Sound investment
Just as the diamond engagement ring has symbolized love (and a good investment) for couples since time immemorial, so today these same couples label their purchase of country property as a haven of joy, as well as a sound investment. I must agree with them. But don’t consider that I’m endorsing what some prophets claim off the top of their heads today—”A country home with some acreage costing $45,000 now will have a market value of $ 100,000 in ten years or less!”
If I personally were confident of this projection of the future. I wouldn’t be writing this book. I’d simply purchase a substantial number of these country properties, go to Puerto Rico or the Islands, and bask in the sun, returning in ten years to cash in my many chips.
Long-term stability and reasonable growth are the conservative reasons for making any investment. The purchase of country property is no exception. Although the final evaluation rests with you, let me elaborate upon the many factors that will generally influence the stability and growth of your investment in country property.
Land is a great natural resource that once consumed, or used for a particular purpose, is no longer available to other purposes, nor can it be manufactured. Demands for land are continually growing with a population that’s expected to reach one billion people in the next seventy years. Think of the vast areas of land that have been allocated during your lifetime for hospitals, colleges, schools, universities, roads, office complexes, shopping centers, factories, motels, homes, apartments, condominiums, golf courses, race tracks, airports and a hundred other uses. The list is steadily growing. The Utopian city planners have been trying for over half a century with varied success to establish untold numbers of small communities in order to reduce pressure upon the cities.
The two-home family, one in the city and one in the country, is becoming as much a part of the American way of life as the two-car garage with the two cars. Millions are migrating from the cities to such recreational, leisure and retirement areas as, for example, Vermont, Colorado, Florida, Arizona and California. Desirable land, and even not so desirable land, is rapidly becoming very expensive and very difficult to obtain. The basic law of supply and demand is having its effect, and certain repercussions will follow.
Strong and powerful conservationist factions are acting to preserve great areas of our country from being exploited. Thus, an acre of land with its blades of grass could very well become as valuable as any precious stone.
The cost of new building is spiraling daily and has become almost prohibitive; therefore demand for established property with spacious rooms and acreage at far below present-day replacement costs is on the increase.
High-speed, rapid rail transportation, helicopter type passenger aircraft, hydrofoil and massive seaplanes will soon be shuttling vast numbers of commuters daily from the overpopulated cities and their places of employment, to country homes in a matter of minutes. To live with clean air, clean water and space will be every man’s goal. No personal inconvenience will be too great to achieve this end.
The trends described are but a few that will have an overwhelming effect on the stability and growth of investment value in land and country property. Unless there should be a general economic collapse, it appears evident that an investment in America’s land and country properly does not carry with it abnormal nor even speculative risks.