RF&L - Ranches, Farms & Land

[whatstheofficerproblem]

I will explain why I started this thread in the Ideas forum.

 

After seeing Seedance 2.0 a lot of doomer stuff has been circulating. I think AI is a bubble, no doubts about it. AI is only as good as the data it has, it is not thinking or reasoning, merely playing with patterns. But the tail risk is that it's very real and we're inching closer to AGI at which point 'Singularity' will become a reality. All the companies that are spending trillions in order to cut labor and that would require ROI to show up fast for it to be justified.

 

So let's say if every company replaces the blue collar & white collar workforces right from Janitors to EVPs at that point unemployment would be so high that consumption will crash and no will have any money so whose dollars are these companies even competing for? I'd assume the powers that be will step in at that point buy income equality will be so high that people will revolt.

 

The tape in stock market is horrendous right now. A very paranoid way of looking at stocks has become the norm. AI is going to replace something or the other so sell everything and rotate that money into Semis. Is there even a point in buying stocks if that's the case.

 

Land. I'd like to see AI replace land & food. Which is why I'm mulling over using my bonus to buy some land. Doesn't matter if it's barren, remote etc. It's physical and it's tangible and hell the use cases are better than precious metals if anything. Thoughts?

 

I think this is the way.

[Valuebo]

Weren't you using your bonus to buy more GTLB? Feel like peak fear to me in software names if guys like you go looking at safe havens too.

[gfp]

I think it is a mistake young people often make to buy barren, remote, or otherwise inexpensive land just because it is land and it is in their price range.  If you can buy some land that is attractive and will be more attractive in the future, stick with that.  There are options in the physical world and a ton of easier ones to size to your bonus in the publicly traded world.  Just don't buy some useless pile of dirt just to say you have some land.

 

[Gregmal]

Well you look at the wealthiest men in the world…most own tons of land. But stock bois rather owns cable cos and stuff(ironically owned by dudes whose careers have seen them siphon money out of said cablecos to buy more land!)

[UK]

30 minutes ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

I will explain why I started this thread in the Ideas forum.

 

After seeing Seedance 2.0 a lot of doomer stuff has been circulating. I think AI is a bubble, no doubts about it. AI is only as good as the data it has, it is not thinking or reasoning, merely playing with patterns. But the tail risk is that it's very real and we're inching closer to AGI at which point 'Singularity' will become a reality. All the companies that are spending trillions in order to cut labor and that would require ROI to show up fast for it to be justified.

 

So let's say if every company replaces the blue collar & white collar workforces right from Janitors to EVPs at that point unemployment would be so high that consumption will crash and no will have any money so whose dollars are these companies even competing for? I'd assume the powers that be will step in at that point buy income equality will be so high that people will revolt.

 

The tape in stock market is horrendous right now. A very paranoid way of looking at stocks has become the norm. AI is going to replace something or the other so sell everything and rotate that money into Semis. Is there even a point in buying stocks if that's the case.

 

Land. I'd like to see AI replace land & food. Which is why I'm mulling over using my bonus to buy some land. Doesn't matter if it's barren, remote etc. It's physical and it's tangible and hell the use cases are better than precious metals if anything. Thoughts?

 

I think this is the way.

Why not JOE (or something simillar) then? Land, but also a productive business building on it? Liquidity, diversification etc vs physical land?

Edited February 12 by UK

[Gregmal]

Jokes aside I agree with @gfp

 

Buy good dirt it’s better than gold. Shit dirt you need a super cycle to do well, or you need to do a lotta legal/entitlement stuff to add value 

[Eng12345]

2 minutes ago, gfp said:

I think it is a mistake young people often make to buy barren, remote, or otherwise inexpensive land just because it is land and it is in their price range.  If you can buy some land that is attractive and will be more attractive in the future, stick with that.  There are options in the physical world and a ton of easier ones to size to your bonus in the publicly traded world.  Just don't buy some useless pile of dirt just to say you have some land.

 

Yeah I remember being tempted to buy land at $400/acre in southern missouri just to say I could. 

 

Sure it would now be $1000 an acre (underperforming) if I could ever sell it. 

 

Reality is it would be a liability - I'd have to pay taxes on it and think about it and waste my time with some crap hole undevelopable land that if I'm lucky I may hunt once or twice a year. 

 

Not all land is valuable. And for good reason. Neighbors can make easements hell. Water rights can make it undevelopable. Access to utilities is often problematic. All while your stuck with a albeit likely small tax liability and no way to offload it. Lots of land sits for sale for years at a time hoping for the next sucker with a dream to come by. 

[gfp]

My Father in law traded a beat up old pickup truck in the early 70's for a plot of land on the Wolf River in Mississippi.  Seemed like a great deal.  The land was river-front.  The pickup truck was only worth a few hundred bucks.  Half a century of paying property taxes on that land later and now Father in law has dementia and they tell me to figure out what to do with the lot.  The answer is it is basically impossible to sell and impossible to give it away.  The only option is to stop paying the property taxes and let it eventually go back to the county through that process.  Nobody would even take it as a donation for conservation because it comes with an ongoing tax liability.

 

I haven't totaled up the 54 years of property taxes but lets just say they would have been better off DCA-ing into stocks

[Eng12345]

My buddies recently bought a plot of land for hunting. They have fun going down a few times a month clearing it in preparation for next hunting season etc. They offered to let me go in on it and I declined because I simply don't have the time to mess with it. 

 

But beyond that I went with them to look at plots - you can't underestimate the power of neighbors sitting behind a screen. We looked at one plot that had legitimate easement access and were with a realtor with a marked truck/UTV. The easement access was via a gated road accessed after driving down 2-3 miles of county dirt roads. While touring the property we noticed roughly a dozen trail cams even though the owner had been dead for supposedly 3 years. Someone was obviously hunting it. On our way out we were surrounded by guys on four wheelers who were making their handgun ownership very prominent. "Just curious what you're doing down this way" etc. Don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure these guys were the ones hunting it and had a vested interest in scaring off any owners/making their lives hell. Definitely got the feeling a 30 rack of Busch Lattes wasn't going to solve that. Looking up the maps afterward we realized the property was surrounded in ownership by the same family under different aliases. 

Edited February 12 by Eng12345

[gfp]

My college roommate bought a steep lot in the Hollywood hills 15 or 20 years ago.  The Hollywood Hills!  How can you go wrong?!  Lot is unbuildable, nobody will let you carve into the hill to build the foundation, gain driveway access to the street (steep, on a curve) and you can plop a "for sale" sign on it for years and nobody will buy it for what you paid for it.  He couldn't even get a neighbor to bite. 

[NnnnotSoSmart]

5 minutes ago, gfp said:

I think it is a mistake young people often make to buy barren, remote, or otherwise inexpensive land just because it is land and it is in their price range.  If you can buy some land that is attractive and will be more attractive in the future, stick with that.  There are options in the physical world and a ton of easier ones to size to your bonus in the publicly traded world.  Just don't buy some useless pile of dirt just to say you have some land.

 

 

If you just want a piece of dirt, there's some cheap land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.

https://www.landwatch.com/colorado-land-for-sale/san-luis

 

Good read on the subject:

 

In May 2017, Ted Conover went to Colorado to explore firsthand a rural way of life that is about living cheaply, on your own land—and keeping clear of the mainstream. The failed subdivisions of the enormous San Luis Valley make this possible. Five-acre lots on the high prairie can be had for five thousand dollars, sometimes less.

https://www.amazon.com/Cheap-Land-Colorado-Off-Gridders-Americas/dp/0525521488

[gfp]

LOL - you too! can be part of bailing someone else out of a failed land investment!

[whatstheofficerproblem]

1 hour ago, Valuebo said:

Weren't you using your bonus to buy more GTLB? Feel like peak fear to me in software names if guys like you go looking at safe havens too.

 

Why would I buy software of all things with my bonus, it was LQDA.

[Red Lion]

1 hour ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

I will explain why I started this thread in the Ideas forum.

 

After seeing Seedance 2.0 a lot of doomer stuff has been circulating. I think AI is a bubble, no doubts about it. AI is only as good as the data it has, it is not thinking or reasoning, merely playing with patterns. But the tail risk is that it's very real and we're inching closer to AGI at which point 'Singularity' will become a reality. All the companies that are spending trillions in order to cut labor and that would require ROI to show up fast for it to be justified.

 

So let's say if every company replaces the blue collar & white collar workforces right from Janitors to EVPs at that point unemployment would be so high that consumption will crash and no will have any money so whose dollars are these companies even competing for? I'd assume the powers that be will step in at that point buy income equality will be so high that people will revolt.

 

The tape in stock market is horrendous right now. A very paranoid way of looking at stocks has become the norm. AI is going to replace something or the other so sell everything and rotate that money into Semis. Is there even a point in buying stocks if that's the case.

 

Land. I'd like to see AI replace land & food. Which is why I'm mulling over using my bonus to buy some land. Doesn't matter if it's barren, remote etc. It's physical and it's tangible and hell the use cases are better than precious metals if anything. Thoughts?

 

I think this is the way.

 

 

I think the same way. I think AI/robotics might very much increase the value of same farmland. But you need a lot of economies of scale to actually be profitable, so this makes it hard to buy in with your bonus. The logistics of actually growing food for profit though are very difficult. Again, this is something that could have a lowered barrier to entry (other than the farmland itself) with AI/robotics. 

 

Barren/remote land seems like it's probably a dead end without some type of catalyst. 

[gfp]

I own a third of a corn & soybean (alternating annually) farm in Indiana and am not getting more bullish on this stupid farmland investment because of AI.  If you want to focus on commodities, focus on energy and scarce metals. 

[Valuebo]

35 minutes ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

 

Why would I buy software of all things with my bonus, it was LQDA.

 

Apologies.

[Thrifty3000]

20 hours ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

I will explain why I started this thread in the Ideas forum.

 

After seeing Seedance 2.0 a lot of doomer stuff has been circulating. I think AI is a bubble, no doubts about it. AI is only as good as the data it has, it is not thinking or reasoning, merely playing with patterns. But the tail risk is that it's very real and we're inching closer to AGI at which point 'Singularity' will become a reality. All the companies that are spending trillions in order to cut labor and that would require ROI to show up fast for it to be justified.

 

So let's say if every company replaces the blue collar & white collar workforces right from Janitors to EVPs at that point unemployment would be so high that consumption will crash and no will have any money so whose dollars are these companies even competing for? I'd assume the powers that be will step in at that point buy income equality will be so high that people will revolt.

 

The tape in stock market is horrendous right now. A very paranoid way of looking at stocks has become the norm. AI is going to replace something or the other so sell everything and rotate that money into Semis. Is there even a point in buying stocks if that's the case.

 

Land. I'd like to see AI replace land & food. Which is why I'm mulling over using my bonus to buy some land. Doesn't matter if it's barren, remote etc. It's physical and it's tangible and hell the use cases are better than precious metals if anything. Thoughts?

 

I think this is the way.

If a bunch of white collar yups - up to their eyeballs in debt - are about to be all but unemployable, then what assets will they (or their lenders) be selling to stay afloat? I suspect I’ll own a nice chunk of land 10 years from now. But, I’m not in a rush to buy just yet. (I remember when I could have bought a multistory beachfront on 30A for around $300k during the GFC. Unbelievable. I ended up buying my primary home for $500k instead. No regerts.)

[73 Reds]

4 minutes ago, Thrifty3000 said:

If a bunch of white collar yups - up to their eyeballs in debt - are about to be all but unemployable, then what assets will they (or their lenders) be selling to stay afloat? I suspect I’ll own a nice chunk of land 10 years from now. But, I’m not in a rush to buy just yet. (I remember when I could have bought a multistory beachfront on 30A for around $300k during the GFC. Unbelievable. I ended up buying my primary home for $500k instead. No regerts.)

The original post in this thread was a bit perplexing.  Land is like any other asset.  If you are considering buying it, there has to be a reason.  If that reason is fulfilled through buying vacant, unimproved property then all the power to you.  But if you're looking at it as an investment with the idea of making money, there is much more to it.  As a property owner I own some (but not a lot) vacant land but each parcel has its own strategic objectives with include improvement and income.  

[whatstheofficerproblem]

19 minutes ago, 73 Reds said:

The original post in this thread was a bit perplexing.  Land is like any other asset.  If you are considering buying it, there has to be a reason.  If that reason is fulfilled through buying vacant, unimproved property then all the power to you.  But if you're looking at it as an investment with the idea of making money

 

The plan was to grow your own food so you could sustain yourself during the apocalypse that is Singularity. I don't believe in this, but it's a tail risk like I said.

[73 Reds]

6 minutes ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

 

The plan was to grow your own food so you could sustain yourself during the apocalypse that is Singularity. I don't believe in this, but it's a tail risk like I said.

OK.  Hopefully the apocalypse doesn't contaminate your land.  Maybe long-lasting foods like the kind sold by MyPatriotSupply would be an alternate choice?

[Whensthepaintdry?]

I don’t think in such a scenario your rights to a lot of land you don’t inhabit would do any good. I always wondered why there wasn’t a prepping topic on COBF. 

[thepupil]

guys...you hedge the apocalypse w/ a reliable revolver w/ enough to kill your family and yourself...to effectively hedge the most dire of scenarios is cost prohibitive unless you're worth like 9 figs...even then your hired guns will turn on you the second it gets real

 

just buy some OTM puts and live life 

Edited February 13 by thepupil

[Thrifty3000]

Apparently a family only needs about an acre of land (and decent weather) to sustain itself. Some seeds, livestock, tools, a couple Tesla bot farmers, and you’re farm to table, baby!

 

But… when you realize that it will cost less than $10 billion a year for about 200,000 bots/machines to replace the current 3 million or so farmers in the US, you’ll realize that farm labor cost per American will only be about 6 CENTS per day! (Cost of seeds and meat also plummets over time.)

 

Don’t buy farm land. Dig through your couch cushions.

 

There are several angles to the AI/robotics story. One that people have trouble wrapping their minds around is just how incredibly cheap basic things ARE about to get.

 

I think your best use of that bonus is to get out of debt! If the value of your labor declines it’s gonna be hard to pay off that loan. 

[Eldad]

Definitely something to this. 
 

The old families in Germany that still have money today only made it through WW1, Weimar Republic inflation, Nazi Germany, and WW2 by having productive land. They would have lost everything multiple times over in securities. 
 

In a hardcore wealth redistribution environment. Likely the last thing they will take would be your home place land that you work and manage. It was the last thing the Bolsheviks and the Maoists took. 
 

Also, it may be nice to have a separate, peaceful place to live and spend your time as the world in the city may devolve into something not very fun. 

Edited February 13 by Eldad

[Castanza]

22 hours ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

Land. I'd like to see AI replace land & food. Which is why I'm mulling over using my bonus to buy some land. Doesn't matter if it's barren, remote etc. It's physical and it's tangible and hell the use cases are better than precious metals if anything. Thoughts?

 

I think this line of thinking is oversimplifying things from many different angles and skips over a lot of speed bumps you could incur along the way.  

 

To me if you're paranoid about AI eating the world and your livelihood it's probably better to sure up your personal finances to remain flexible. Flexibility is leverage in tough times. Being upside down on "cheap land" with property values at all time highs when AI comes for your job doesn't sound particularly enjoyable. You'll end up dumping that land for a fraction of what you paid because you corn didn't grow and it turns out your wife doesn't like playing Little House on the Prairie.