Comment by bko
4 days ago
This is cool, but isn't owning property bordering public land undesirable?
Sure, there's the ability to hike directly from your home, but I imagine you'll regularly have people wander on to your property. And if something illegal happens on your property by a different party, you might be liable.
Seems like the cons outweigh the pros. Or is there something I'm missing?
I think for an individual owner there are some downsides, but if you're a big developer buying a large piece of land it can become a selling point. There's a private residential development in my state where they completely enveloped the entrance to an existing state park trail/boardwalk. So to access it, you actually have to go through this gated community. Supposedly anyone can go in if they say they're going to the state park, but I'm not sure that's true in practice and you have to interact with the private guard gate and show ID. I was able to go in with my family, but we look like a typical suburban family, so that doesn't mean others wouldn't have more trouble. It's a pretty gross case of effectively privatizing a public resource.
That's the flip side of this: private land controlling the way into public land. It's a real problem in a lot of places, and an interesting thing to map someday.
American Prairie in Montana is an example going the other way: a nonprofit buying private land that surround public land and opening them to the public. It's somewhat contentious locally, but it shows how much the private parcels around public land shape who can actually use it.
> I was able to go in with my family, but we look like a typical suburban family.
How does the typical suburban family look like? Did all 3-4-5 of you drive F150s there?
It means a group of people unlikely to be stopped and turned away at that gate. My assumption is white, middle class, dressed boring but clean, decent car without damage, with young kid(s), no/light tattoos, no motorcyckes in the back and no drug/booze/gun stickers or visible stuff. Basically someone the Karen's won't call to complain about.
Other people deserve access to public land too but might not pass the vibe check of the private guards, which is what op was lamenting as well.
We look exactly like the Simpsons before they nerfed the animation.
That would be a typical f150 family. A typical suburban family travels in a convoy of chevy suburbans. A luxury suburban family travels in a convoy of escalades.
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> but I imagine you'll regularly have people wander on to your property
Well, that depends on how large and obvious your property is.
Assuming you have a typical suburban 1/2 acre or 1 acre property, the simplest thing to do is put up a fence, or otherwise make sure that there are no trails that go over the property you use.
Otherwise, you need some kind of bounds marking and obvious "no trespassing" signs.
FWIW: The site identified public lands near my house that have a lot of trails on it. There are trails that go right behind peoples' yards, and most of them either have fences or sheds that make it obvious where the bounds are.
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That is going to depend on location. Most public land is way way out. There are often only a handful of visitors per month, and most of them won't get close to your land. Most of them are locals who know where the bounds are (and probably know you)
That matches my experience next to state game lands in PA. There's a few hunters in season who know where the lines, especially with OnX, Mostly quiet the rest of the year.
It means that nobody can build more houses "up the road" from you. That's the primary benefit. Unless the government sells the land, which this government has been trying to do in various places. This one issue is responsible for much of the reduction in republican support in Montana, for example
If you want similar benefits in more urban environments, consider property next to a cemetery. The neighbors are quiet and the lot is very unlikely to be turned into a strip mall.
"Nobody builds up the road" is the reason I hear most often from buyers, and it's personal for me too. My aunt and uncle bought a home in rural Ohio 35 years ago, on about a few acres, in the middle of nowhere. Over the years they've watched the farmland around them get sold off and housing developments creep closer.
Land that borders public land doesn't have that problem on at least one side. That's also why the site shows which agency manages the land next door, since that affects how likely it is to stay as it is.
For some buyers, yes, and that's a fair point. The site doesn't claim bordering public land is better, it just measures it, because listings say "borders state land" constantly and it's hard to check.
The people who've been most enthusiastic so far are hunters, homesteaders, off-grid folks, and people who want somewhere to walk out the back door and keep going, where the public land is the whole point. Others will see the same boundary as trespass risk, hunting pressure or a fence the state won't fix (see the comment above about a state park). Same fact, different buyer.
On liability, rules vary by state, so that's worth checking with a local attorney before buying, whatever the map says.