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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (12058)	8/4/2003 11:52:44 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 306849

Portland, Denver and the Youngstown, Ohio areas. West Virginia but it's going up pretty fast there. I'm thinking Boise and McCall, Idaho... Actually, your position is great...tour for a year. I suspect there will be more opportunities. Let us know what you find. Jim

To: bentway who wrote (12058)	8/5/2003 7:51:40 AM
From: George8	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Chris: Congradulations on the trade! What an adventure it will be if you actually tour the country a year looking for depressed property. However, $200K profits alone may not go very far in most places, right(how about living expenses)? George

To: bentway who wrote (12058)	8/5/2003 10:02:30 AM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Maybe you could grab some of the land mentioned below, before conservationists find a way to put it out of circulation forever. You might even be able to make quite a bit of money selling timber back to the timber companies. By the way, the areas of Georgia mentioned in the story below, are something I would be interested in. Might even be living there someday myself, but it's too soon to tell. ________________ For Sale: Prime Timberland in South Soaring Property Taxes Put Millions of Acres on the Block Associated Press Tuesday, August 5, 2003; Page E03 Washington Post MADISON, Ga., Aug. 4 -- Soaring property taxes and increasing debt have forced giant timber companies to put millions of acres of timberland up for sale across the South. The Georgia office of Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Development Co. plans to sell roughly 30,000 acres in Morgan, Putnam and Oconee counties for more than $3,000 an acre. The company also announced plans to sell 174,000 acres in Tennessee and 170,000 in the Carolinas. Weyerhaeuser's land sale is one of the biggest in Georgia, and it is part of a modern land rush occurring in the South. Giant timber companies are selling forest land as they try to cut costs to offset mergers and operational changes. Larger tracts and corporate lands also are taxed at market value. In areas such as north Georgia, where land values are hopping, taxes are making it too expensive for corporations to hold on to their forests. "It seems like the whole South is for sale," said Ken Driggers, executive director of the Palmetto Conservation Foundation in Columbia, S.C. Last year, more than 1.2 million acres of timberland in the South were sold for nearly $1 billion. Among this year's big land sales, Bowater Inc., the second-biggest producer of newsprint in North America, has sold 82,000 acres of its property in northeast Georgia to an investment subsidiary of Wachovia Corp. The timber company plans to sell another 264,000 acres in the Carolinas later this year. Texas-based Temple-Inland intends to put 160,000 acres of its land in Georgia in a "high-value" category, making its forests too valuable for timber production. Temple-Inland has hired an Atlanta real estate group to investigate development potential. For now, it seems investors are the most interested in purchasing timberlands. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 12 million acres of southern forest land -- an area equal to about two-thirds of South Carolina -- will be developed during the next 20 years. Forestry experts say ownership changes will hurt wildlife and the environment by dividing whole forests among developers. "The large forest tracts help protect air and water quality," said Miles "Andy" Stone, president of the Georgia Forestry Association. "But many of the new buyers are not interested in keeping the large tracts intact." The state currently leases tens of thousands of forest acres from timber companies for wildlife management. Some conservationists, however, say the land sales offer a chance to collect thousands of acres of green space for permanent protection in the South. "It's an unprecedented opportunity," said Tavia McCuean, head of the Nature Conservancy of Georgia. "We've been on the phone a lot these days talking with other groups on how we can protect a lot of this land." But the problem lies in the fact that many states are struggling with tight budgets and have little money for land purchases. Georgia's green space budget was cut from $30 million a year to $10 million. Georgia voters turned down a proposal five years ago to create a permanent land-acquisition fund for new parks, wildlife refuges and other protected green spaces. © 2003 The Washington Post Company

To: bentway who wrote (12058)	8/5/2003 1:37:43 PM
From: MSI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Great post! You came to the right place, I'm anxious to see what responses you get If you talk to pros, there are always opptys in any market, but is sounds like you should do another fixer. There should be more repos coming on the market in a few months. The other avenue is to take raw land and make it habitable, if as it sounds you have the time and inclination to do something different. Some have converted r.e. dollars and are having a boom in stock market equities but I certainly wouldn't recommend that if you haven't already been down that road enough to know the pitfalls, of which there are many more than r.e. Time is on your side, IMO, keep the nest egg, earn a living as you go, and in a few months you'll no doubt see major opportunities.