Vacant land or investment lots are a unique class of property. They offer endless benefits that houses cannot offer. Let’s look at the kinds of assets that are similar to land..houses. When you buy a home, the purchase comes with a list of challenges. The first is to secure a mortgage. Most homes are at a price point where the average person, and even a corporation, cannot build a good portfolio without taking out a mortgage. Every mortgage (in the same root class of words as mortuary) adds a 30-year commitment to the portfolio. As we all know, 30 years is a long time for many changes and events in the world that cause economies to collapse. Under these circumstances, all the monthly payments and mortgage commitments choke the average investor. To come to this conclusion, one only has to look at any average recession that they have experienced in the past. There are plenty of “experts” that exist when the market is up and disappear when the economy goes down, never to be heard from again. These are people who ride that roller coaster by accumulating a few houses, to the point of quitting their job to manage their portfolio as their new form of employment. As soon as the next recession hits, they are not able to pay the monthly costs without having renters who pay enough. The cash flow becomes less than the cost of the houses and the houses are soon taken by the bank (that is when you realize who the real owner of that house was…you were just the junior partner with your 20% ownership). Once that happens, these hot shot “investors” go back to their old 9 to 5 jobs. In today’s world, you have to be wiser than that. You need to have a consistent plan that leads to permanent retirement and not a series of mini-retirements followed by a return to work, over and over again, or worse a job at Mickey D’s in your old age. 

Fads come and go. But our lives have finite cycles. Eventually you have to synch to the cycles of life and nature, and not the latest new craze.