Sellers! Help your buyers

I looked at a small wooded tract a couple of weeks ago.

Before visiting, I asked the seller if he had a deed that he could send me so that I could run the calls through a deed-mapper program to check the acreage. He said that he did, but that he would not provide it. “Go get it at the courthouse,” he said. The courthouse was a five-hour drive away. I asked for the deed book and page number, so that I could phone in a request. “Look it up,” he said.

Most questions were met with stonewalls and an I’m-too-busy-to-be-bothered attitude.

What advantage could this seller have thought he might be achieving by acting this way? Beats me.

I’m reading an excellent book on negotiating by Steve Cohen, Negotiating Skills for Managers, McGraw-Hill, 2002, $14.95. Steve runs The Negotiation Skills Company outside of Boston, which provides professional negotiators and assistance. www.negotiationskills.com.

Sellers will help themselves in negotiations by being civil, helpful and honest.

This land is our land

I was lying in bed at 3:30 a.m. a couple of weeks ago recounting dumb things I’ve done and making a to-do list when a new thought slipped into line.

It was this: I was warm and dry, fed and watered. I did not fear a knock at my door and a one-way trip to jail. Since I have a long and undistinguished record of hostility to power in many forms, maybe I’m just too old to bother with anymore.

Had I been born in most other countries, I would probably have found myself as a left-wing opponent of a right-wing dictatorship or a right-wing opponent of a left-wing dictatorship. My fate would have been the same unpleasantness in either case.

I’ve had a long, blemished tussle with authority acting arbitrarily. I attribute this to poor breeding and too much early Bob Dylan on my part along with bad rulings by bad rulers on authority’s part.

So why was I feeling pretty safe in my own mortgaged home on my own mortgaged land? Read more »

Why Vacant Land?

The demand for land will continue to be strong in the next few years especially compared to other forms of real estate. In fact, the major media is reporting a strong, positive message in recent articles about land: Read more »

Carbon, carbon everywhere: Storing for dollars

It’s always fun to watch clever people make a profit out of a mess.

Take global warming. Today’s consensus opinion — whether you believe it or not, and whether it’s true or not — is that using hydrocarbon fuels and other human activity release gases, among them carbon dioxide (CO2), that trap heat in the atmosphere. This raises the earth’s temperature and threatens everything from polar bears to popsicles.

Both Presidential candidates say they’re worried and want to do something. Reducing man-made CO2 appears to be the main way to slow warming. But the federal government has yet to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas — that are important sources.

So what should we do about man-made carbon dioxide? Read more »

8 Benefits and Tax Advantages for Landowners Who Sell a Conservation Easement

A conservation easement is a viable solution for landowners who want to protect their land from development. Simply put, a conservation easement is a restriction on the use of property owned by an individual, similar to a deed restriction. It is recorded in public records and generally is in perpetuity. Landowners who sell conservation easements can control the ownership of the property, while receiving money for the easement. The government receives assurance that valuable land will be protected from future development. Read more »