It appears that a lot of people are just sitting on the fence, not knowing when and where to get off. Today with market uncertainties and changing laws in Washington has created a lot of anxiety. Real estate has always been one of the best investments and Land has the best stability record of all.

Land values historically tend to stabilize during downturns in the housing markets and commercial development. Land values are driven more by population growth and limiting Land resources where the housing and commercial markets are driven by interest rates and supply and demand.

Here are a few of my old friends that have given us some pretty good advice.

WILL ROGERS: "Find out where the people are going and buy the land before they get there."

TEDDY ROOSEVELT: "Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent, for real estate is the basis of wealth."

ANDREW CARNEGIE: "Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate."

ANONYMOUS: "The money you get from selling land, never buys the same land back."

MARSHALL FIELD: "Buying real estate is not only the best way, the quickest way, but the only way to become wealthy."

J. D. MORRISON: "The West is the best, get here and we'll do the rest."

HETTY GREEN: "I advise women to invest in real estate. It is the collateral to be preferred above all others, and the safest means of investing money."

GROVER CLEVELAND: "No investment on earth is so safe, so sure, so certain to enrich its owners as undeveloped realty. I always advise my friends to place their savings in realty near a growing city. There is no such savings bank anywhere."

F. D. ROOSEVELT: "Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world."

WILLIAM J. BRYAN: "Real estate is the best investment for small savings. More money is made from the rise in real estate values than from all other causes combined."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1862: “A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. One generation passed away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.”

GERALD O’HARA to KATIE SCARLETT “GONE WITH THE WIND”: “Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for tis’ the only thing that last, and don’t you be forgetting it! ‘tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for – worth dying for”

THOMAS JEFFERSON to JAMES MADISON, 1785 ME 19:18, Papers: “The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployment…It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.”

The LandReport published an article 8/1/2007 “The Land Report 100” showing the top Land owners from Ted Turner with 2 million acres+/- to Roxanne Quimby: 75,000 acres+/-

http://www.landreport.com/free-digital-copy-of-the-land-report-100/

These are some of the smartest investors in the United States. Wealth has historically come for Land ownership. Wars have been fought over the control of territory and more importantly over its recourses.

Wikipedia analyzes wealth in it many forms and structures, including Land. Specifically stated:

“Wealth in the form of Land”

“Many indigenous cultures, being either nomadic or communitarian in nature, rejected the notion of the private ownership of land wealth. In the western tradition, the concepts of owning land and accumulating wealth in the form of land were engendered in the rise of the first states, for a primary service and power of government was, and is to this day, the awarding and adjudication of land use rights.”

“Land ownership was also justified according to John Locke. He claimed that because we admix our labour with the land, we thereby deserve the right to control the use of the land and benefit from the product of that land (but subject to his Lockean proviso of "at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.").”

“Additionally, in our post-agricultural society this argument has many critics (including those influenced by Georgist and geolibertarian ideas) who argue that since land, by definition, is not a product of human labor, any claim of private property in it is a form of theft; as David Lloyd George observed, "to prove a legal title to land one must trace it back to the man who stole it."

“Many older ideas have resurfaced in the modern notions of ecological stewardship, bioregionalism, natural capital, and ecological economics.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth

If have not invested in Land, just be happy with what you have. If you spend your life looking for greener pastures, you might find that you’re too old to climb the fence.

Will Rogers: “Buy land. They ain’t makin’ any more of the stuff.”

Lou Jewell ALC

2/2/2009