What was the best land purchase you have ever made?

[FrankB]

I am interested in farmland and real estate and love to hear how guys made some great deals that worked out well...

Share them here if you have a good one?

[coppertop]

The best deals in my area are the
quarters of land that people bought
twenty years ago, and are now
subdividing them into country
residential parcels and selling each one
for triple the price they paid for the
land. I don't agree with this practice
and our municipality is very lax in
their land use planning as far as
protecting better agricultural land but
some of people in the community are
making a killing, or were until things
slowed down. There is a glut of acreages
on the market here now.

[FrankB]

coppertop where abouts do you live. Here in Southwestern Ontario we have very strict rules designed to prevent what is happening around you. My family has 200 acres and the only way I can build on the 200 is if we severe 100 acres. Sounds as though new rules are needed.

[coppertop]

I am in west central Alberta. The
resource based economy in our
municipality has put pressure on
agriculture land by people wanting to
live in a rural setting but not on a
farm. This has happened to the
detriment of the livestock producers who
are now dealing with trespassing,
complaints about generally accepted
farming practices such as spreading
manure, hauling silage and weaning
calves. The conflict between the two
landuses is great, plus the added
pressure on the environment due to
numerous on site sewage systems, some
that have already failed, plus the
number of water wells in the area. I
agree that people need a choice in where
they want to live but if we aren't going
to protect the better agricultural land
and the right to farm by our existing
producers then agriculture really isn't
a valued industry.
As you may have notices, I am passionate
about this and all land use issues.

[FrankB]

I couldnt agree with you more. The same thing is happening here. City people move to rural communities thinking that they have the right to ask for these changes. Its quite disgusting that our Gov't allows this to happen. Nothing pisses me off more then some idiot trespassing, be it for hunting, growing pot etc. They damage crops and have little or no regard for other peoples property. Keep up with the passion, it becomes a major problem when people become complacent and lose the passion.

[coppertop]

I am a municipal councillor, and have
voted against development adjacent to
large livestock operations due to the
potential for conflict. People don't
understand that the silage wagon will
start going by their nice little house
in the country every morning at 6:00,
and they will smell silage all day in
the crisp winter air. They don't realize
that the farmer has to follow rules in
Alberta with respect to spreading
manure, and those rules include his
being allowed to spread up to the
property line if he intends on
incorporating the manure. I get calls
from people complaining about the dust
along a silage haul, and those calls are
never from a farmer, always from someone
who moved to the country from town and
didn't understand what sort of
activities go on in a rural setting. Our
county hands out a Rural Living Guide
with every subdivision, and it clearly
states the obvious such as: If you live
on an acreage you may need to own a
tractor because you are NOT going to
automatically be plowed out in a
snowstorm. It also deals with the dogs
running at large issue, although I am
afraid that sometimes falls on deaf
ears. At our Municipal Planning
Commission meetings we hear all about
conflicts between neighbours, mainly due
to dogs running at large bothering
livesstock. The odd time the neighbours
don't like each other because one of
them ran off with the neighbours wife,
but those situations aren't as prevalent
as the dogs running at large. LOL !!!!!

[shortround]

The opportunity to sell your land for development is really only an option in a few spots close to cities and towns...

As farms get bigger, I see fewer rural folks as most of the houses are being bulldozed. I think we should allow some splitting off of the homes with the land to try and keep the rural population up in certain areas?

[coppertop]

I have never objected to the farmer
taking out his farmstead as an acreage.
In our municipality the farmstead parcel
can be no more than 15 acres, which
allows the person to have some livestock
if they wish.
This coming week our Agricultural
Service Board is going to be discussing
a recommendation to council which will
see no acreage development allowed
within the Minimum Distance Separation
from any confined feeding operation. It
is difficult to explain to some
councillors who have an urban background
and don't understand that allowing
acreages near feedlots, hog barns,
dairies etc. only creates conflicting
situations, and hampers the farmers
right to be able to carry out normal
operations.

[Ron]

"This coming week our Agricultural
Service Board is going to be discussing
a recommendation to council which will
see no acreage development allowed
within the Minimum Distance Separation
from any confined feeding operation."

As a youngerish farmer I have always thought that if worse comes to worse I can bail myself out by subdividing a piece and generating cashflow. Whether to keep farming seriously or hobby farm and work off-farm year round I was not sure.

If you stop subdivision within boundaries of CFO's I will have to fight any new CFO to the bitter end. Even though they buy my feed grains and I buy manure it would drop my land value significantly if they encroached onto my subdividable area.

Now that I think about it I better apply to subdivide any potential sites now before you change the regs.

I assume the county councillors (and anybody else in the know, er, I mean with forsight) have already done this for themselves over the past couple years?

[coppertop]

Actually, Ron on our council no-one has
subdivided any land. With respect to not
allowing acreages within the setback of
a CFO, if you don't have any CFO's near
you then you don't have a problem at
this time.
How many people to you know that would
want to live within the Minimum Distance
Setback of a CFO, eg acreage owners ?
The MDS is considered to be the area
necessary for the least impact of odor
from a CFO. Personally, I don't know
anyone who would want to live that close
to a hog barn, or other CFO with the
exception of perhaps a poultry
operation. In the days where people are
building million dollar houses on their
acreages it is difficult to understand
why anyone would want to put that
investment beside an operation where
there would be significant odor, dust,
manure spreading etc., that is why I
support no acreage development within
the MDS of existing CFO's. They need to
be able to operate and expand without
being hampered by country residential
parcels located too close. These CFO's
also include multi species operations
such as Hutterite Colonies.

[Ron]

Actually I do have several CFO's around me and part of my "technically subdividable" parcels are within the minimum distance.
The operators of the CFO's are good people, respectful operators and I have noticed an odour probably less than 5 days a year due to injection or immediate incorporation (for good agronomics not to appease the neighbors) so I dont know why anybody would mind living near them.
I believe that at the present moment I need agreement from the CFO to subdivide? I can deal with that (the hog barns were there when I was a kid), but if the rules are changed so I have no option of subdivision in that area it would change my retirement/bailout plan considerably and I would have to fight it.
What about first parcel out in the MDS? Fragmented parcels?
I am not trying to pick a fight but this is going to affect a lot of people if it goes through and the current land value in central alberta is tied to acreages. I see the county council as retired landowners that want to prevent change and keep things as they were 20 years ago, I dont see any young people having influence on the decisions that are forced upon them.
If the current regulations were enforced properly I dont think any reasonable person would have a problem living in a MDS, the problem is there are rules with zero enforcement. Just a waste of paper. ie. incorporation of manure, just before BSE there was talk of soil testing before and after manure application to prevent groundwater contamination.
Custom operators that run commercial operations with farm fuel, farm plates, no safety inspections and no maximum hours of service are crazy.
The county has better places to look than limiting and lowering my property values.
Covered way to much here, it must be a sore spot. Sorry but acreage owners arent the only problem.

[coppertop]

Ron your county likely has completely
different rule than ours does. The
Agricultural Operations Practices Act
sets out the regulations for CFO's in
Alberta. Municipalities are required to
develop their own Land Use By-Laws and
Municipal Development Plan which will
indicate how many parcels may be
subdivided per quarter section of land.
Most municipalities allow one parcel,
the farmstead as an automatic
subdivision. Many are now not allowing
subdivision within the MDS of CFO's
because of the issues that both parties
face, conflicting land uses, trespassing
on property, ATV's, snow machines,
complaints about odor and dust etc. In
our municipality the CFO operators spend
hours each week dealing with frivilous
complaints from neighbours who do not
understand generally accepted farming
practices. CFO operators have provided
dust control for their neighbours, have
changed their silage haul routes and
drive miles out of their way to appease
complaining neighbours. This costs the
CFO operator a lot of money which
normally would not be necessary his
farmer neighbours don't complain about
the dust and the silage trucks ! As far
as councillors being retired people not
embracing change, I disagree with you
wholeheartedly. There is nothing
stopping young people from running for
municipal councils, in fact next year is
election year so maybe consider putting
your name on the ballot. Our county has
numerous leading edge developments, as
do many others. Any county that does not
embrace new ideas isn't going to be
viable for long. The taxes from farm
land and residential aren't the ones
that keep municipalities viable,
commercial assessment is the money maker
for municipalities and you do not
attract new commercial development by
being old fossils that don't embrace new
ideas !!! The Province has downloaded a
lot of things to rural municipalities
much of which is costly and requires
adhering to provincial legislation. It
is easy to criticize your local council,
but if you haven't walked in their shoes
perhaps you should attend a few council
meetings to see exactly what they deal
with on any given council agenda.
Our county deals with re-zoning
applications for land on every council
agenda, this might be for a recreational
development, a commercial development or
an industrial development such as a
class 1 land fill. With each
application comes reams of information
to read, and these old 'retired,
councillors as you put it' spend hours
going through the material before making
decisions. As with all land use
decisions, any changes to the land use
by-law must first go through a Public
Hearing where anyone from the public may
give their opinion .
I personally know numerous councillors
from across Alberta, I am willing to bet
that very few people who are young, like
I assume you are, would be willing to
work seven days a week, being on call to
the community from 6:00 AM to Midnight
daily, study thousands of pages of
documents monthly, drive up and down
roads on a daily basis, attend every
charity function in the community, and
the list goes on and on. Most of these
folks make less than $35,000 a year for
the time they spend as ' Boards of
Directors' making decisions in a multi
million dollar businesses. Much of what
they do is done voluntarily. I have a
great deal of respect for anyone who
will put their name on a ballot, go out
and knock on 1500 doors asking people
for their support, and then on election
day only have 35% of the eligible voters
bother to drive to the local community
hall and vote. Apathy elects most rural
councils !!!

[cakadu]

Hey coppertop. I appreciate your comments on what councillors do and it is a pretty thankless job for the most part. Having said that, no matter how flat you make a pancake, there are still two sides to it. The councillors is my area make WAY more than the amount you've stated and that is just as a base "salary". They earn a per diem for every meeting they attend etc. etc. so some of them make far more than most of us.

I am concerned about the number of acreages that have been "cut" out of the ag land around me. Heavens, with the amount of subdivision that has gone on, we could likely open a 7-11 at the end of the road. For example, on the 1/2 section beside us, the original owner took 5 acres out of each quarter for a 10 acre parcel smack in the middle of the two parcels. The south quarter is still farmed. The north quarter was kept intact until about 3 years ago when the follow that bought it sold it to one of his grandkids. That kid turned around and subdivided an acreage out of it, sold the remainder to his brother and now that has been sold to someone who is farming it as well as building a house.

In the subdivision applications, it is amazing how the seasonal creek turned into nothing more than a drainage ditch. It is far more than that - it is one of two wildlife corridors between the Red Deer and the Medicine (there I've given my county away)and that will likely now be severely impacted because of the fences, cattle and house.

There are always unintended consequences and I fully understand where the municipalities garner a lot of their tax dollars.

[coppertop]

Hi Linda, I am aware that some county
council's are paid a base salary plus
per diem, but that is not the norm in
across the province. The Alberta
Association of Municipal Districts and
Counties polls all their membership and
provides a detailed report on councilor
compensation. In my county councilors
are paid a per diem, for half day and
full day meetings, plus two days per
month for the time spent communicating
with ratepayers.
Again, if the public is not in favor of
their council being paid a monthly
salary plus a per diem they need to
speak out during election year. I
certainly know there are some 'hogs at
the trough' in municipalities, but those
folks need to be held in check by their
colleagues on council.
In our county we must get the approval
of council to attend any meeting or
function outside the regularly scheduled
council meetings and committee/board
meetings.
I have always felt that a good, honest,
hard working council is worth whatever
they are paid, a useless councilor that
only shows up for photo ops, and doesn't
do their homework etc. isn't worth
anything as far as representing their
ratepayers goes.

[Hopperbin]

Frank I think these guys got a little off topic thought off topic was just for the marketing forum haha. Were you asking how to make the good deals or were you asking about good deals?