Comment by morphle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morphle | Hacker News Reader

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British "Ben Fogle New Lives in the Wild" and Dutch "Floortje naar het einde van de wereld" are over 100 documentairies on this theme. A few of them where programmers who quit their jobs and started a small homestead farm or go to the wilderness and hunt. The majority are young families going for sustainable living. Another large group buys rural houses, fixes them up and rents them out as B&B rooms. They also have their own documentairies. The latest group are youtubers who document their move into the country. The lessons from these examples are that almost no one could earn a living from the farming. They all had problems with local laws. They all have unfixable infrastructure problems, especially for remote working c.q. programming jobs. Many had to break off when they became sick or went bankrupt. Its is very hard, so I started a business to help make the transition.

I am trying to make a business combining the two extremes. I sell rural or remote wilderness land with a high-tech solar off grid tiny house with very good internet for around $50.000. At any moment I have around 10 suitable plots of land on offer. The best are in nature reserves, the largest 100 acres. It takes on average 24 months or more to find land, get permits, build the road, water, electricity and internet infrastructure and move the mobile tiny house onto the land. Spain, Portugal and Arizona mostly.

This is for programmers and other remote workers, retirees or people who can't afford a house in the city. Since Covid there has been an large increase in people moving to remote rural locations. Most of them homestead, some take on the #vanlife.

A new trend will be permanent living in a mobile house, RV, bus, truck while working remotely. This only becomes affordable with Starlink and an electrical truck completely plated with solar panels. Water is purified onboard.

I expect the trend of going rural or mobile to increase even more in the next 10 years. I'm looking for cofounders to accommodate this increase in my business niche.

Asimov and Larry Niven wrote some science fiction stories before 1970 on this theme. When Star Trek transporters become possible, you could go live remotely on or inside a mountain or another planet.

Chris Stewart's "Driving Over Lemons" is a nice book describing the move into the country.

Do you offer such service for people who live in third world countries too? We are a couple, we live in Africa and want to move to Europe for a better quality of life but we don't want to live in the city. 50k is a bit hard to collect but we can manage if such a service would work for non-americans.

Yes we do, but it ususally will require more work to accommodate your specific situation. You might need to help us with that work to keep cost down. I'm brainstorming now: Maybe you could keep your African house or land for a few years and swap with one of our rural land owners in Europe? I know a few who dream of living in Africa. Or we find enough tourists to rent your African place. We probably could get you permanent visa's if you would legally be on the payroll of our coop (but maybe also keep your current jobs). Depending on your nationality, you need different visas. After a few years in Europe you would become citizens and would no longer need visa's. I am sure we could work out a way that would not cost you $50K, maybe you could work for it and rent. We have helped African students to emigrate. Yes, I'm sure there are ways to make it work for you, send me an email and we'll make a plan.

Do you have a website?

Still building the complicated website (maps and video and calculators), so its not yet online.

I currently send out a spreadsheet brochure every week with new rural lands and tiny or mobile house and van conversion options to choose from. I do virtual tours around the nature reserve or farm lands online, augmented by Google Earth and Streetview tours with video conference sessions. I shoot video tours and photo galleries of the available lands and houses. Most of the time its more like a coaching session, explaining how to get a visa, how to find reliable remote programming jobs, how to get a loan. Explaining why its very hard to make the transition without my professional help.

Some want to buy a turnkey house, land and infrastructure. This is possible but moving to a rural existence is much more involved than these customers think. A sales website would not convey this, this is why I prefer online tours and discussions.

morphle at ziggo dot nl to request my brochures or book a personal tour. I'm looking for cofounders and sales people (on commission).

Sent you an email. Would love to chat. This is something high on my interest list, and I’ve been thinking on how to make this easier for US expats to learn about and accomplish. There are a lot of blog posts and discussions about this, but making it turnkey would be great.

You sound like the person I want to invite to join me in this startup business, you current company is the perfect fit.

Where are these plots of land?

Right now I have offerings in Spain, Portugal, Arizona, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Kroatia, Norway, Finland. For Americans I can offer a permanent visa for Europe as well, this is why the main focus is on Spain and Portugal.

I constantly search around the world, but most lands do not qualify because of local political rules. My best is a 100 acre(!) forest on the slope of a mountain. I have several mountain plots with a whitewater river flowing all year. Land plots with an entire forest or lake.

I tried to offer land in Kazachstan, Ukrain, Bangladesh, India, Argentina, Costa Rica, Australia and the Amazon rainforest but either foreigners are not allowed to own land or it is without Starlink or fiber backbones where not available or the country is involved in a war.

Above $50K (including the land, mobile house and infrastructure) I have a lot more offerings worldwide. Islands in Belize or very remote pacific islands, but you need a boat so its more than $50K. Desert locations, but you must have 4WD and only have two satelite or radio 100mbps connections and need multiple batteries, no fiber. Medical facilities only by plane or helicopter.

The 50k is just the plot of land, or comes with a (decently) build cabin? I’ve actually been looking (in my spare time, not very seriously) into owning something in either Finland or Norway. I’m a EU citizen, so visa is not a requirement.

A friend of mine is building entirely off-grid in Finland: https://medium.com/@upnorthandoffgrid

I’m not that interested in off-grid, but I am in a nice plot of land with nature, a decent home on it (as sustainable as possible) that I can use for a few months/year.

Let me know once you launch a site.

$50K is for a complete turnkey package: a custom house build, the land, legal fees for permits, the infrastructure (you would need a lot of extra solar panels, heat storage, batteries, water and sewer purification in Finland and Norway especially near the artic) and to be able work remotely you need more than a Starlink satellite dish. You probably need at least one electric car as well. It all depends on the location of the land. Your picking the most expensive northern place in terms of cost of living, land prices alone are much higher here. You might need to build a road. Renting out the place for most of the year might cover your cost, but I guess $50K is not a lot in this part of Europe.

I have a friend who moved on some land near Holbrook, Arizona and it is challenging from what he says.

No electricity, has to truck in water, nearest paved road is 45 minutes, closest big box store (Costco) is in Phoenix, dirt roads flood when it rains and he has to camp out in the post office parking lot when it snows so he doesn’t get stuck trying to go work.

And he loves it…

I stopped overnight in Holbrook on my way through to Phoenix in January, they were supposed to get an inch or so of snow overnight, and the locals kept advising me to wait until the snow clears before resuming my trip. I was tickled because I'm from the rural midwest where 2 inches of fresh snow was a best case scenario growing up. Holbrook gets about 5 inches of snow a year whereas my native county would get 42 inches (the US average is a little under 30).

If Holbrook is getting snow then Flagstaff is probably getting hammered which is most likely what they were concerned about. I’ve been through Flagstaff a few times when they really should have shut down the roads but didn’t for who knows why, it’s not like Arizonans are known for their bad weather driving skills. They actually have a “Stupid Motorist Law” for people who drive through flooded roads and have to be rescued because it happens so often.

Two times I have almost and even started to drive through a flooded road in the east coast. During Hurricane Sandy aftermath and another time. Luckily both times my immense worry of social embarrassment saved me from possibly getting stuck. A “Stupid Motorist Law” sounds good. I don’t know the first thing about cars, I shouldn’t be driving through flooded roads to save 30 min.

I live in snow country too, and I think this advice isn't really about your ability to handle the snow. It's that they don't get snow often enough to know how to drive on snow. Then there's all the out-of-towners that drive faster than 60km/h when it's puking snow.

They also don't have rescue equipment like the midwest. We have scalable plow trucks which work for medium rescue and even special large tracked vehicles for deep snow efforts.

For Americans, how much does it cost to get permanent residency? To my understanding, it's $500k for a golden visa from Spain, which is too rich for my blood.

An American can get a permanent working visa in the EU (most of Europe) by starting a company and having $4500 sitting idle in a bank account. You still own this $4500 and can spend it after a few years. In essence the Dutch government wants you to reserve the money for a airplane ticket and the move back to the US. Without this money you look like an economic refugee and they won't give you your visa.

So I have set up a few companies (a Coop, a non-profit and C-Corp, LTD, B.V.) in the Netherlands just for this purpose. You register yourself as a cofounder/owner of this company (free) and put $4500 in the company bank account. You now qualify for a working visa and can start roaming all over the EU.

I'm a little vague here, because I want to sell you all the advice and legal work to set all this up for $1000. You first get advice from all the other Americans I helped emigrate to Europe over the years. morphle at ziggo dot nl

Without my help it will cost you a few months, three visits to the Netherlands, setting up a company from scratch and hiring a notary, a lawyer and an expat fiscal tax lawyer for at least $19.000 all together.

>"An American can get a permanent working visa in the EU (most of Europe) by starting a company and having $4500 sitting idle in a bank account."

Are you referring to DAFT? Isn't this only for NL though? Also don't you actually have to show that one of your companies is making money or they won't renew your visa after a year or so?

Yes. Under DAFT you only get a NL visum, but you then can live and work anywhere in the EU. No, you need to show you invest in your company (or have a valuable profession), but not need to show a profit. Renewal is not an issue.

I must give the standard HN disclaimer though, I can't give legal advise in public, I can not give legal advise here without knowing your individual situation. Talk to you lawyer instead.

The whole point of the turnkey house+land+permits+visa+remote working+infrastructure package we make brochures, a community website and a Coop for is that you need legal support on top of the land buying, (off-grid) house building and electricity/fast internet, water recycling and remote working. We can't give legal advise in public, we can just warn you that is complicated.

Does the permanent working visa have a path to citizenship in an EU country?

Yes, but only for Americans

That sounds weird. I would expect a 500k donation (and probably much less) to give you access to the nationality.

Definitely not the case for Portugal. You can invest 500K, but it’s not a donation, you still own the asset. Or you can apply for a D7 visa.

I have just received 314 request in the last 3 hours for my brochure of turnkey rural land+tiny house+visa +off grid infrastructure for $50.000. I'll send out the material this weekend. I expanded the list of land plots to 31 today.

With so many interested people I think we should set up an online community. It could grow into the support network for us remote rural people worldwide. I'll add the myrad links to the biographies, blogs, vlogs, websites, articles and resources. I'll put up this website at http://ruralremote.org and a backup at http://fiberhood.org within 24 hours

The reason I offer rural land plus working visa plus a tiny house and infrastructure as a package is that it is very hard to arrange all this by oneself, especially for city people. It took me three years fulltime work, thousands of hours of video and many failures before I was successful. But its all worth it, off course! Waking up with deer drinking at your own river, walking for an hour through your own forest to reach the edge, getting lost on your own land, planting an acre of trees, planting and eating your own food, having meetings with customers from all around the world with a laptop under a palm tree, it really is as magical as I thought it would be.

But you still need at least a $1000 income from remote work and a visa, without it its even harder to make remote living work at all. Maybe we can help you find that remote work too, now that we have a large group of interested people.

More than 50% of people who attempt it wound up broke, ill or destitute, giving up after 10 year at moving to a rural off-grid existence.

Don’t be fooled by the low land prices, it is the easy part. Building and living permits and working visa are hard. Anyone can get an acre of land for $1000 in most of the US and Europe. Few can actually live there for more than a year (cold, drought, crime).

Cheap land is not the problem you have to solve. How to be warm in the winter, how to make a living when the nearest town is 2 hours driving, what to do when you are sick and 300km from a hospital, where you get the money to buy food or transport. How to find a partner or how to deal with loneliness.

I’l sell you an almost turnkey solution but you still need months of planning and preparation while your custom tiny house is being built (or existing house being renovated). I sell you my construction labour for $8K, $15K internet,electrical heating and water infrastructure, $21K house building materials, $6K legal fees and experience from a network of people who have made the transition.

Sorry to sound overly negative, but I've been trying to decide whether this is a scam or not, and I could not conclude either way.

My biggest problem (besides having stock photo pictures of national reserves as "brochure" (including a photo of an eagle - what does it have to do with anything?), and basically a completely lack of actual facts) is that I cannot figure out what is the business in all this for YOU?

The only thing I can imagine is that you are not really selling land (actually, these are not even your properties atm, are they?), but you are planning to buy some of these properties for your company using the money of punters, split them to smaller pieces, and then somehow lease them / sell them on. Which might be acceptable for some people I guess - but not exactly as "advertised"...

As you very rightly described, buying some land is not really the biggest hurdle - it is the administrative costs, the transportation, the time spent etc. And then there is the value of the know-how. Even if you know everything, it is a lot of extra work, and there is no way someone would do it for the price you mentioned (€50k fully inclusive?) ANYWHERE in Europe. I'm from the Eastern part of Europe, and even there, this would be a "steal" (ie. an unbelievably good price).

So I'd be very skeptical about this whole story, and remember, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though. Do you have anything _real_ to prove your story? Land+houses that you _have_ built and sold? Contacts to previous customers for references?... Any physical location people can visit and have a look around?

Hmm, none of the links work.

As a Spaniard, I'm curious on how you're dealing with the amount of BS most municipialities throw at you, specially construction permits.

Also, why don't you make it as a community? I mean, it would be way easier to pool resources, make it cheaper for your customers and a more stable income for you, although they wouldn't be owners but renters.

Also, IDK in Portugal but getting on-grid electricity and internet (even fiber, if you're not too remote) shouldn't be a problem in Spain

I am still setting up the website, the links will start working around sunday evening of June 5th 2022. Until then you can email me at ( morphle at ziggo dot nl ).

I am making it a community site, with a HN type discussion forum and video blog hosting.

Fiber internet outside of a town is very much a problem in Spain! Electricity hookup (its called 'Solar' in Spanish) is almost impossible because you first need building and living permits and you simply will never ever get one. In Portugal its usually even harder. Laws are different in Arizona but still a big problem. You might need permission from the local tribe, or bridge a few hundred miles with microwave dishes as a backup to your Starlink. Having reliable electricity at night requires inverters and batteries that are not for sale yet, they must be custom built. And then you still need road access to your cheap rural land...

These are the reasons my company needs to help you find suitable land, get the permits and build your tiny house, because you can not do all that on your own, especially the electricity, water and internet you need for remote work.

First you need a community of rural land owners to fund the (minimal $25K) infrastructure build out . My company Fiberhood sets up a 300 Mbps Starlink Premium for Business ($9000 for the first year) on your land with 4G backup antennes and then builds a local fiber network to all the farms in the neighbourhood. After 12 months we hook up the fiber to the fiber backbone 100 km away, then you get 10 Gbps for around $99 per month on your rural land, fit for running a remote business.

As a Spaniard you point out the BS the municipalities (Ajuntamente) throw at you about permits. Don't forget the regional governments, the tax department, the electricity companies, etc. All over Europe this is a problem, but rural Spain and Portugal are especially difficult. This is why we only offer off-grid living in a few dozen locations this year. Only these locations where we have already managed to convince the local governments to give us permission, or place where we have found legal loopholes in the law. One example I can give is land in a nature reserve where you will never get a building permit for any house. But you are allowed to park a truck in that forest and live in it. In other places we get permits on our land because we build infrastructure to the local town as well. But you alone would never get that building or living permit, ever. You need to befriend the local technical architect and the mayor, buy them a couple of beers and have you children play soccer with them for a year before they will even listen to your building proposals that took you $5000 to draw up by another technical architect you hire. And it would still take a few years to get the 11 or so permits you need. We figure all this out for you, build the infrastucture and make a liveable house. You can off course do some of that work yourself (on top of your remote work you also do) but you still need our help in the first 2 years with permits and infrastructure.

I understand your struggles, but the way the "system" is set up in Spain, this isn't going to change soon. In most small municipalities the people in charge have no idea what are they doing, and most of them don't get any money for it, so it's just the local guy who likes to be known or has some personal interests, and maybe, sometimes, someone that does it for the altruism.

Maybe I would say that for ISPs there are plenty in rural Spain happy to lay fiber if you can assure them enough recurring revenue.

Even with the not so small ones like Adamo you have a chance of getting fiber laid.

> Electricity hookup (its called 'Solar' in Spanish) is almost impossible because you first need building and living permits and you simply will never ever get one.

Interesting. Is this an intentional thing i.e."We don't want people to live outside of towns so we're not going to issue any occupancy permits", or a bureaucratic incompetence/corruption thing?

Yes, its all intentional, many laws. On top of that also bureaucratic hurdles, widespread incompetence and a little corruption. But our company gradually learned the solutions with the help of many Spanish and Portugese locals and high fees for the local lawyers and technical architects. There are millions of dwellings in Spain and Portugal built without permits. Nowadays they are demolished quickly if they find out. Buying the older illegal houses is also dangerous (and the reason so many foreigners are scammed bying their dream property).

For example, you can not build on rural land outside of town, not on farm land or on nature reserves. The government owns the water, you can't just digg a well. You can only get permission to build a tool shed in some areas if you own at least 5000m2. The police will evict you if you start building or living on your land, tipped off by the neighbours who don't like foreigners or competition from your farm. If you rent out your house to tourist, you'll need a permit and pay more taxes. And anything is slow, you'll run out of money much quicker than the government runs out of ways to delay you. Watch the 17 years of Dutch episodes (thru a dutch VPN) of "Ik Vertrek" for all the horror stories of people buying land or houses in Europe and losing all their money.

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