|
|
 |
|
| Features |
Real Estate & Land
06/01/2004
|
A popular writer of the Southern Gothic potboiler once wrote that “Land is the
only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for ’tis the only thing in
this world that lasts.”
Perhaps we can agree with her first
premise: As assets go, land is incomparable. Over the course of history,
we have killed for it, coveted it, horded it, mourned it, rhapsodized it and
even named it, as if it were a family member. Given land’s obvious power over
our emotions and our actions, perhaps it truly is the only thing “that amounts
to anything.”
As to her second premise, that land is the only thing in this
world that lasts, with America’s current economic and demographic realities in
mind, we must politely disagree. As suburbs creep and populations swell,
land—particularly the large, open tracts that have defined family wealth over
generations—is quickly becoming too valuable to “last” as a passive, yet
emotionally evocative, family asset. Interest rates are at 40-year lows and
property values are at all-time highs. Consequently, the real-estate market is
the hottest (some say the most overheated) game going. As housing values and
returns on securitized real estate soar, even those of us with the most abiding
emotional attachments to our properties are forced to see those properties as
assets of enormous financial potential.
In the following pages, Worth
examines land and real estate in both financial and emotional contexts. First,
we look at the current hyper-paced real-estate market, and at the confluence of
factors that have created its dizzying, uncertain state. We then turn to the
practical matter of leveraging our real-estate assets. We examine how, through
careful planning and strategic development, we can reconcile the goal of
financially optimizing our only asset “that amounts to anything,” with an almost
primal desire to make that asset “last.”
|
|
|
|
|
