Buy Land They’ve Stopped Making It, or have they?
November 4, 2006
Post Tags: lava-flows , making-more-land , new-mountain , Tucson Real Estate , tucson-volcanos
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
“Buy Land, they’ve stopped making it.” When I was a boy and my Dad told me that I thought it was one of the wisest things I had ever heard. It wasn’t until years later I found out Dad was just quoting Mark Twain, or Will Rogers.
I didn’t know it was a joke, it became a guiding principle in my real estate purchases along with “Buy High”, meaning don’t buy in a flood plain, not pay too much. You know, elevation vs. inflation.
There were a few challenges to this statement along the way.
- When I was in high school we saw a film on the growth of the Hawaiian islands as lava flowed into the ocean and islands actually grew, creating more real estate.
- I was in Japan in 1971 and took a trip to the northern island of Hokkaido, there was a new mountain there called Showa Shinzan, meaning “New Mountain” go figure. That mountain erupted in 2000 and continues to spew out sulphurous gas. When I was there I took a hike on the mountain and gathered a few rock samples, as I was coming down someone asked me If I were up on the mountain and I said yes. They pointed to a large sign saying to keep off the mountain it was very dangerous. I couldn’t eat eggs for weeks after going up there, all I could smell was sulphur.
It would appear there are places in the world where more land aka. real estate is being made.
Here in Tucson
- We don’t have lava flows, unless an old hippie happens to break a lamp.
- We don’t have any active volcanoes, I’m sure that would violate a city ordinance of some kind.
- Occasionally a sink hole will open up but that is the loss of real estate, a subject for another day.
I think our mountain and desert areas around Tucson are so vast that many people don’t even realize, real estate is being created right before their very eyes.
Tucson Volcano Ant,
making more real estate in a neighborhood near you.
Maybe they are making more land, Dad.
