How much land can $10,000 buy me?

Question

I'm toying with the idea of investing money in land, but I only have $10,000.

Is this a good idea? Where can I buy cheap land? Preferably somewhere that has good development potential. Somebody suggested in buying land as an investment but it just seems that $10,000 will get me barely a sliver of land.

Any and all comments, advice, tips, etc are GREATLY appreciated!!

Answer 1

"rio del oro" in new Mexico. 10k will get you lots of land. you may be 10-20 years before these lands take off but they will.

Answer 2

It depends on where the land is and what kind of land it is.  In some places that wont buy you a plot to build a house.  In some places it will buy five or ten acres.

Answer 3

in some cities, about 1 ft,

in others, many acres.

remember though, till re-sold or built on

it provides no cash for you; a risky

venture in many ways.

[if you held it for 5 yrs and was offered

50k, you would not have

netted 500%, but instead, about 15%.

cause you could have used it for

other things, thus, lost "opportunity

value".

study books on RE investing

I will guide you for free.

Answer 4

In the 1980's $10,000 bought me 33 acres of land in northern Wisconsin.  All it was good for was hunting or possibly tree farming (untillable wooded bog).  12 years later I found out that my easement had never been properly recorded and was about to be locked.  So my buyers backed out, and I ended up selling it to a new neighbor for my $10,000 purchase price (so he ended up with 96 acres on the township road).

I originally bought southern WI woods on a 10 yr land contract and that northern WI property on 5 yr contract.  I still have the southern property.

The guy that sold me that property is now trying to sell 5 acre unfarmable wooded hillsides for $39,000.

Where I live in IL my county figures fair value of the unoccupied 1/4 acre of my double lot is $27,000

Answer 5

Actually I bought a small piece of land for 10,000.  It just depends on where how much it costs.  The lot I bought was enough to build an average house on.  Rural areas are cheaper.

Answer 6

it is risk.   invest in mutual fund is better

Answer 7

Unfortunately you get what you pay for if is good investment land you have to pay top dollar. In England the land is worth a third of what you can build on it roughly. Maybe not so in the states but it must be similar. It is strange how we in England use the phrase top dollar when i have never even seen a dollar let alone spent one.

Answer 8

First.. change the word "investing" into "speculating".  Everyone thought they were a Real Estate "investor" many are now foreclosure statistics.

Do not use money you can't afford to lose or money you might need fairly quickly.  Real estate is not a liquid commoditiy.  

Tennessee and Arkansas have good growth potential.  But before you buy land, you need to know who you are dealing with.  Will you be buying sight unseen?  A lot of people bought swamp land in Florida 40 years ago sight unseen... a lot of it is still swap today.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you fully understand what you are getting into and can afford to lock away this 10 grand for a long time.

Answer 9

Depends 100% on where you live and where your looking to buy! For example out here in Calif. (especially in S.F.!) land is like gold! You can't even touch a decent home for under say $500,000.00! What you should do is this. Wait out the real estate values because you know how prices got so expensive in the U.S. and people were losing their mortgages etc. etc? Ok then as I type real estate prices are really starting to come down. Then really keep an eye on the market and wait for it to bottom out. Talk to a local RE person about your best buys on land, say 1 acre of buildable property and take your $10 grand and buy buy buy! The market then will most assuredly go back up again and maybe sit on it until you feel its peaked out (or maybe ask a realtor) then sell for hopefully $50,000 to $100,000 and say it's $75k, you've just profited $65,000! Then what a lot of folks do is keep doing what you just did over and over a few times until eventually you might just have say $150,000 cash to either put down 15% on a real nice property and make pmnts. or plunk it all down and try to pretty much own the house/land free and clear! All from just $10,000! You have to #1 be patient for awile and I don't know what state you live in but whenever you sell property you have to pay capitol gain taxes on it so what folks do is live in the home, mobile or whatever for "1 year and 1 day" to avoid a lot of the capitol gains! But it sure does take money to make money in RE for example I knew a guy with a lot of money that bought a very nice home in Bel-Air just out of LA and spent $750,000 on the property then sunk approx. $300,000 into really adding to the home so he really fixed this place up and it was geourgeous! Lived in it for a year and a day, put it up for sale for $1.5 million, then sold it pretty quickly! So, he lived in the home for a year and a few months for absolute FREE plus he made the nice profit of $450,000 on top of that. MY POINT IS, IS YOU CAN DO THIS STUFF ON A MUCH SMALLER SCALE, AND JUST AS WELL! HOPE I PUT A LITTLE LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT ANYWAYS! lATER [e-mail]

Answer 10

10000 wont get you much.  just stick it in a money market account.

Answer 11

You can't buy much land for only $10,000 unless its pretty much useless land like a swamp. There's also not much point buying land unless there's something you can do with it like renting it to a farmer. Again, good farmland of any worthwhile acreage will cost you much more than $10,000. Better to keep with more traditional investments. Good luck.