LandThink

The phone call came in cold, three weeks ago. A major gas company was offering $10,000 to buy a 50-foot-wide, pipeline right-of-way easement over about a half mile of timberland I own with three others.

Sooner or later — words I use a lot — gasoline in America will cost $8 per gallon. Which is what it costs today in Europe. “Sooner or later” lends me a little erudition, which I don’t deserve, because whatever follows usually comes true. Not always, but often enough.

US population growth in general and growing wealth in our top 25 percent are the fundamentals driving sales of second homes, land, and land investments in the country. Neither of those engines are likely to change.