You could open up all this land for development of houses tomorrow and no one would buy it, because people don’t like to build on swamp, mountainsides and tundra.
Maybe, maybe not.
Like I said, let’s compare what I can get in Canada for “worthless” land that I can actually buy for what I can buy in the middle of nowhere Deep South America.
Note, I said LAND. Not land plus a house, because I realize the cost of building an actual house in Canada is probably more for various reasons (though I suppose one could correct for that).
PS. I have to go for this evening and a good bit Sunday, so if I don’t respond, don’t think me rude…
There isn’t really a comparison to be made though, since “middle of nowhere Alabama” doesn’t look anything like “middle of nowhere Ontario” because of climate and terrain. There’s nowhere in Alabama that I can zoom in on Google Maps and not find some sort of town. Meanwhile, you can fit Alabama pretty much entirely within an area in Ontario where no one lives. Not to mention that it’s Siberian (literally) in climate. I grew up in northern Saskatchewan - well, really central, but northern in terms of where towns are, and our farmland was on the bleeding edge of viability. Literally ten miles north of us, there’s no more farm land to be had, because it won’t grow crops. And this is an area where the Homestead act was in place. If people had wanted to try farming that, there was nothing stopping them, but they looked at it and said “no thanks”.
As billfish678 mentioned, it’s not enough just to be cheaper than Toronto (and even the houses you linked weren’t exactly steals - one of them was 115 years old, yeesh!) Those areas should be competitive with similar areas in the U.S. and other countries in order to attract new businesses and people. Why is that so hard to achieve if the land is allegedly worthless anyway?
THATS EXACTLY my point.
This means I should be able to buy Canadian land for almost nothing compared to middle of nowhere Deep South land.
Deep South land has some actual value based on what it can produce/provide. There is an absolute minimum value.
For much of Canadian land, it sounds to me that value approximates zero, not some low level.
So, lets say 50 miles outside of a major Canadian city with nothing around me…is there somewhere I can buy 40 acres for lets say $500 an acre?
PS. This is it, I really gotta go for now.
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what’s wrong with a 100+ year old house? I live in one. And besides, it’s comparable to other, newer vintage houses in the same city. And so - brass tacks if these don’t count as affordable - what do you think a house should cost? And find me that location where it costs that.
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Comparing across different areas, regions and countries is extremely complex. There’s no reason a house in one city should compare to another far away for a huge variety of reasons including the local economy. (and don’t forget that the C$ is worth about US$0.74 right now)
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If a business is only looking for a deal on land, isn’t “cheaper than where it is right now” enough? I mean, rural municipalities are literally giving away land to people who want to build houses or businesses and don’t have takers. It turns out that people, by and large, like living in large cities. And that drives up house prices.
I suppose you would have to contact the Ontario government (or others) to find out how much it would cost. There’s not a lot of point in delineating out what a patch of scrub land would run someone. But, they’re eager to hear from you:
Ok, maybe I was biased against old houses so I’ll retract that. But the thing is that investors aren’t stupid - the real estate value has to reflect the area it’s in… it’s still a lousy deal to have 1/3 of the real estate price compared to the GTA if you only have 1/10 of the infrastructure and amenities. Might as well take one’s business to some other country instead. I don’t see that the Canadian government has any particular interest in attracting viable communities (other than wealthy investors), and having 90% crown land can only be part of the problem.
There’s a base minimum that a house can cost because of materials - a $500k house in Toronto doesn’t become a 50k house in Antigonish because there’s less infrastructure - and how are you quantifying that there is 1/10th the infrastructure? In large part house prices are tied to how much people can earn - I don’t have a problem with my mortgage in Calgary that is twice what it would be in rural Saskatchewan, because living in Calgary gets me the potential to earn much more than it would there - not to mention the intangible benefits of living in a larger center with more amenities. For some people, that’s less of an issue, so they derive value from living in the smaller center. I really don’t think you comprehend the vastness of Canada, and just how much cheap land is out there, and why it’s so cheap (because it’s so far away from anything). I mean, why is New York City real estate so expensive? Why San Francisco? It’s not because Federal land is hemming those cities in.
Don’t forget that not all land use is equal - any random spot in northern Ontario has a good chance of having a valuable mineral deposit, so buying the rights to that land has to factor in that potential. But even if you find a giant deposit of gold, that doesn’t make it suitable for housing, other than on a temporary basis, because people are smart enough to realize that it’s a bad place to make a permanent investment in residence.
In Ontario, when crown land is leased or sold, and when resource extraction is licenced, fair market value is used.
I agree that you do not know about the Ontario government’s decision making process on how to allocate Crown land, however, I do know about the Ontario government’s decision on how to allocate Crown land, ranging from my working on the Ontario Hydro Demand/Supply Plan Class Environmental Assessment that took about four years and finished up in 1993, and the Class Environmental Assessment for Timber Management on Crown Lands in Ontario that took about five years and finished up in 1994, through to ongoing title transfer work I do in small northern Ontario communities.
As I already pointed out in post 105, if a community wants crown land, it gets it.
What, you mean guys like one of my canoeing buddies who made a high yield find, sold his junior to a senior, and retired last year in the lap of luxury? Guess what – all on Crown land. Or are you referring to most small northern Ontario towns, in which usually homeowners own surface rights but not mineral rights?
Mineral exploration takes place across Ontario’s crown lands, and mines open up if they are financially viable. Our economy in northern Ontario is based on mining and forestry. Obtaining rights to extract resources from Crown land is done either by licence or by transfer of ownership. Either way, Crown land does not impede, and in fact encourages mining and logging, which in turn provide the economic base around which communities form. Seriously. I’m not putting you on about this.
As others have already pointed out to you, Canada has had homesteading, and since you were born in Ontario, you should already be aware of that settlement of Ontario included many planned communities, and still does. The Ontario government makes great effort at maintaining viable communities in northern Ontario. As far as plopping down people in the middle of nowhere goes, surely you will agree that it would be a better course to deal with the communities we already have before artificially creating unwanted communities.
Care to explain why there are no polar bears in Copenhagen, whereas Polar Bear Provincial Park (where about 70% of the polar bears in the province call home) is at that latitude in Ontario? Please explain why Crown land is the reason that only a couple of hundred people chose to live in Peawanuck, only three hundred people chose to live in Fort Severn, and no one else choses to live in the rest of the region that is three times larger than Denmark?
The building beside my office in TBay houses the police service for Peawanuk. The Superior Court judges for Peawanuk live here. Any idea how long it takes to drive from here to Peawanuk? Five days, if the weather cooperates. If the weather does not cooperate, then you can add a further ten months while you wait for the world’s longest winter/ice road to be rebuilt next winter. You know what happens when families on a grocery run get into trouble driving on these roads? SAR.
Do you honestly think that rich people in the cities want to move to places like this to free up space in the cities so that the less rich children of other city dwellers can continue to live there rather than relocate to find better jobs or less expensive homes?
Crown land does not keep most of the country inaccessible. If you want to build a four-season road to Peawanuk, go right ahead. The government would be thrilled that you would be so kind as to spend several billion dollars to build, and many millions more to maintain, an all-weather road that would service all of several hundred people. I’m not putting you on about this either. In the boonies of northern Ontario, it’s private industry that is the impetus for road building, and the construction is usually funded jointly by government and industry, or solely by industry.
Look, you were born and for a few years lived in Ontario’s Carolinian forest, and based on that you have concluded that less wealthy people will be able to out-bid more wealthy people for homes in major urban centres if there were private rather than Crown land in remote sub-arctic polar bear country. I must disagree with your assertion that you know your geography.
Comparing Copenhagen with prime polar bear habitat? Come on, get real.
Oh, and since you have already been provided with the link to Ontario’s Crown Land Use Policy Atlas, I’m sure you will now agree that there is almost no Crown land anywhere near the major urban areas of Ontario, i.e. The Big Smoke, the Golden Horseshoe, etc., so your thesis is disproven.
The flaw in your argument is that there is a great deal of worthless land that is for sale, and worthless land that is not for sale in fact is sold or leased or licensed once there is a use for it, so really it is immaterial whether worthless land is held by the Crown or held by a person, for the land is available if there is a use, and if there is not a use then it truly is worthless in monetary terms.
As far as a butterfly effect goes with respect to value, you might be interested in Atif Kubursi’s work on existence value. (He is a professor emeritus at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.)
Governments often base decisions on money values, e.g. how much money can be earned from stumpage paid by logging companies verses how much money can be earned from selling land to farmers, etc. Back in the 70s, Kubursi was looking at how to compare monetary values to non-monetary values – in particular, existence value.
For example, to compare competing monetary values when deciding how best to use the land in Ontario’s Copenhagen latitude region, how do you weigh the value of the existence of those pesky polar bears, or those tiny aboriginal communities? Their very existence has a value to a great many people, but quantifying it is not as easy as quantifying the value a mine would bring to the region, the province, and the country (or the negative value caused by plopping down a town filled with hapless urban refugees there would cause to the region, the province and the country).
It interesting stuff, for when planning to optimise all values, it can be very challenging to try to balance solid, monetary values with intangible existence values.
Existence value is key to making land use decisions in northern Ontario, for land use decisions have huge impacts on communities – particularly remote aboriginal communities – that go far beyond simply figuring out how to make the biggest buck.
By considering extence values, we can move from an unstable resource based economy to a stable resource based economy, and thereby make our communities viable in the long term, rathern than gold rush to ghost town.
I think that the ordinary folks that you are talking about, follow the money and right now and has been for the previous fifty years, that the money is in Southern Ontario golden horseshoe. You start to see it drifting north, as the barracks communities with access to the 400 and 404/ 401 and QEW taking the west east. Everything feeds into the GTA at some point, and then flows out to where ever the product is going.
The next populated band , is travel and tourism based. Which pretty much stops at Huntsville. So draw a radius using Toronto as the datum point, and arc all the way up to Huntsville, if there is any Crown or MNR land left, I would kinda be surprised (sorta, other than penny packets here and there)
Here, my direct knowledge goes off the rails and into coffeeshoppedia, but the next band tends to revolve around population clusters based on what ever local industry, thats already been mentioned enough in the thread.
Unless your building a hero project like one of those chinese cities, public funds have to flow towards representation, the census says x amount of people live in y, then tax dollars are allocated. So by definition, all money leads to Toronto and area.
So now, you want some land, and you want it either free or really cheap. First your going to have to figure out where you want the house, since you need access to potable water. For four months out of the year, not really so hard. But the other eight are kinda problematic. Clear the land, and figure out what kind of house you want. That means you have to either bring in pre cut wood, or do it old school. Not impossible, but expensive on the one hand, and tool intensive on the other, and you want to put up the house within the summer months. Add the rest of the stuff that goes with a house, and you run out of things that you can use from local resources.
Food, hunting and fishing are very much possible, but I personally dont know how to butcher a what ever to efficiently harvest meat and skin, and like old school homesteading, you sometimes gotta figure in that animals may simply not be there, due to ecological concerns , like that forrest fire that gutted everything twenty miles away.
Farming might be possible on a micro level, but I personally don’t know anything about farming beyond knowing I have to till land and drop seeds and hope they grow. Its going to be a learing experience, as the nearest costco might be 500 miles away (rectally extracted guess), oh yeah, what happens when you have a marginal diet.
Or you can ask your closest neighbor on a ham radio.
To do this effectively, your going to need something like a commune. So you set up your own personal alexandria , all in one or two moves, with a bunch of like minded people, especially if your planning on bringing up the wife and kids with you.
Personally I like the idea, if the Ontario govt or Ottawa gave away plots of land old school for todays population. But there is a reason that people cluster, no matter where that cluster is.
Declan
Define “major Canadian city.” You’re not likely to find anything close to Toronto at that price, any more than you’d find much close to New York City or Boston.
However, look at Timmins, Ontario (population 43,000–bigger than Gadsden, Alabama, but not quite as big as Dothan). Sure, you can find largish tracts for less than $500/acre. How about 158 acres for $22K Cdn–just over $100 (US) per acre.
How about this one? 91 acres, right at $500 (US) per acre, an hour south of Thunder Bay (which is about the same size as Tuscaloosa).
That one is a bit pricey – the vendor is probably fishing for Americans. In that area (Hwy 593 – Devon Road – Pine River – Arrow River) concession/farm lots that have road frontage but have been logged over in the last ten or twenty decades (such as the one you identified) go for about CDN$300/acre, and similar lots that have a public road allowance but no actual road (you do it yourself) go for about CDN$250 per acre.
(Missed edit) In American dollars, that would be CDN$300=USD$222 and CDN$250=USD$185 per acre respectively.
Billfish, I take your point, however, what you are missing is that most land in northern Ontario (i.e. northwestern Ontario well north communities connected by roads) is nowhere near anything – as in hundreds of miles of muskeg and rock and only scrap trees such as scrawny black spruce, so forget about a road ever going there unless a major mine opens up (e.g. Ring of Fire).
The USD$185 per acre for farmland/woodlots are on the periphery of a large urban centre (we’re #30 in the country of over 35 million people, so of course the land here has value. Lots of folks buy such lots for lots of reasons: logging, farming, recreation, primary home, second home, storage. The value of such lots are affected by the immediately surrounding area’s population and economic activity, and when the surrounding area’s economic activity is noticeably increased by other economic activity a few hundred miles away (i.e. Ring of Fire), then the price of land surrounding the regional centre is affected. (For example, the office building where I work was purchased by a senior mining company, and a friend sold his junior company to a senior company.) As a regional centre, we do well when stuff happens in the muskeg.
This, however, is not a two-way street. Thunder Bay could be the best place in the province (and in a couple of aspects it actually is, which is why I’m here rather than elsewhere), but the land that is separated from us by hundreds of miles of muskeg and rock will not be affected by our population or our economy. If the global market for a particular mineral justifies opening up a mine, a mine will open, and the immediate remote fly-in reserves will benefit if a road is built that happens to be very close to them. (If the mine choses build a railway, which is the norm, most of the nearby reserves would be SOL, so the odds are very high that the government will require that a road be build). If a mine does not open, then they will not benefit. Either way, the economy and land values here in TBay has no effect on land value in the Hudson Bay lowlands. It is not a two way street, particularly since there isn’t even a road.
I’m busy today.
But several of you posters seem to totally be missing my point.
I point out that there should be some CHEAP assed Canadian land for reasons XYZ compared to Deep South American land that is better in almost any measure.
And then you guys come in an talk about how useless/worthless said land is…and then you somehow do a logic flip as to why that land cost MORE.
:smack:
I don’t even know how to respond at that point.
Somebody is missing something. Maybe it is me?
You asked for land that was in the middle of nowhere that is cheaper than $500/acre. You’ve been shown stuff that was even cheaper, and actually relatively close to something. I suspect it is you that is missing something. Also this scrub land is going to have a very different value to someone wanting to build subdivisions of houses (likely zero) than to someone want to build, say, a fishing cabin, or to someone wanting to exploit mineral resources that may or may not exist on it.