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| From the Editor: Worthy Notions |
The Opportunity of Land
Dwight Cass
06/01/2004
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These macroeconomic uncertainties are perhaps of
secondary importance to the fact that, as most real estate analysts tacitly
admit, some parts of the market are currently “overbought.” Capital flows into
many types of commercial real estate have pushed prices far higher than the fundamentals of investment in income-producing properties justify. Some may
recall a similar situation nearly two decades ago: the painful aftermath of the
real estate boom of the 1980s, which produced such a glut of capacity that it
took a decade for prices in many major markets to regain their previous
heights.
Those with significant landholdings may feel that the desire to
skirt the Charybdis of these macroeconomic and market uncertainties forces them
to veer too close to the Scylla of hurried decision-making. We have all seen the
unfortunate consequences. Near my own home on Long Island, there have been
innumerable examples in which farming families that have worked the land since
the 1600s have, in the past 20 years, sold their legacies to developers who have
polluted the landscape with awkward clusters of identical, aluminum-clad
McMansions. But there are alternatives. Land can, through the use of easements
and careful, intelligent improvement (where we partner with a developer whose
sense of the land mirrors our own) prove both a good investment and an ongoing
source of pride.
Dwight Cass
Editor-in-Chief
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