Renaissancemen.org

I’m going to break this down into a few sections here. The WHY part of this is going to discuss by background and motivations. If you don’t care about that – you can easily skip to the next section (Raw Land) which discusses what I’ve been finding, and what challenges are out there. And – things to look for and how to strategize on buying.

Why???

As a kid, we camped all the time at French Creek State park in PA. I remember it was $7 a night, and my parents, me, and my brother would drive 15 minutes there with our tent, in our piece of shit Volare, and camp for 3-4 days. We didn’t have a lot of means, so this was an affordable way they could take us on vacation. Eventually when I was like 10, we started staying in motels after my mom got her CPA. But the adventure of it, I really liked. I highly enjoy sitting by a campfire and talking with close friends. Or just staring at it. Or reading. It’s tranquility to me, and centers me.

Additionally, I was in Webelos, which is the second rung of the Cub Scouts ladder. I quit here rather than go into Boy Scouts due to my objections with getting a religious badge and having to meet with a pastor. A friend of the family had recently died, and it hit me hard. I was not a fan of God, and with that, wanted no part of associating learning to scout with the bible. That being said, I had spent 5 years in the Scouts and learned a ton! I had also been to Hawk Mountain (boy scout camp in PA) for a week long camping trip. While I don’t remember the 900 knots I had learned, a lot of the skills I did learn I enjoyed a lot.

In the last 6 years or so, it’s been calling me again. With the poconos trips I take with the camp fires, and the amount of hiking/biking I had done, being outdoors rejuvenated my soul. It had me wanting to buy an RV, and later try and build a mountain retreat. Unfortunately – the wife loves the beach, and with that, having and RV to travel all around is hard to justify and trying to build a mountain retreat with others for a business has too many challenges to begin to even name.

Likewise – many of you are here due to my gold and silver writings, and with this, there is a doomsday element that has come front and center since 2019 for me. This had to do with stacking PMs, stacking lead, and stacking years of food. Like it or not, many of us need some sort of “bug out” plan. Part of me also wanted to buy a rural house and raise chickens and have a garden – but we also then settled on the suburbs in a development with an HOA. While I do love my home, I yearn for times to be away in my mountain bliss.

I had also spent much of my early years fishing with my father, so I wanted to have something with access to a stream or river so I could fish if I wanted. While I despise eating fish, I also understand the importance of having access to it as a food source if SHTF.

Likewise, I feel that access to a LOT of land can help if I would need to hunt deer, wild turkey, or rabbits. Having access to massive amounts of woods can also provide a fuel source for heat or cooking, as well as the means of building crude or expansive shelters. I have spent years watching a lot of bush-type of things.

While the comfort of living in a home you built is extraordinarily awesome, many of us feel the situation in this country today is untenable for a long term situation and something is coming to a head. Likewise, many PM people do not have an exit strategy. They just want to stack hundreds or thousands of oz of metals to then what…convert it to shitty fiat? No – watching Mike Maloney’s wealth cycles also then helped me understand that when PMs DO go bananas, we should rotate them into something.

With understanding the wealth cycles, you also understand that houses/land (as well as stocks) have been at recent all time highs, and previous cycles suggest that the metals will have a lot of catching up to do and then perhaps outperform.

So IF we see $100 silver, what do we DO with it? I play the miners with the idea that the stocks will go silly and thus any fixed rate mortgages or debt I have, I will be able to pay it off with the miners. IF there is a repeat of 1980 and 2011, to me there is a way that all of my current debt will be wiped out. House, cars, loans, whatever. *poof*

Which then begs the question, THEN WHAT??

Well, things you rotate into, should be undervalued to that asset and/or generate revenue. For example, many may see dividend stocks as that sort of play. And, maybe it is.

Real estate can be a rather illiquid investment. And, it can be highly sensitive to the most recent sales around it. Part of MY thesis is, and has been, that things are going to get pretty tough, and with that, there will be massive liquidation of real estate and with this, land. Raw land is FAR more illiquid than land with a house on it, so you also want to make sure that the land you buy isn’t to try and “get rich”, but rather be a destination, or have utility.

Meaning, I envision a time in the next few years, where houses will plummet in price, and with this, a LOT of land will come to the market. At the same time, my miners will rocket in value. While I reserve the right to be wrong, this is MY thesis. Do your own diligence.

This also led me to buying my first pickup truck 2.5 years ago. I was never a pickup truck guy, but suddenly finishing my basement with drywall needed the ability to haul that stuff. I started looking at RVs, and the idea of hauling an RV. My only regret with the pickup is that it cannot haul bigger RVs. But like houses, I feel car values will also plummet – so I may eventually trade in the Ram 1500 for a Ram 2500. Who knows. In my type of career, these days, you can do a lot remote, so I don’t have to worry about the discomfort of a 2500 for a daily driver an hour each way.

I then went to Bass Pro shops yesterday (sister company of Cabella’s) and saw the tents, the sleeping bags, the chairs, the stoves – even the meat grinders and slicers. And I knew I needed to start writing about this.

Raw Land

In trying to find raw land, I had found something like 6 acres by me for $25,000. I hopped in the car, went there, and it was a steep cliff down, and then a steep cliff up the other side. No house could ever be built there. There were houses right next to it in the development. There looked to have access to a tony stream, and the only flat part looked like it could be part of a flood plain.

When I started, my eyes lit up at the AMOUNT of land versus HOW CHEAP it is. What you find, is a LOT of problems.

1. STEEP hills, to the point where it is pretty useless. This is what I was finding close to me a few years ago before I understood much about this.
2. Cannot get water – no perc test done. Look up costs of drilling for water, it can get expensive. Maybe you foot the cost for this, but you have to ask, why doesn’t it have water? Could previous owners not get water and then decide to hand that steaming bag over to you?
3. Cannot get power – while boondocking might sound fun for a weekend, you might want to have power ACCESS in case you want to build someday
4. Cannot get sewer, or problems with putting in some sort of cesspool
5. Landlocked. Much of this is marketed as ‘hunting land’- but you have no means (or legal rights) to driving to and from your property. In fact, you might have to trespass on someone else’s property just to get there.
6. Flood plain – I have seen a TON of property for sale that has access to water, but it literally floods to the point you could never build there, or even reliably camp there. That is someone else’s bag you don’t want to hold
7. Mineral rights – some of these I’ve seen “seller will hold mineral rights”. What you are missing here is that you buy the land, and then the week later oil rigs are all over your property. We have a LOT of fracking and nat gas in PA, so I see this a lot. I will NEVER buy land without the mineral rights.
8. Timber rights – I have also seen where “seller will hold mineral rights”. This means you buy this awesome woodland area, and you show up next week and the entire property has been logged. And you have no rights to that income.
9. Location too far out – while we all like the idea of having a remote location, you then have to worry that if the nearest decent town is an hour away, can you ever even get home builders to come to your property to build a house?
10. Access to conveniences – like the above, what if you are 2 hours away from the nearest hospital? Living off the grid sounds fun until you break an ankle all by yourself. No one is coming for you. So I want something remote, but not TOOOOOO remote. Think about going to your property, then wanting to go to Home Depot to get something, and it’s 90 minutes away?
11. Zoning – maybe you want to build a house on it and it’s zoned for agricultural? Or you want to have a small farm, and it’s zoned for commercial?
12. Pollution – what if 50 years ago people were doing “tanning” on the property and chemicals leached into the soil and your well would be polluted?
13. Title – what if someone is trying to sell you something they don’t have clear title to? What liens exist on the property?
14. Back taxes and other problems – maybe this property is cheap because there’s all kinds of encumbrances
15. Not allowed to build – I have seen this as a restriction of the land. Could be in a flood plain.
16. Sub-dividing. Maybe you want to buy 200 acres and sub-divide. Can you?
17. Rights to land/easements – maybe you want to put a house on a lot and go to build and find an easement for a right of way exists right where you want to build. With the sub-dividing, perhaps you may have a problem putting in some sort of access for the to their land. Do YOU then need to create easements for the sub-dividing?
18. Financing – if this is a second home or investment property, you may need to put down a LOT more money. Maybe 40%? Do you have this?
19. Access to internet/phone? None of any of this does you any good if you cannot communicate with anyone.

Let’s stop here for a second. This is what you find in a lot of postings. I watched a video Saturday by someone named Kristina Smallhorn about buying raw land – she gives a ton of good tips in this, and many other videos she has. One thing I have seen in her videos from Louisiana is “walking the land” and use “muck boots”. To me, this makes sense everywhere – and my worry is high grass where I’m from and walking around and stumble into a copperhead nest or some snake hits at you. Muck boots!!

One big thing she talks about is putting together a spreadsheet. This is probably the best tip. I have probably spent 20 hours on zillow over the last 6 months looking at all kinds of things, and yeah – something you hit the “love” for, you go back and were like, “why the hell did I like that?”

Something else was of interest to me – days on the market. Some of these that have been on the market for a LONG time, perhaps there are serious flaws – like being landlocked. Others may be priced too high. I saw one yesterday that has come down $100k in price over the last 6 months, as it looks like a motivated seller.

But something occurred to me with raw land. Do I want to go through the hassle and expense of building something new? Do I just want to build a cabin? What NEEDS do I have for this?

I then expanded my search. And I wrote to Kristina yesterday saying how I appreciated her videos, but figured there’s a decent video in this question.

What if you want to look for a LOT of land that already has a house on it?

Kristina wrote an amazing email back about some of my questions, but I still think there’s a lot of value in this discussion. I think it’s imperative that before you make the spreadsheet, start listing out what NEEDS you have.

For me, I wanted to be able to have a place I could go to on weekends when it is cooler outside. So I can fish, hunt, and shoot guns with my friends. That’s the basics. This then potentially has me at a specific radius from my house. It also needs a specific location of the land to be able to shoot on (for example, I think in PA you cannot shoot within 200 feet of a road, but this is the kind of thing I would need to look up). I also wanted to be near water for fishing and potential drinking water if things got tough. I’d like to have a well, and I’d also like for there to be a freaking bathroom. As much as you think camping is fun – if you aren’t at a camp ground, suddenly those beans you ate heated up over the fire at noon have a different meaning 6 hours later. Meaning, it makes sense to have a bathroom.

So instead of building, why don’t I just try and look for 50-100 acres with a house already?

I did find some I had some interest in, but as you could imagine, all are in some version of disrepair. Some look like they should be leveled. Now, if you aren’t a handyman, you probably shouldn’t be buying these. Think about all of the stuff you’d need to replace. Is there a Home Depot nearby? What about local contractors, are there any within an hour?

I think now there’s a real question you should ask yourself. Or perhaps several questions…

1. Can I live in there, today, as is? This can be influential on whether or not you can go up on weekends to make some repairs. If you aren’t local, and cannot stay in there, that’s a massive problem
2. To what extent of repairs are needed? If you are sitting on a pot of gold to completely renovate the house, have at it. Most of us do not. I saw on one a roof looked seriously rough. On 150 acres. Relatively inexpensive. So can you borrow and then afford to pay for a $20,000-$30,000 roof? Was there water damage?
3. How much do you think all repairs might be? I saw one property with 23 bedrooms on 150 acres across several houses, and a new horse barn . It was a metal barn-like thing for the main house. Pretty cool. I want to invite some friends up. 23 bedrooms could invite all of my friends AND their kids. I seriously looked at this listing for WAY too long. What eventually had me moving on was the bill of repairs just started going higher and higher – the main thing was I deduced the first floor was a laminate floor – not LVT, but the cheaper stuff. Perhaps 4,000 sq ft of it would need to be replaced.
4. What do you ACTUALLY need? The 23 bedroom thing was interesting, but I think the max might be 5-6 bedrooms. The 23 bedroom thing also had a house that looked like you could rent, perhaps offset some of the mortgage. But I’m 3.5 hours away, and I have no relationship with any contractor or know if there’s even a rental management agency anywhere near there. Maybe someday I have a compound to be able to sub-divide, but that day isn’t today.

I also saw several BIG houses with lots of land – but there was no electricity. In PA, we have Amish. Well, they have them sort of everywhere now, but in NY you see some of these farm houses with 7 bedrooms and mysteriously no electricity run in the house. I cannot even begin to imagine the cost to try and getting that setup, as you’d probably have to take everything down to the studs.

For me, it starts to become an issue with a lot of these with a house already. Many of these are in such bad or outdated conditions, that they don’t add much value, if any, to the property. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few I found that were decent, but perhaps maybe 100k over the budget I wanted.

For me – what do I NEED versus what I WANT?

I believe every single person wanting land will have a different set of requirements, which is why this is interesting. I think BEFORE you create the Excel sheet, list out NEEDS.

Here are my needs, in order of importance

1. A specific price range. Maybe 300-400k. I don’t care if it is 1,000 acres for 700k, it’s probably out of my budget.
2. Within about 3 hours. I might have some wiggle room with this, but meeting ALL needs for me, but being in North Carolina might not help. This has a nice wide radius for me though – perhaps West to Pittsburgh, north to NY/PA border, east to poconos, and SW to West Virginia. I see a LOT more about 4 hours away, but then you start to worry about being able to get there.
3. Sewer/water/power – I don’t want these headaches. I need them either guaranteed or already there. This can get expensive, and there’s a lot of unknowns. You buy the property, then find you cannot put any form of cesspool or sewage treatment on your property, you are screwed.
4. Need to be able to shoot rifles, perhaps 200 yards or more. This lends to wanting SOME cleared area and mostly wooded. This means I don’t care if it’s 50 acres, but if it’s skinny land with houses around, it’s a no go. You also have to worry about what is down range from you. So in this respect, some steep hill at the end of a property where no one lives is nice.
5. 50+ acres, preferred 100+. I have found a LOT of these, and many FAR below this price range, with MANY of them have houses. While many of you might balk at the land size, if you look in the right areas, you can most definitely get large lots. One of my goals here is to have land to pass down for generations that can be subdivided and built on.
6. Access to water, preferably a body with fish in it. But IF it’s in a flood plain, perhaps only a small portion of the land. Meaning, I’d love to be able to walk easily to it to fish, but don’t want the water anywhere near the house/cabin. Not too fond of ponds with stagnant water and mosquitos.
7. Lots of woods. I don’t mind hills so much, as long as it is not vertical. Part of this is I’d like to hike the property. But I want a lot of trees. This also gives me optionality to have some of it timbered. With a 200 acre lot, I don’t see an issue with a few acres a year being cleared to pocket the money. The first few can potentially be where I might want to put a house/RV.
8. Ability to grow food. This is one reason the 23 bedroom thing appealed to me. There’s a massive garden next to the one building. I don’t need a mega garden, but I do enjoy some things that are low maintenance.
9. Be able to plant berries/fruit trees. This might attract animals, but might also be a good and easy way of hunting lol. I grew up with berry patches in my yard, and I used to spend hours getting the raspberries and black berries. I would like fruit trees to be able to get apples.

WANTS

1. Would like a house already there, with relatively minor repairs to do. I can deal with “outdated” but structurally broken, is different.
2. Be able to install solar/batteries on the house, or in a field adjacent to the house. This needs south-facing to the sun open. This is why it is a want, may not have a lot of south-facing land.
3. If no house there, want to be able to put an RV there and hook into water/sewer/power until/if I build someday.
4. Would like a barn or outdoor structure for equipment like snow plow, mowing, farming, animals.
5. Be able to generate income from the property someday. Whether it is renting something out, sub-dividing and leasing, timber rights, whatever – I like the idea of being able for this property to be able to bring in some sort of productive value.
6. Be able to raise chickens/animals. Chickens are of interest to me for eggs and meat. But if I’m only there part time, this isn’t necessary. Someday, maybe I retire to this property. I’d like to be able to have animals. However, I don’t know much about this and why this is a WANT versus a NEED. If I’m bugging out due to SHTF, this is important as a want. However, if I’m there 30% of the year, I can’t have animals or they would die.
7. Be within 20 minutes of civilization, like Home Depot, medical services, grocery, etc.
8. Be within 30-60 minutes of something to do.

MY solution

My solution will be different than yours. Speak to your own financial advisor. I feel that in the next 12 months, we are going to see a lot of selling off, on a lot of things. We are seeing unemployment trickle up, but sales and numbers are going down everywhere for business. Therefore, I’m expecting a lot of layoffs. This then potentially crosses paths with those who are in hock up to their eyeballs in credit cards. Those who are “house poor” and lose their job, might feel that they can just sell their home next week and pocket $200k equity. This might be a false way of thinking. I feel that as the rates stay higher, and unemployment creeps up, you will start to see a cascade effect of homes/land being liquidated. It’s also possible that my dream compound is a soon-to-be failing AirBnB that I can get for pennies on the dollar. I don’t know. You get the idea. I feel we are still wayyyyy too close to the top to buy, today. However, a distressed seller is a distressed seller, and now might be an interesting time to find deals that fly under the radar. So you need to keep vigilant on your searches.

Timing is important. I don’t want to buy now at 8-9% rates and with needing 40% down, this would require me to liquidate my PM stocks. I don’t want to do that now. However, IF I can get the rates down to perhaps 5% and start to see some fire sales, then might be a good time to try and get a place with the least amount down. I can also save a lot of cash over the next 12 months to assist. Probably 12-24 months away from this. Why? Because I also want my PM stocks to launch into orbit. While I saw a post that seems like many of these stocks CAN go 10-20x, that also might be over a 3 year period and not necessarily by March 2024. If you can time it right, before EVERYTHING goes somewhat vertical, you can:

1. Use the least amount of cash possible to get into land at 5-6% – assuming rates start to fall due to poor economic conditions
2. Have the carrying cost for 12-24 months, betting on your stocks going 10-20x. Carrying cost can be paid by your rental FCF.
3. Pay off the loan with profits from the stocks.

Why? IF we run into a scenario where you are talking $75-125 silver and $3000-$5000 gold, it’s also possible that you are seeing EVERYTHING melt up, including the land. I feel there needs to be a deflationary event in land/real estate FIRST, before I buy, and with this, hopefully I have a 3x by then in PM stocks (OR a pile of cash saved) and can sell 1/3 of it to fund my downpayment. Let the rest of the stocks run over years.

Now – the hope is this is perhaps a $150-200k parcel for 50-100 acres, OR a $300-400k parcel WITH a decent house for 50-100 acres. IF it is a parcel only, that’s when I look to get a decent 3-5 year old RV to be able to put it on the land that should have sewer, water, and power. Maybe down the road I build a house there and sell the RV. It would give me the respite for years, the ability to use the land – before committing massive capital to building a house. Maybe after 2 years I don’t like it. I can list the land (hopefully as prices start going up) and sell the RV. Even if I lose a few percent on the sale of the land after years of usage, it’s worth it for the vacation use. A parcel for $200k at 6% rates with 20% down is $1200 per month. It costs you perhaps $600-1000 a month to park an RV in an RV park. Also – if you have significant free cash flow from rentals (I do) this can pay for the mortgage easily enough, as long as you can provide details on rental income over x amount of time. So maybe due to the income from that, the lender may not need y amount down. Who knows.

The hope then is with the PM stocks going vertical by 2026, it is simply paid off in full by then. This would also pay off the loan on my current home and loans.

The trick is the timing about when to buy, along with understanding your specific needs and wants, with your specific budget. No one is going to catch the low or top, but understanding the mechanics here might help. Finding a motivated seller on a great property is a dream, and those listings that have been out there for many months/years with prices dropping might be prime for the taking.

Good luck on hunting!!

P.S. I’m really not going to link you to the 20 properties I have saved and am looking at with my specific search criteria, as I don’t necessarily want to create competition 🙂