There’s an old story about people being defrauded by a shyster real estate agent and tricked into buying worthless swampland in Florida.
Where can I (knowingly and willingly) get me some of that worthless land (on the cheap, of course, it’s worthless, remember?)? It could be in the swamp, the desert, or high in the mountains, anywhere where the economic value of the land is slim to none. The purpose of ownership would be primarily for shits and giggles.
Is there any land like that available today? When I say “cheap”, I’m talking about not only the asking price for the land but also total cost of ownership, so a lot in Wyoming that can be bought for $100 but comes with $50,000 back real estate taxes (due in 6 months or the county seizes the land), or that requires me to spend mucho dinero to abate a nuisance or else get fined by the state doesn’t count.
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this question.
So, just PM me, tell me how much you want to invest and I will willingly sell you any amount of worthless stuff, land, anything that you want to buy. Hope you are on PayPal.We can complete the transaction within minutes and I will send you the appropriately worthless ownership papers.
How about a bridge in Brooklyn? I have one of those for sale.
No, I’m looking for actual legal land ownership that would be recognized by the courts in the rare case that there would be a dispute over ownership or use. I would receive an actual legal deed to record at the courthouse. The catch would be that there isn’t much that I could practically do with the land (too remote to commute from, no public services, soil not fertile, not in a convenient location to serve or attract customers, terrible climate, etc.)
If the land is truly worthless, there won’t be a market in it, and so it will be difficult to find anyone offering any for sale. (As in, how will you identify people looking to sell? They certainly won’t be advertising. And how will you find a lawyer/conveyancer willing to handle the transaction? You’re not going to want to pay the kind of fees that would make them remotely interested in handling the business for you.
Well, there’s always those [del]freaks[/del] entrepreneurial visionaries who sell land on the Moon.
Thirty years ago you could buy land in the Palmdale/Lancaster area of California for $500/acre. Now it’s worth about $20,000/acre and there are manufactured homes on the lots. But I’m assuming that the price must drop precipitously as you get farther off the grid. All the stuff in Nevada is BLM, so it’s not for sale, but maybe there’s some stuff way out in the middle of nowhere like halfway between Barstow and Hell that’s way off I-15 that you could still buy at that price.
There’s companies out there that specialize in selling nearly-worthless land in the southwest, particularly in Arizona. Look up “arizona land” and you’ll find a bunch of them. Some properties seem like they might be quasi-legitimate investment or residential properties, but a lot of them are just basically some patch of land out in the middle of nowhere whose only appeal seems to be allowing the buyer to say they belong to the landowning class. I’ve also heard a lot of these places are borderline rip-off artists and that if you really must own some patch of desert, you can get much better deals by simply walking in to a local real estate office.
If the land is not worth anything no one is going to list it, so you are going to have to go looking. Find an area of the country where no one lives. Where the nothing is growing and the land is ugly. Check to see who owns the land. Go to the county treasure or assessors web page.
When you find out who owns the land contact them and make an offer.
Lots and lots of land in beautiful places like California City can be had for tens or hundreds of dollars per acre. As I pass through that area about once a month on business, I can assure you that the land is utterly worthless… unless you enjoy camping in the desert!
Look at county websites for land for sale by the county. A lot of times they’re selling tiny chunks of land that are stuck between some registered piece of property and the railway right-of-way, for instance, or a triangle that appeared when they changed the route of a road. Not sure what good they’d be to you, but they do fit the definition of “worthless land.”
Hmmmm. I don’t know about that. At least what he claims he’s selling looks to be cheap for a reason - their ten cheapest per acre, running from $179 to $249 an acre for some chunks of desert in Wyoming and West Texas:
Derelict urban areas like those Detroit properties are entirely different animals than patches of sagebrush out in the desert somewhere a couple miles from the nearest road. Taxes, assessments, liens, etc.
I am a commercial real estate agent. As a practical matter land that has very little utility is typically not offered for sale by private owners unless it’s in very large acreage sections. Trying to buy a small section of low value land would barely be worth the transaction costs ( ie legal, closing costs, survey etc.) in most cases.
Beyond this there will often be annual state & local property taxes of one sort or another due on this land so ownership still has an expense.
Owning land you can’t do anything with is just throwing money away. Some exceptions are if you’re looking to acquire it specifically for the reason of limiting growth or protecting animal habitat. There are many environmental trusts that will acquire otherwise non-productive land for this reason, but they are usually not paying a great deal per acre and have various tax exemptions as well.
My FIL owns some piece of land up the side of Mt. Shasta, California. I’ve never seen it, but my understanding is that it’s just a patch of volcanic ash.
Does it need to be in the US? I’m think that a government is your most likely seller.
The land the OP is looking for will have certain characteristics. No fresh water source, or nothing but water. No roads nearby. Perhaps very dangerous geology, like right over a fault line or where two tectonic places meet.
I wonder if you can buy all or part of a glacier? Or does that count as land? Or how about buying the land underneath a glacier?
I think you maybe could buy land far to the north of the Arctic Circle from the US or Canada pretty cheap. There’s someplace in Iceland where the land is literally getting ripped apart – I think it’s about the only above ground junction of tectonic plates. There’s the Rift Valley in Africa, that I think is being torn apart by one plate breaking up.
How about land that isn’t… yet? Could you buy an underwater patch in Hawaii that will eventually be filled in by lava flow?
Then there’s plenty of big deserts and likely governments willing to sell you some acres right in their centers.
If you want to be really clever, there are some people buying property along the Northwest Passage in the expectation that global warming will eventually make it reliably navigable.
Worthless land would have a few more characteristics than “desert” or “out in the middle of nowhere.” I happen to be living on 36 acres that I value much more than worthless, but “out in the middle of nowhere” pretty much describes it.
If you want it to be completely worthless, there are a couple of characteristics you need to target. Landlocked would be at the top of the list. That means there is no legal access to your property. If you find a way to get to it, you’ve actually trespassed. And I guarantee you, unless there is something hugely valuable discovered UNDER the land, a landlocked parcel won’t be salable.
Second thing I’d look for is a parcel that is not level. Not in ANY sense of the word. And there should be no way to easily make it level.
Third characteristic would be land not arable. Ideally, this would be where some type of industrial waste or mine tailings would be deposited. Extra bonus points if this waste is radioactive.
Finally, I’d say something in the middle of a floodplain would be ideal for your purposes. No bank or lending institution would loan money for improvements if those improvements would be jeopardized every single time it rains.
Of course, my question to you now would be, why in the HELL would you want anything like that???
You can’t split it up into pieces and will it to your obnoxious relatives. Too many laws to accommodate that! And even worthless land has an assessor’s number, so the County can send you yearly taxes. Unless you pursue it separately, land these days does NOT include mineral rights, so even if that gold vein under your property suddenly becomes desirable, you won’t profit from it.
~VOW
I have some, well, actually I think my brother owns it. My parents bought a few acres outside of Flagstaff. (IIRC) It was supposed to be developed into a neighborhood and the town even has a map that shows the streets. The streets and other utilities were never put in. So it is just a patch of sand.
Your property isn’t completely useless. It’s been surveyed, mapped, and identified. It has restrictions of use, and it is known to the County Assessor, and it receives a yearly tax bill.
Even though the land isn’t developed in the way most people consider, the assessor’s office has a whole list of levies for county amenities: schools, roads, emergency services, and anything else the County can think of.
~VOW
This hurts me more than I can tell you. You want to buy some worthless land for shits & giggles? While there are Americans going to bed hungry every night?
I can only think that you think you’d be making an investment for future generations, because even tho the land is worthless now, at some point down the line it would be needed…hence, payoff. (When all the good land is gone, but people still need some, they figure out how to make it useable.)
To me, this falls under the catagory of having more money than you do sense.
If you’re just looking for a rush, why not try feeding a family. A lot of the “poor” today are the stable middle class of yesterday.
Why don’t you put your money where your heart should be. There really is such a thing as karma. You might want to invest in some.
