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

buddy of mine owns 100 acres about 60 miles from here. He can and does pretty much whatever he wants on the land. Uses it for atv trails, built a shooting range on it, and camps there to get away from things. There is no power or septic, or anything there (although at one time somone did have power ran there). It is a lot of work though. Another buddy goes out there at least once per month to mow the field and area around the old buildings (at least 100 years old) and in the summertime, it is not real pleasant (ticks, snakes, bugs, heat, etc). Great place to have and fun, but like mentioned earlier, there are some things to think about

Have you thought of buying a lot in a strata owned RV park.

When you are not there you can put the lot in a rental pool and the park usually has maintenance for you should you need it.

Then you have all the amenities and none of the head aches of looking after the property when you are not there.

Alfred622 wrote:
I've not done it - but have sure thought about it!

I like the fact that: I could control the neighborhood, the isolation, keep it as clean as I'd want.

I would not like: Needing to mow the campsite weekly (or face a tough mowing infrequently), no place to dump (unless I put in a septic field), no water source (except what I pack in), feeling like I had to go to the same place each time.

For me, I'd worry that the spot would become a burden after awhile.

Alfred makes some very valid points.

As a home owner with several acres of land plus several acres that I have purchased beside my property one MUST take into consideration the upkeep of even vacant land.

The area of the property where you intend to "camp" IS going to need some routine mowing, if not weekly perhaps every two weeks during the entire "growing" season.

If you fail to mow, you will be facing a lot of weeds, trees and poison ivy overtaking your land. I have several steep hillsides on my property which can not be mowed easily nor safely. These areas give birth to so much unwanted vegetation it isn't funny. For the last several years I have resorted to spraying weed killer to keep the weeds down. It isn't something I "want" to do, it HAS to be done to reduce mice, ticks and other unwanted critters.

Be prepared to spend a few hrs each time you are at your property mowing, weeding and other cleanup activities. Something I would rather not spend time doing while camping. For some folks that is relaxation for myself Allergies make it a real pain in the sinus's.

Many have looked into it. We have some friends that have their own place. They can't put in any sepic, water was a lot of $$$ to put in and have a problem with kids breaking in, elec was out of question. County rules and regs made their dream not so happy. We are in our 20th year (boy time flies) of having a full time lot at a "private camping club" about an hour from city. Totally loved it when working and until couple years ago when new management changed some rules. We have full hook ups and pay $less than $1,000 a year. But the new rule changes have us thinking about selling. You would think making your own place would be easy and fun, but actually doing so is not as easy as some make it out to be. Maybe you don't have to worry about county rules, or have a county that puts people first. I don't know.

30 years ago we bought a 2 acre piece with 250' of lake frontage Lake was about 65 acres, great fishing and swimming, only 250 miles from home. Checked all the township info before purchase for what I wanted to use it for and was good to go. We used it like your talking for about 6 years. We use to leave the trailer there most of the summer. Then we arrived one weekend to use the trailer we found a big red tag on the door. Red tag said in violation of township ordinance. We used it that weekend and on Monday I went to the township with tag in hand. Come to find out a new township supervisor was in charge. He had moved there from a big city. He took it upon himself to tag several trailers on places such as ours and small lake cottages that he didn't think belong there. Long story short he had no legal backing to do it. As the kids got older they didn't want to go there any longer and the wife and I sort of felt we needed to visit other places so we sold it after 15 years and moved on. It did end up being a good investment.

Most likely you will need to find some out of the way locations, far, far away from large cities/towns. If you don't you will be fighting a lot of possible zoning and or deed restrictions.

Even where I live is rather rural, but many people have written deed restrictions prohibiting mobile homes which a RV could be lumped into this category.

Years ago my plan was to buy a small piece of property, move a mobile home that was paid for but was paying lot rent on, live in the mobile home a few years while we built our house..

The problem with that plan was #1 every property I looked at was considerably more expensive than expected. #2 Deed restrictions prohibited mobile homes. #3 The few properties that had no restriction usually required a 10 mile drive down a dirt road from a paved road access.

This is done because folks either don't want property values to drop and or trying to squeeze the max value out of the land.

Ultimately ended up finding a small house on a couple of acres and abandoned the mobile home idea. Fortunately my property has no deed restrictions nor any HOA to tell me what I can or can not do. However since my neighborhood has no restrictions I can not "control" what may neighbors may or may not do..

Additionally in my county in order to sell less than 10 acres you WILL be required to have Perc test done for septic EVEN if you do not want to build..

Read and understand the entire deed contract before signing.

It's gonna depend on the county/township restrictions, as to what you can do, but usually, in the places you are looking to buy, there aren't going to be very many restrictions.
When we lived in PA, our next door neighbors were State Troopers (Husband & Wife) who had a small trailer (maybe 25') that they set up on their 15 acres.
I guess the plan was to eventually build on the site, but I don't think they ever did?
I guess I could see it making sense, if you had plans to build on the property eventually, to retire or something. And lots of folks will do just this, with a camper, for Hunting Season....and these reasons make sense.

We had talked about doing something similar when we went to visit up in the mountains of western NC....but the more we thought about it, the more we decided not to do it.

Our thought process was that we bought the RV to travel, and while we might love to stay in certain places for extended periods of time, it just didn't make financial sense to pay for the property (it's hard to find "cheap" prices, even in the boonies), or have the taxes to deal with...especially, if we only use the place for a month a year.
We could take that same money, and see a lot of this beautiful country.

Yes, the property would hopefully appreciate in value, but depending on your age, and where you decide to buy, it probably won't really be a profit for you, unless you invest in it, and install services to it. If you hold it for 30 years, you may break even?

I like the idea of peaceful and tranquil campsites....but we can get those, if we camp "off season", during the week, after kids are back in school....and we'll have hook-ups and all the amenities.:) For a fraction of what that piece of property would cost.

Of course, that's just us, and I'm sure that others who have done it, may disagree.

I've not done it - but have sure thought about it!

I like the fact that: I could control the neighborhood, the isolation, keep it as clean as I'd want.

I would not like: Needing to mow the campsite weekly (or face a tough mowing infrequently), no place to dump (unless I put in a septic field), no water source (except what I pack in), feeling like I had to go to the same place each time.

For me, I'd worry that the spot would become a burden after awhile.