September Debrief

I know this is a wall of text, but bear with me:
So I should apologize for the silence over the last few days - Im still gearing up for a big move in a few weeks (hopefully) so i’ve been picking up as many hours as possible to make some money.

As far as progress here at the homestead community has gone, I think we’ve made a pretty big splash for only putting this all together in about a month. Understandably everyone seems a little exhausted. It’s a big project, we’re sure to come across a few road bumps and pit stops. That being said we should take moment to reflect and reexamine our project timeline and see what we can get accomplished in the next few months. No “accomplishments” means lower morale, lower interest and lower likelihood of this being accomplished.

On a personal note: This is something I think about often. I’m not the original proprietor of the idea, but it’s still a very dear project to me. If people lose interest and decide to leave, I won’t view it as a failure. I very much intend on seeing it through one way or another. With that being the case, I certainly do hope you all see it through with me.

Which brings me to my next point, correlating to my point on morale just above: We do need to somehow make some headway on the project. I personally consider all the research and effort we’ve been putting in as “headway” but I understand what people are saying. Something finite needs to occur, in a sense. Some have mentioned purchasing the land outright, others consider moving to maine as soon as possible. I think there should be discussion on our options as far as the next (or first) major move in concerned. I can only feasibly see us purchasing one property, and that’s the 100 acre, $39.9k Penobscot parcel
(http://www.landandfarm.com/property/100_Acres_for_Sale_in_Penobscot_County_Maine-2206743/)

If this was to be our option, we’d have several things to consider, such as pros and cons. The pros as I see it are: We have the land in our pocket to do with as we please. Land investment isn’t a terrible thing after all - it is something that appreciates in value, something physical that you can walk on and touch and sleep on. It has resources that you can extract for some (if little) value. Hell, you can pop a tent on it (or a yurt, or a trailer) and live off of it without having to pay rent.
The cons are however: That’s around 4K out of your pocket immediately. For some people that’s a big investment to make so suddenly. For other people it may immediately exhaust their bank accounts. For those of us on the other side of the country, we may not be able to simply rush over and admire it. Either way, it’s a big decision to make.

Before we can even do this, however, two things need to happen:
1)Someone needs to scout it out. We have several Mainer’s with us eager to go surveying, so the only reasonable consequence to this is their time and money, which shouldn’t be too much.
2)We need either to contact the Real Estate agent/ Owner of the parcel, contact a lawyer, or both. Contacting the Realtor is free, but potentially bothersome depending on how they feel about people who have put no money down screwing around on their property. I know nothing about Lawyers, but I assume they too enjoy money. This could lead to the first financial investment of the group, small as it may be.

Which brings me to another point: We all need to really understand who is involved here. Several of you have introduced yourselves and I have grown fond of you all. Some have expressed interest in labor, but inability to finance. Some are not even in the country ( I see you ScandinaviaBro) but are following out of curiosity and future interest in similar endeavors. The fact is that if we want to make a financial move of any sort, we need to know who can contribute and when.

I see myself in the camp of people who can “probably maybe contribute if you’re patient”. Some of you have the money right now and can spend it immediately. We need a consensus on how we want this done. My thoughts on this are: Money is effectively king of this situation - if we have the minimum 10 contributors, all of whom have the money and can buy in right now, those of us who can’t need to sit aside. I will still contribute effort to the project, but from the outside (making phone calls, research etc)

However, I don’t think we have 10 people who can immediately contribute. I don’t even think we have 10 financial contributors. I say 10 minimum though it sounds arbitrary, simply because 100 acres between 10 people is 10 acres each for a reasonable amount of money. It’s a good balance. So if people are willing to wait, I’m sure we will have 10 financial contributors - within at least 5 months.

This is where the discussion needs to be happening. We can take it to the Legal and Finance thread, if you all wish.

Another matter of Legal and finance is a “Full Start Up Cost” list. This needs to be drafted soon. I can do it, but you’ll have to be patient with me - I’m going to say give me at least 4 days for a draft.

Feel free to begin discussing below

I'm expecting a $3.5k check before December, and my S.O is expecting around $5k in December, so I would be ready by then the earliest.
It might be a good idea to start up a kickstarter or communal paypal so people could fund us, I know some people were mentioning this in some of the earlier threads (and the r9k one as well). It would be nice to buy some land for "free".

it will take me about 10 months to save up 4K. Provided nothing major goes wrong and that I can rent one of my rooms quickly. To bad I started closing on a home this month. If for some reason it falls through before I close at the end of the month I might just buy some land instead. Manebub or I will have to talk to the land owner about owner financing. Or heck we could just get a 40-50K loan from a bank. That would only require 4k total from all of us for a downpayment and we could split the 450$ a month mortgage ( on a ten year loan) between use. I'm sure even 3-4 people could do that. As long as no one has disastrous credit we could have everyone on the mortgage.

I'm just spit balling here of course.

Hey guys, been a busy 2 weeks for me, just started a new job and been into some awesome fishing. I'll be around to contribute some more stuff this week.

As far as money goes I have none, but I can get a little cash together by the time we decide to make moves.