address to them means you can send an offer for that
land.
Conclusion
A
piece of property gives you lots of options. Most preppers dream of having a
piece of land to call their own. Whether that be the beginnings of a homestead
or just a secure place to bugout is up to that person. I think we can all agree
that some land is better than no land.
If
you find that piece of land and you are closing a deal, remember, without a
deed you have nothing. Be sure that when money changes hands there is a deed
for that property present, or you trust that it’s coming to you. Without a deed
on that property, you don’t own anything.
Contracts
can be a big help when you are dealing with property owners. The state will
have the proper paperwork if you go the route of tax deeds but buying from
individuals will mean that you cover all your basis. Consult a realtor or
lawyer to be sure you don’t get taken advantage of.
I
hope you are inspired to use this information in this article to get your own
piece of heaven. Remember, there are few resources that cannot be reproduced.
Raw land is the most precious of them all.
Author’s
Bio
James
Walton is the host of the I AM Liberty Show (www.iamlibertyshow.com) a podcast about 21st-century freedom. He is a freelance writer in the prepping
and survival niche and likes to keep a healthy balance between prepping and
enjoying life.
NOTE: My wife and bought and sold several properties
over the years using creative financing methods which often included seller
financing or land-contract deals and lease-option which were very lucrative to
buyers in depressed areas in which we sold. I’m sure you can find examples of
contracts for such financing online.
Here’s my idea for a new bill
Since term limits
never seems to gain any traction perhaps we should entertain the idea of zero
pay for elected officials after their third term in office…give them their
office, expenses, health insurance while in office and a living allowance only=much
like our Founding Fathers and see how many decide to remain in office.
Bruce ‘the Poor Man!’
Final Notes…
Contributors and subscribers enable the Poor Man Survivor to post 150+ free essays annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales & ecommerce alone.
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Additional
Resources
Social
Chaos Survival Guide: Savvy Precautions To Make You Self-Reliant
A
Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production
2 comments:
Would love to buy an island paradise with clean water, plenty of fruit trees and far away from idiot progressives-ha ha!
Some of the local auctioneers in our county sell off property too-sometimes, but not always, you can pick up some deals.
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