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Comment by 0xB31B1B | Hacker News Reader

owning land in a high demand city is a wildly different experience than owning land in a rural area with creeks. The issue is not just that "land is a finite resource so any piece of land will increase in value" the issue is that "vacant urban land has very few alternatives for people who need it so the price consistently rises in areas with growing economies".

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Land often has a lot of strings attached. For example you need to maintain it, make sure there is no wild foliage, people don't start camping, it is safe (someone gets in and breaks leg? Nightmare), then maybe you need to build a specific thing or cannot build anything at all and so on.

> For example you need to maintain it, make sure there is no wild foliage, people don't start camping

You really don't. Dirt lots coated in rusty chainlink, gang tags, weeds, and tents are traded hands all the time, even in Downtown Los Angeles, for top dollar. Maybe you hire a crew to weed wack once a month if that. Even land zoned for a single bedroom bungalow goes for a lot of bread, because one day in the future that zoning can change and there is always demand in a big city with a lot of jobs near a major harbor and airport for more units, and parcels in big cities are finite.

This is not true. Maintenance is necessary for dirt lots in downtowns. I own a few parcels in the middle of dense cities. You have to deal with soil erosion, animals digging up soil which blows away, problems with trees (due to storms, pests, hanging into other properties), property line encroachment, and vandalism.

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