Buying land - making land pay for itself?

[ts_hunter]

I am *again* investigating buying land for hunting and perhaps some day living on or building a cabin. I am curious what ideas others have thought of to help pay for land. For example, 80 acres @ $2,800 would be $224,000. If half of that was tillable, I could rent the tillable acres to a local farm for how much a year? Any other State/DNR forestry programs that can help?

[Musky Buck]

For me that 224,000 I could go on 45 five thousand dollar hunts and I'd be 85 years old at the end. I could take a year off here and there and pocket 5 grand each time. I'm not sure what renting that 40 would bring you in your area but a friend of mine gave that a go and every 3 years I believe his 40 is potatoes and there is like a doe and 2 fawns left once rifle begins. The other years it's plowed under corn or beans or whatever and he's locked in with these farmers for another decade, be careful.

[PerchJerker]

I bought land about 10 years ago and love having it. We don't go there just for hunting season, we go there year-round, as a weekend get-away. And I plant food plots and do other things for wildlife management -- I really enjoy that and get much more out of it than just a spot to hunt. The whole family likes having it.

But --- making land pay for itself? I don't know about that. I think a better goal might be to get the land to pay for the property taxes.

I don't have ag land and don't know anything about it, so I can't help with that. There's not any timber or conservation programs I know of that are going to pay much --- they might pay for property taxes but not a lot more. If it's wooded you might be able to have it logged, although if there's timber on it the purchase price will be higher, and you might be able to sell firewood or have gravel taken out if you have the right kind of soil.

Hope that helps a bit, and good luck.

[SkunkedAgain]

...and remember that if you log part of your 80 acres, you are removing resources that will take many decades to recover. So in that situation you've now reduced the value of your land.

[hockeybc69]

I would never consider logging a negative.

Leaving old growth trees can be a bad thing. The habitat you create by doing logging can be as good as anything to attract wildlife, and it doesnt take that long to have some extremely thick cover.

Programs galore out there, but it totally depends on where you are at, and what you have for land.

We are in Ottertail County and there are some pretty lucrative programs out there in that region.

Biggest one is the Wetland Easement Program. We permanently retired 25 acres of wetlands and received a one time check for $30,000. Thats not a typo.

The WEP I mentioned above is only available through the west central part of state where its considered an important waterfowl flyway. The program is funded by sales of Federal duck stamps.

We have CRP on 15 acres which pays us about $800 annually if I recall correctly, we have done Timberstand Improvement projects on about 40 acres and received payments of around $3000-$4000 total. We rent out 10 acres of tillable land to a farmer. We logged about 8-10 acres of old growth(worthless) aspens.

So can you pay for land? You can sure make a huge dent in the price you paid if you play your cards right.

[TooTallTom]

Depending on where you plan on buying land, $2,800/ ac might be too low or too high a price to pay for land, and it might be just right.

A good way to find out what programs are available for the land or area you are considering is to check with the county ag extension service and/ or the local office of the NRCS. Use google to find the County's HSOforum and just look for them on there. If you can't find a number for them, just call whatever number is listed on the homepage or "contact us" page and ask them to send you in the right direction.

Because, in all honesty, the people from the internets (as awesome as we are) are not the experts.

[hockeybc69]

Quote:

Because, in all honesty, the people from the internets (as awesome as we are) are not the experts.

True, but hearing from people with success stories is tough to beat.

[bottomdweller]

As far as ag land, its getting very valuable. In the part of wisc I am in, most are getting 100 an acre on average for rent, some lower some higher.

[PerchJerker]

My land is farther north in a region that is heavily forested and has lots of lakes, rivers, streams, waterholes, etc. None of the government programs that apply to ag land are available in my area.

Logging does not have to mean clear-cutting. Logging is a very effective for wildlife management, and produces income. I've got a buddy who bought some land, had some pine selectively thinned (which improves the value of the pine that got left behind), and paid for a heck of a nice pole barn with a concrete floor with the money he got from selectively cutting the pine.

If the land you buy has timber on it, you pay for the timber value in the purchase price. Logging does not reduce the value of your land, it reduces the timber value.

[TooTallTom]

Everyone likes a good success story, except maybe for those emo kids I keep seeing around...

Some places have great rental rates (if you're the landowner) other places, you almost can't find a farmer to rent the land from you. It's all pretty localized.

[someday]

My Uncle's Grandson bought a similar property in central Wabasha county for hunting and to build a cabin on just over a year ago paying $5000 an acre. With commodity prices so high land and rent prices have gone up since then by about 25%.

[nonteepical]

I would never consider logging a negative.

Leaving old growth trees can be a bad thing. The habitat you create by doing logging can be as good as anything to attract wildlife, and it doesnt take that long to have some extremely thick cover.

Programs galore out there, but it totally depends on where you are at, and what you have for land.

We are in Ottertail County and there are some pretty lucrative programs out there in that region.

Biggest one is the Wetland Easement Program. We permanently retired 25 acres of wetlands and received a one time check for $30,000. Thats not a typo.

The WEP I mentioned above is only available through the west central part of state where its considered an important waterfowl flyway. The program is funded by sales of Federal duck stamps.

We have CRP on 15 acres which pays us about $800 annually if I recall correctly, we have done Timberstand Improvement projects on about 40 acres and received payments of around $3000-$4000 total. We rent out 10 acres of tillable land to a farmer. We logged about 8-10 acres of old growth(worthless) aspens.

So can you pay for land? You can sure make a huge dent in the price you paid if you play your cards right.

Agree 110%.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

ag cash rent varies throughout the state wildly. My cousin gets $45 an acre on some little acreages up by duluth. We get $180 an acre for 1 80 acre parcel, $155 per acre for another 275 acre parcel, and were getting $105 an acre for the 100 acres we just sold. all that land western mn all within 6 miles of each parcel. The land in my wife's family name down by New Ulm gets $225-$250 an acre. It all depends on region and soil type. Is it tiled, drained, irrigated, beet ground, corn ground, etc.

If your goal is to restore wetlands on your property, I reccomend looking into the WRP and CREP programs. There are some great cost sharing tools that we used on our CREP. Going through another round hopefully this spring to do some living windbreaks, and maybe put some more wetland easements in. Our goal is to hopefully get another 60 acres of currently drained farmland and get it into grasses, wetlands, and winter cover.