So, You Want to Start a "Commune"

(I knocked this out "quick n dirty" so if there are typos/misspellings please understand)

A family member posted a meme about “buying some land with other people” and it took me back to something I’ve had in my head for twenty-five years. This blog is about the basics, the very basics, about buying land with people in your life.

First off, you need to reach basic understanding about basic elements of the Land:

What does everyone need and want? Do some people need electricity? What about phone signal, how important is it? How much water does each person require? Some people are frugal with water, some are not.

Animals make noises and smells, some are aggressive---is everyone okay with animals like goats and chickens on the land?

Guns---not everyone is comfortable with them.

Is everyone okay with snow? Or, are there people who would prefer land below the snow line?

These are just some of the issues that need to be addressed and agreed on. Some people will drop out. But it’s better in the early stages than the later ones.

This is the first serious stage of acquiring “group land,” making sure all of you have compatible needs, goals, and wants. You will also need to figure out how much everyone can spend for the raw land. In every group you will have some folks with more money than other people in the group. You need to come up with a figure that is reachable for everyone and I will explain this more below.

Once that is taken care of you need to look at the where. This could take some time as all of you go back and forth. My family is (mostly) in California, they’d probably want to stay in that state. I am looking for land in Southern Oregon which would put me between my parents. Narrow it down to a half dozen counties or so. Learn the building codes of those counties and monitor land auctions and sites like Zillow and Realtor to get a feel how much bare land is going for.

Okay, your group has your basic needs, budget, and area sussed out. Before you can buy land you need to form a legal entity be it an LLC or a corporation or whatever. This legal entity needs an attorney and each member of the group needs their own lawyer. A document with everything you have agreed on and that the ownership of the land is equally owned by each person--(this is important, you need to eliminate any ambiguity, potential resentment, other negative stuff). You also need to decide who is the Manager, the person who oversees the details of the Land and coordinates regular meetings between the “shareholders.”

Again, I am not going into a lot of detail, this is just the basics. The Legal Entity’s attorney draws the doc and each member of the group then presents it to their own attorney for review. Once that is done, you are in business.

If people are interested in more details or if you have more questions please leave them in the comments. This may seem off topic for a writer but this is part of the whole “American Outback concept,” the idea of shared, sustainable land.

Izk

#offthegrid #groupland #sustainability