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Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 | Hacker News Reader

No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.

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Eminent Domain is nearly never used in the USA for private development, since Kelo v. City of New London. The City won in court, but lost massively in the court of public opinion. Many states passed laws restricting or prohibiting that type of eminent domain use following that case.

And even in that case, Kelo's land ended up not being used after all.

But Kelo didn't get it back.

Eminent domain is close to dead in the US. We nearly always lack sufficient political consensus to use it. It is partly why new infrastructure projects are increasingly rare and significantly more expensive.

It's probably for the better. It generally just gets used on people who lack the resources to fight back. It just doesn't sit well with me that a government can force you to sell your land at a price they determine.

Exactly. The more justified infrastructure use cases of the 20th century gave way to "economic development" crap where the city takes land it thinks the current owner isn't using effectively enough and then sells it to their cronies who promise to build a strip mall or a mixed use development or whatever (and some number of useful idiots support it because they like the idea of more taxable commerce). The government has zero business stomping on people to do the latter. Just buy the F-ing land outright the normal way if that's what you want to do.

> It's probably for the better.

Until you want to build a train line (or some other form of public transportation).

I don't disagree, but there are ramifications. A big one being sprawl. If existing urban/suburban areas are to remain stagnant, then development will just push outward into areas where land is cheap and landowners more than happy to pocket a nice chunk for their former farmland. Wrap an urban growth boundary around the city, and then you can stop some of that and instead watch your housing prices skyrocket.

Wait a second, I think I just described Portland.

The reverse also works.

People see a block of land that's "unused" so they simply move there and start "developing" it. Sometimes they'll legally own the land ("adverse possession") but usually it doesn't matter. It's theirs because they're there and they're willing to defend themselves and "their" land even if they don't have a deed.

So sure, go ahead and buy a bunch of land, in the USA or elsewhere; you'll need to be prepared to enforce your ownership stake or lose it.

I have also read about cases where foreign owners just have their land straight up taken.

Locals just assume the property while the owners are away and force them into a court unfriendly to foreigners.

Devil's advocate - if you don't even live in the country should you have the right to own property there?

If you don't live on the property should you have the right to own it?

It happens to people who live on the property too, and have to leave for a while.

I read about a person who had to go to the US for cancer treatment and in the interim his otherwise full-time primary residence was stolen.

Sure, why not? But you should be paying an appropriate tax for that privilege to make owner occupied housing and land more affordable than rentals.

Which is why it is important for the states to pass laws forbidding this activity after the Supreme Court deemed it legal (or not prohibited by the constitution) a few years ago.

And there’s a bunch of land for sale outside of the UK which can be bought and let to go back to prairie or whatever. You can get 10,000+ acre ranches for a few million in places like Nebraska and just let some buffalo lounge around.

Note that this article is about the UK. It discusses your point in part 3 and goes on to discuss an alternative solution at the end. There are complex laws as almost all of the land is privately owned by either private citizens or the crown.

Scotland has what is pretty much the opposite - communities can register interest in land and get a "right to buy" if the land is ever going to be transferred:

https://www.gov.scot/policies/land-reform/community-right-to...

That is a problem of immanent domain and lobby. Remove that and private reserves work perfectly fine.

So you get your money back, and then you use it to buy other land. Same same?

Land is not fungible.

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