Ever buy a piece of property to have your own camp site?

I have experience with this. I bought a small lake front {unbuildable} piece of property about five years ago that we use in the spring and summer as well as early fall. We do love it although it has come with some headaches. First of we have no septic or water but I was able to get electricity last year after much haggling with the town and an added cost of about $2,000.00. My taxes each year are $800.00, not bad when you figure the cost of renting a site {aproxx. $2,500.00 to $3,500.00 each year for decent campgrounds in New England.Next year my plan is to add a 400 gallon holding tank that fits underneath my camper that I can have serviced once a summer or so.. I havent looked into drilling for water but i'm pretty sure the state/town might fight me on this but having electricity is a huge plus. I was told by the surveyor that we used, that if we want to spend the$$$ I could probably build some type of "green" house on the property that will of course raise my taxes significantly. This property was going to be sold as "buildable" but the land would not perk. Just my 2. Gregg.

my father in law did something similar .
he found an undeveloped piece down a rural road near washougal wash. in the late 1960's.
not fancy but he did have power .
it had a little creek on one edge of the property , also .
he had a work schedule that gave him 3 days off .
it was a 2 hour drive when he bought it and a one hour drive when he sold it .
he made quite a few improvements over a couple of decades .
when they built the 205 freeway across the mighty Columbia river some years later his property went up exponentialy in price .

Thought about it at one point in time. Then, we made the mistake of getting tied up with a summer cottage on a lake. It was great for a while, but the overhead costs were just too much for our budget. We just sold it a few weeks ago...hallelujah!! Already, we're back to doing more camping with the travel trailer. For the immediate future, we just want the freedom to take off and explore new places and see as much of the good ole USA as possible!!!

Watch the HOA stuff.

I have been thinking of some property as well. Texas is prime land for solar output, so looking at some property. I definitely would put in off-grid array, but septic and water would also be important as well.

One thing about Texas... if I wanted to, I could get an above-ground gasoline or diesel tank put in. One of the few ways to get ethanol-free gas that is made for road use is to do this, and have the gasoline truck visit your property every so often. This would allow me pretty much to have a complete staging depot (drive there right after work, sleep there, refuel/restock RV) as well as a retreat.

Add a RV chalet (a custom mini-house/storage area), and it would work well for a place to start/end trips (mainly to pick up/drop off camping gear depending on the season), and a retreat from Austin on weekends when F1/ACL/SXSW/RoT stuff happens.

We bought mountain property, and love it. We are in Colorado. For many years, we camped in places such as Forest Service / BLM land. One of the things we noticed, the places we can get to with the trailer, so can a lot of others people. Most of the time, it was not too bad. But a few times, we had people trying to camp in the same spot as us. Then, there are the motorcycles / ATVs, etc.. (NOTE: To each his own, they have every right to be there, just like we do, so I am not complaining that they should not be there!!!). When there are more cycles going down the dirt road, then there are cars on a 4 lane highway, well... its time to move to another spot. So, the wife and I decided to start looking for some property of our own. We spent about a year looking. Found a lovely 40 acre plot, that we now call our own. Its only about 1.5hrs away. Some things that need to be looked into: HOA dues, Taxes, other fees, Rules, etc.. Our place is zoned agricultural, so the taxes are less than $25 a year (not bad, since a county over, the same type of land was $4000 a year, and this is only 5 miles away). Our HOA dues are low, and we do not have any other fees. The HOA allows campers to be permanently parked (which ours is mostly). We have neighbors, but we hardly see or hear them. We do not have any running water, electricity or sewer. However, I have six, 6 gallon water cans, which I bring up every trip. I have a generator, if needed. And I have a portable tank (for the black water). Which, when full, I drive to the nearest campground, and dump.
Our goal, was to find a piece of land, that we can use for camping, etc.. And in a few years, we may consider having a house built.
So, it may be worth checking into. Take your time, find something that fits you and what you want.
Good Luck.

We have 6 acres we camp on. We have power tho...would never own property I could not get power to. We spent 25 grand on it and planted about 8o decent size trees and 400 seedlings...in about 5 more years it should turn out really nice








Water supply

We did, Had it 6 or seven years. Truth is got bored, same thing all the time. Plus the maintance, taxes etc. Much rather see and do different stuff all the time.

But some people love it, having a place like that. To each his own

I almost bought some land in the Colorado high country but upon investigation found that the land was zoned for farming (it was just outside of a very recognizable Colorado town) and if one made non-farming improvements (such as putting in a paved pad and/or utilities for the RV site), it would trigger requirements to do some pretty substantial work: run city utilities to the property line, etc.

...and then the owner decided that she could start a bidding war between myself and another person (who also desparately wanted to get out of Texas). I don't play that game, so there went that idea.

I'll stick to the 100 acres in Alaska with a cabin. Maybe my great-grandchildren can put an RV there.

Doug33 wrote:

That is impressive and exactly what I would love to do. Does your son rent out the sites to anyone else?

No, it is just for family use. He also has a large pole barn on the property where he keeps all his "toys" and also stores his RV in the winter. The electricity was already in to and the pole barn built when he purchased the property. We just had to extend it to the campsites. Seems the previous owner planned on building a home there but changed his mind or something came up.

Here is another picture that shows the barn and campsite.
Barney

JiminDenver wrote:
I've thought about buying land for the same reason here but with so much NFS and BLM land around, why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free. No taxes, no work, no worries and we don't have to go to the same area all the time.

Always keep in the back of one's mind that the BLM/NFS land can always wind up closed to the public at any time, either by being sold to a private company, or deeded to China to pay off debts. It is highly unlikely, but who knows these days.

Can't hurt to have one's own piece of property, if only as a place for storage. I've thought of having a place within 1-2 hours drive that would be a nice stopover spot before a trip, where it would have a septic tank system, gasoline tank (local fuel distributers can sell gasoline with no ethanol, but you have to special order it), water, a solar array, and a building for storage. Plus, with decent upstream Internet access, it makes for a decent remote place for storing backups and other Internet stuff.