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But land is special in that it requires no maintenance. Its not the same as any kind of capital that requires care or maintenance in the long term,like a house
by conanbatt 9y ago
But land is special in that it requires no maintenance. Its not the same as any kind of capital that requires care or maintenance in the long term,like a house itself.
There is a case to say that big money that buys land does something to make it more valuable, and hence there was care and investment. But most of the time, land is something bought long ago, that has benefit basically forever.
- sokoloff 9y agoDoes that then make unimproved land a particularly good long-term investment in your opinion?
- conanbatt 9y agoNo, but its still is an investment with an expected positive return. Otherwise nobody would have any and would tend to sell it at 0. Land also has the chicken-egg problem capital doesn't have. The first one that built a house didn't consume his capital, the first one that got the property rights didn't consume capital whatsoever. I am closer to your position than to the other commenter in this thread, just wanted to distinguish that land can capital do have some differences worth thinking about.
- sokoloff 9y agoMost places have real property taxes (and to a lesser extent, adverse possession laws) that act as a beneficial (to society) drag on infinite holding periods of land. That tends to be a tax on the current (improved) value of the land, where others have made an argument that a tax on unimproved value would work differently (in some ways better, in some ways worse). My apologies on the prior post; I meant to imply that buying unimproved land in the "right" place is a great long-term investment.