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I live in the beautiful Ozarks of northeast Oklahoma. The county in which I live has no restrictions on land, unless, of course, it’s in a town/city or restricted by a HOA, etc. A lot of land has trees, creeks, etc. I have seen discussion about buying land (such as 5 acres) and then leasing sections of the land to individuals that would like to put a getaway/bugout cabin (no electric or water) on it. People can acquire these cabins lease-to-own with no money down. I would only be leasing the land…not acquiring the cabins myself. The cash flow would simply be from the land leases. What do you think?
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Mike, here is a somewhat similar project about 75 miles southeast of Dallas, TX. When I talked with the couple who own it a few weeks ago, they explained they hoped to open it to applicant RV owners in about two months. They also told me they had run a websearch and had found nothing else in the country quite like it.http://www.providencervparks.com
Their “About” page gives some bulletpoint detail on what they have so far, and what they hope to add:
http://www.providencervparks.com/about/
Your concept and theirs overlap considerably. You might like to get in touch.
Also, there are a few consulting services across the country specializing in relocation advice for such purposes. A lot of them advertise on preparedness / prepper / survival oriented websites (of which there are many; there’s a top 50 list that’s updated yearly). Some have a heavy military background. Some are very real estate oriented. Doing a thorough websearch ought to help you find some of them. Learning what they are recommending versus what you are offering sounds useful, and could tell you if getting promoted by them would help you.
There is also a nationwide circuit of expos that specialize in the topics, products, bodies of knowledge, etc that your market is interested in. It shouldn’t be difficult to unearth that contact and schedule information to learn where and when the closest ones to you might be handy.
Hope this helps.
–Dee
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Without electric or water, I think it would be a very hard sell.
Even bug out locations need a water source and power. Solar is a possibility but it would really drive the costs up which would make people look elsewhere. They could have a years supply of bottled water but that also drives up the costs.
Some people want to be totally off the grid. But most people can’t do it.
You should determine what it would cost to get electricity and water to the property. So those who want it have that option.
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Mike, here are some thoughts about water and power.The early days of migration into Texas and the trails those people followed were often from water hole to water hole — for good reason. Since you?re still shopping around for a property and concept that might work, there will almost always be somebody in the nearby community, town or county government that you can ask about whether a given property has any water below it, and usually how far down one has to dig a well, and maybe even whether that water has contaminants bad enough to worry about. The deeper the water table, the greater the likelihood that you?ll need electric power to pump that water up to user level. Just because there may not be an existing well on a property doesn?t mean there never was. A lot of rural land has slowly depopulated, leaving many filled-in or abandoned wells, fallen-in or rotted houses, etc. I had a grandfather whose family got along nicely (from 1912 up through the 1950s) with a hand-dug well (in limestone country), a bucket on a long rope, and a hand crank under a small roof over that well. But not every property is suited for that.
The tension over electric power (to depend on it, or not) will usually relate to how your prospective customers make their living, or how they stay in touch with their investments, how close to local medical facilities they need to be, whether or not they need internet access (as most people do these days, to shop and bank online, and maybe earn money), and 1) what it would cost to run power to the edge of this development, and 2) what it would cost incrementally to connect each new customer?s plot as they sign up (to keep your ongoing costs as low as is reasonable).
The people who have long been masters of ?Living without Electricity? (which is also the name of a 1990 book I have about that lifestyle, by Stephen Scott and Kenneth Pellman) are the Amish (since 1693, when they split the sheet with Mennonites in Switzerland — I have some fuzzy-faced ancestors long ago up that complicated family tree). Even the Amish today have learned that since the economics of farming will no longer support large parts of their population, so many of them have needed to seek employment out in their local economy to make a living. So some of the interesting contradictions in their rules are about no electricity at home (but OK if an employer has it), or relying on very expensive natural gas or propane-powered refrigerators being OK, even though that gas supply does depend on the outside economy.
Lehman?s hardware in Kidron, Ohio has long catered to that non-electric lifestyle of the Amish. Their printed catalog makes very interesting reading, as does their website at
though I have my doubts as to how many Amish without electricity at home have ever logged onto it. (There?s probably a bad joke in there somewhere about how many Amish hackers does it take to change a light bulb…)
But there?s a lot of recent technology that?s really not part of their traditions, but that would help prospective customers who perhaps wish to MINIMIZE their use of electricity rather than live with a total cutoff. An example might be solar panels to keep a bank of batteries charged up for nighttime and power company outages, even if that should go long-term. That might even power a computer and satellite internet connection. Neither the solar gear nor the satellite internet bills are cheap. But those are typically choices that have to be made by the individual household, where their credit and financials support the purchase or leasing of such equipment — not the responsibility of the project developer, I?m thinking.
Since choosing and designing the right mix of features in your land parcel development, and then selling to your customers will mean understanding their lifestyle choices, these are some of the issues where being knowledgeable about them is probably a good idea.–Dee
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One other little tidbit — if you’ve never seen the Amish move a house without benefit of electricity or machinery, you’d never guess what’s in this 5-minute video of that process (sorry for the wee bit of non-Amish bad language from the video maker). Get ready for a shock:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAlbFj0ZHr4
The point is that it takes a sizeable and very tightknit community to do things the way the non-electric and non-technological Amish have chosen to live — not a system that most Americans have even imagined.
–Dee
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Mike, here’s another consideration. The farther your project is from major cities, the more challenging that securing a fast internet connection can be. However, I stumbled across this rather interesting YouTube video intended for RVers (and updated for 2016), but I see no reason why it might not be helpful for your prospective customers looking for remote internet access:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdEh6v3p0rg
–Dee
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UPDATE: About a week ago, I found 5 acre partially wooded tract of land, no utilities, and acquired it with seller financing of $100/month for 48 months. I stepped it off into 4 equal parcels with each having vehicle access. I immediately placed a Craigslist that basically said: “For lease – 1 acre partially wooded tracts in the beautiful Ozarks of northeast Oklahoma. No utilities. $95/month. Perfect for RV or tent camping. Since placing that ad, I have leased 3 of the 4 tracts at $95/month, with a very solid land lease.
P.S. Thanks, Dee & Jackie for the valuable input and info!
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Mike, it’s probably been about twenty years since I last visited a friend’s waterfront property in that general area you’re describing. It was gorgeous, (A long time ago I did a lot of mountainous backpacking.) I can just imagine your CL ad with a headline such as “Boondocker’s Paradise!”Congrats!
–Dee
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Hey Mike
CONGRATULATIONS! Great deal on the $100 a month for the whole property
I bet you’re out looking for the next land deal. Sounds like you found a winning opportunity. That’s about $300 a month cash flow with no toilets to fix or roofs to replace.
I guess electricity and water were not as important as I thought it would be.
With an RV, they usually have generators and a stored water source. Some even have special antennas for internet access.
Keep up the great work! Let us know about the next one.
Jackie
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There have been some really interesting developments in the last few decades for both solar cooking / heating / water purification / etc and water distillation / filtration methods of interest to widely scattered audiences, ranging from RVers to campers to ultra-light backpackers to third-world missionary operations to remote dwellers of all kinds. All of this has made living on the go, or living in semi-to-completely permanent locations much more feasible than ever before.As an example, there are several standard categories of solar cookers, many of which can double as water heaters, water distillers, power generators, etc. There are box cookers, panel cookers, and parabolic reflector cookers, etc. Some of these are easy to fold up and only weigh 2-3 pounds. Some are cartop models or RV-transportable easily. I?ve seen news stories of some European gourmet chefs doing parabolic reflector cooking tours of Europe, moving through country after country with the seasons.
Water filter and water distillation technology has come a long way as well. There are Mexican families along the Texas and New Mexico borders using a passive solar water distiller that looks like a huge pool table on a slant (not portable at all). In contrast, there are entire families in Ecuador using the same pocket sized Sawyer water filter that ultra-light Appalachian Trail hikers use in this country, available from any WalMart.
Many third world countries with centuries-old deforestation problems are intensely interested in affordable solar cookers, and that has helped drive the development of more efficient designs.
And as laptops and smartphone technology has become a lot more efficient in their needs for electric power, it takes a lot less electricity (such as solar panels and rechargeable battery systems can deliver) to communicate via phone and internet.
All of this makes passing through, or living temporarily or longterm in interesting places (once regarded as inconvenient) to be much more feasible for the niche-aware.
–Dee
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