Investments strategy with new administration?

[ponytug]

Nice that you are locally working to manage your fuels and fire behavior. What vegetation type is your land in? Chaparral, conifer forest, oak woodlands?

Originally, well 200 years ago, it was mixed bay and oak forest, with some grassland. Now it is mostly grassland as many of the oaks were cut for firewood forest the nearby cities. Grey pine forest mixed with grass land starts about three miles away, as the annual rainfall drops from twelve-ish inches to seven or so.

It is unclear to me how active the locals were in ecosystem management more than three hundred years ago, but folks east and north of here had a history of burns. The historic issue is really that this is a very thin ecosystem, and not one that folks would choose over the San Francisco Bay marshes and the forests above, all of which are wetter and support more plants and wildlife. I've never seen an archeological specimen older than about 200 years in this area, and I am normally pretty good at finding them, and we have covered thousands of acres in search and rescue on occasion. Of course, I may not understand what prime real estate was to the earlier inhabitants.

Most of the land around us is protected open space in one form or another, both public and private, and a number of agencies work to maintain and improve "the" ecosystem. Great training area for CalFire and others.

All the best,

Peter

 

[ultrarunner]

If you wanted to buy my house on 10 acres on south Whidbey Island you would need to come up with more than a million. I find this shocking.
Eric

Washington in many ways is on par with high cost of living places like the Bay Area.

Washington Property Tax may force my hand as it’s 20k now from $6800 when I bought.

 

[jyoutz]

Originally, well 200 years ago, it was mixed bay and oak forest, with some grassland. Now it is mostly grassland as many of the oaks were cut for firewood forest the nearby cities. Grey pine forest mixed with grass land starts about three miles away, as the annual rainfall drops from twelve-ish inches to seven or so.

It is unclear to me how active the locals were in ecosystem management more than three hundred years ago, but folks east and north of here had a history of burns. The historic issue is really that this is a very thin ecosystem, and not one that folks would choose over the San Francisco Bay marshes and the forests above, all of which are wetter and support more plants and wildlife. I've never seen an archeological specimen older than about 200 years in this area, and I am normally pretty good at finding them, and we have covered thousands of acres in search and rescue on occasion. Of course, I may not understand what prime real estate was to the earlier inhabitants.

Most of the land around us is protected open space in one form or another, both public and private, and a number of agencies work to maintain and improve "the" ecosystem. Great training area for CalFire and others.

All the best,

Peter

Probably it was historically maintained naturally by frequent lightning fires as an open grass/oak savanna.

 

[RayIN]

I'm making around 10% in the Market and I'm going to let them decide what to do with it. I know nothing about the Market and I figure they are charging me for their knowledge, so I'll listen to what they say.

I also have some land, and I'm wondering if it will continue to increase in value like it has in the last few years, or will people dump land and put their money into the Market?

From what I've seen before, the value of land seems to go up when the Market is unstable. But when the economy is doing great, then people want to cash out and buy Stocks for a greater return then they are getting with land.

More than likely, I'm not going to do anything different and hope for the best.

There will never be more land and it can only appreciate as population increases.
IMO it's the most stable investment out there.

 

[two_bit_score]

There will never be more land and it can only appreciate as population increases.
IMO it's the most stable investment out there.

Bring your cash and come on down.

 

[etpm]

Washington in many ways is on par with high cost of living places like the Bay Area.

Washington Property Tax may force my hand as it’s 20k now from $6800 when I bought.

Yeah, when we bought the land in 1996 there was no way we could afford 10 acres near Redmond which was where we lived. We looked further east but still no dice. In fact we looked all over western Washington for a place we could afford but was still close enough to Puget Sound business so that I could have a machine shop that made money. So when we found South Whidbey we were quite happy. The ferry kept land prices down. This apparently is no longer the case. And property taxes are high. But with no other taxes except sales taxes to fund roads, schools, fire department, and public transit, we gotta pay. The crazy thing is I keep voting for these things even though it costs me dearly. But on the other hand the kids need a good education, we need a fire department, and good roads. And public transit is free to the riders, which is a good thing for many reasons. Still, I can't believe how much my place is worth. And how much it costs to keep it.
Eric

 

[Bearsixty7]

Pardon my curiousity but when you say "they only get paid half off what they save us." What, exactly do you mean with that? Say if your house had a Market Value by the CAD (your 'Notice Value") of $500,000 and they handled your protest and the Market Value was lowered to $400,000 what would you owe them?

Half of what they save us in property taxes, taxes are about 2%, my tax bill savings would be $2K (2% x 100K), so I'd pay them $1K.

 

[two_bit_score]

Half of what they save us in property taxes, taxes are about 2%, my tax bill savings would be $2K (2% x 100K), so I'd pay them $1K.

Thanks. I had an idea it would be that way. The agents I've observed never seem to get a very good adjustment for residential protesters. I think most of the commercial agents also just go through the motions to get to appraisal or litigation. Where they probably get paid better but that's just my speculation based on a few cases I've observed.

 

[MossRoad]

In fact forest floor fuels are indeed part of the hazardous fuels that need treatment in addition to tree and brush thinning. But we use prescribed fire to rake the forest floor, not a hand rake.

Good luck with getting personnel to do that.

 

[MossRoad]

It really depends on the vegetation type. For grasslands, fire is ecologically important to renew grasses and remove brush. The only reason to suppress those is to protect structures and improvements. On the other hand many of the western conifer forests in the mountains are unnaturally dense from many years of human impacts and fire suppression (intentional and unintentional fire suppression by grazing, roads, ect…). These forests aren’t ecologically adapted to high severity fires and don’t regenerate after burning. These forests were adapted to low intensity ground fires that kept them thinned out and open. These are the focus of hazardous fuels reduction efforts and restoration work: otherwise they would disappear and the landscape would convert to grass or brush.

The landscape would convert back to whatever it was before people started manipulating it for their own purposes and then continue the natural processes like lighting, insects, drought, flood, erosion, etc. Just like all lakes eventually fill in due to eutrophication, erosion, etc... if it weren't for those industrious beavers, of course.

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