I’m continuing to try to find a piece of dirt that meets my anticipated needs and desires. It’s been a bit of a slog, but I am noticing prices are coming down. Also, the markets (stock and metals) have been nice to me over the last six weeks so I have about 10% more to spend on an acquisition than I previously had. As I peruse the various real estate listing websites I do come across the occasional piece of property that makes me wonder what the previous owner was thinking. One such piece is this guy. I am really curious about this piece. The description says that the whole 11 acres is, to some degree, fenced. Okay thats kinda nice…a bit unusual but nothing really eyebrow-raising. But then theres an inner perimeter fenced with chain link. Ok, it’s bear country and maybe they wanna keep the deer outta the garden. Totally plausible. The three strands of outward-facing barbed wire atop the tall fence, on the other hand….. Barbed wire does nothing to deter deer and bears will go through it like it isn’t even there.

I get the impression this was either someone’s bugout location or there’s a serial killer out there who couldn’t meet his mortgage.

Regardless, its a hard no for me….$20k per acre, even with a well, is absolutely ridiculous. But its certainly an interesting piece of property and rather interesting to ‘read between the lines’ with.

From what I read, a ‘tiny house’ does not usually exceed about 400-500 sq ft. I was in a cottage this weekend that might be considered a ‘tiny house’. I was so curious, in fact, I measured the thing out. The main room was 14×17, which translates to around 238 sq. ft. But, it also had an upstairs loft with the same footprint ( although the sloping sides of the ceiling limited the amount of usable space.) To my surprise….it was quite livable. It had most of the amenities…real toilet, real shower, etc. Deficiencies were that there was no room in the bathroom for a sink, so the ‘kitchen’ sink doubled as a bathroom sink. But otherwise….surprisingly livalble for one person.

I wouldn’t want to live there for five years, but as a weekend or vacation kind of refuge it would be rather nice. What really caught my attention was that if I wanted a small, unnoticed, little ‘lifeboat’ to retreat to if I had to beat feet somewhere, it would actually be a very serviceable situation.

Of course, I’d deck it out in a more survivalist theme….heavy on storage options and off-grid resources. But I could very much see a smallish place like that working out quite well for a backup location.

As I said, it had an upstairs sleeping loft but it had no basement. If it had a basement, that would probably have made it pretty much ideal….plenty of storage while still maintaining a fairly small footprint.

At some point, I’m going to get my 20-40 acres of Montana and when I do, a small, well-equipped and well-appointed place like that might be just the thing while I set aside the greenbacks to build a more substantial palace at a later date.

It was interesting to look at such a small place with a survivalist’s critical eye and think ‘how could I better make this place fit my needs’.

Now, I will say that, as I see it, this was a tiny house but not a ‘Tiny House’ if you get my understanding. This was a stick-built-on-a-foundation sort of building (albeit looking like a gingerbread cottage) rather than the tiny-house-on-wheels that most tiny houses seem to be. And this had genuine grid power and water/sewage. No composting toilets, no water tanks. Real deal house. And the whole thing could have fit into the living room of my present day house.

Not my first choice of a place to live, but if I needed to go to a secondary location and spend a winter there or however much time until things calmed down, or I got back on my feet….well…it would actually be pretty nice.

So, maybe I’ll do some research and draw up some ideas for that day I finally get that acreage in the Middle O’ Nowhere.

Warmer weather has finally arrived in western Montana. This can be a bit misleading because Ma Nature has a habit of giving us a couple weeks of summer-like weather to lull us into letting our guard down and then … wham!…donkey-punches us with snow and arctic cold. Sort like kicking someone in the cajones as you walk out the door.

This winter was a pretty long one. I’m looking forward to doing more bike rising, spending time at the range, and possibly looking at real estate. That’s one problem with shopping for real estate in Montana – for almost half the year its under a blanket of white and inaccessible without a snowmobile.

There’s a couple pieces of property I’m interested in going to look at. It’d be a tough swing to put the money together but I can get about ½ of it together without too much pain, it’s the other half that’s a concern. I have a fully paid for house, but after what I had to go through to get it that way I am absolutely loathe to borrow against it.

The owner of the property is willing to carry the note but at an interest rate that I think is a bit much, and, as I understand it, when you engage in those sorts of deals the actual ownership of the property remains with the seller until such time as the terms have been met. Which means if he gets drunk, slams into a school bus, gets sued, and people come after his assets that means I’m frozen out as the land, still being in his name, gets sold to mee the judgement. Or perhaps I have that all wrong, I need to investigate it.

But, as Will Rogers said, “Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.” It’d be nice to have forty acres to hide in. Of course, I’d have to do some creative means of keeping the ownership information private…but one step at a time, y’know? First thing is to get the money together and buy the bloody thing. Hopefully if the weather is still good in a week or two I’ll go out driving in the boonies and take a look around at some of the prospects.

Well, it’s September which is not really the actual beginning of fall but for me it’s definitely a benchmark that it’s time to get out the Filson, but away the summer gear, and make darn sure the winter gear modules are ready for the vehicle and the Bag O’ Tricks(tm).

I’ve been wanting to purchase a chunk o’ land somewhere and have been keeping my eyes open, as well as being rather aggressive in my investing. Thanks to some reckless disregard and a whole lot of covered calls I’ve hit my goals for my real estate fund a tad early. I was talking to someone the other day about when to buy and I mentioned that I thought the current super-hot market couldn’t last forever and I wanted to be in a position to take advantage of it when it eventually cooled/burst. I speculated that when the feds finally raise interest rates and mortgage rates go back up, the housing market will slump a bit. He opined that he agreed with that but he had another take on things that I found fascinating.

He thought that as the eviction moratoriums come to an end, and recalcitrant ‘tenants’ are finally shown the door, fed-up landlords and people who had been meaning to sell their properties will flood the market with houses, driving the prices back down and perhaps ‘bursting’ the current housing bubble. An interesting thought. Regardless of the cause, at some point the prices will eventually ‘adjust’ downwards and I hope to be there, cash in hand, ready to put Rancho Ballistica aka Commander Zero’s Post Nuclear Bunker O’ Love And Lingerie Proving Ground into reality.

Ok…this looks…interesting.

Assuming the buildings and infrastructure aren’t falling apart, this looks like an interesting opportunity for someone who wants a property capable of housing more than just the immediate family.

A little out of my price range but….interesting nonetheless. Nice to know there are places like this out there.