© 1998 by Mary Lou Seymour and Claire Wolfe. This is a work in progress. You may download it for your own use, but it is not yet for circulation. We welcome any comments, corrections or additions you care to offer.
If you're going to buy land for a Gulch, you've got some huge decisions to make decisions on which the success or failure of your community could hinge. Aside from location, land features and other factors covered elsewhere, you've got two big considerations:
On the surface, these may sound like no-brainers. But in practice, they're dauntingly complex especially when you toss in just one complication like:
Are we talking only about ownership of the land, or are we talking about a Gulch as a business venture, or group of businesses that may include a land purchase?
Options for Gulch ownership
For instance, Gulch ownership options include, but certainly aren't limited to:
Making the decision
As the saying goes, "He who has the gold makes the rules." It's as true in gulching as in anything else. If you have or can promote a pile of money to buy property or build a business, your options are wide open.
Our only problem with some of the grand proposals we've seen for Gulch land developments or Gulches masquerading as resorts is that the people promoting them usually substitute idealism for cold cash. (Well, there's also the other problem that of keeping such ventures low profile. But that, too, can be solved with wherewithal.)
We're also very skeptical about any form of communal ownership or partnership. Communes famously devolve into operations where the few poor suckers who are willing to work hardest bear the burden for the folks who don't (so to speak) want to "clean the toilets." Partnerships are too vulnerable; unless partnership agreements are incredibly well-thought-out and well written, one partner can get mad and wreck the whole venture either by being balky about decisions or by selling to someone impossible for the others to deal with.
For most of us, we suspect that the most realistic options for land ownership are:
In these cases, you'd treat the ownership of any Gulch businesses as a separate matter. Assuming your gulchers are people of average means and attitudes, you'd probably end up with a mix of the self-employed, employed, and a few (such as yourself?) who might want to start small businesses in which other gulchers might find jobs.
The big drawback of individual parcel ownership and possible solutions
The huge drawback of having gulchers own their own land within a development is that unless you plan very carefully for the eventuality owners can sell out to folks who may not fit into the Gulch, or who might even be antithetical to it. That would be a disaster.
One solution is to establish a set of covenants and restrictions that all Gulch-land buyers agree to (something you'd probably want to do anyway). Among other provisions, you might include:
Both are imperfect solutions. The first could make land very difficult to sell, and could potentially result in nasty internecine political squabbles. The second could result in Gulch members having to scramble to purchase parcels of land they really can't afford, simply in order to prevent them falling into unknown or unfriendly hands.
Combining the above two solutions gives an extra layer of safety, but also creates extra layers of difficulties. Maybe a Gulch Guide visitor with some savvy in this area will offer more elegant solutions.
There's also the problem that a gulcher buying land on time might fail to make payments. If the gulcher is financing through a bank, you could end up with a mega-problem on your hands (which all the deed restrictions in the world couldn't cure) when the bank repossessed the land and sold it to a stranger.
You could require that all parcels be purchased outright. But that's not always realistic. (And remember that, even if you do that, if you then finance a building on the land, the bank will almost certainly insist on title to the entire property, not just the structures.)
If you have those Big Bucks, you, the developer, could finance purchases yourself. In that case, any defaults would put the land back in your hands, eventually.
Or, with somewhat smaller bucks, your organization could establish a pool to help cover a struggling member's payments, or to buy properties from members who can't make their payments.
Buying it
One of the best basic resources for anyone buying land in the country is the "bible" of land buying, Finding & Buying Your Place in the Country, by Les Scher, edited by Carol Scher. This book, which has been around since the early 1970s, is now in its fourth edition from Dearborn Publishing and is available from Amazon.com for $20.76 ($25.95 retail).
While it covers a lot of territory (some of which can help you identify an appropriate parcel of land not the subject we're dealing with at the moment), it goes into forms of ownership, techniques of negotiation, and various legalistic details. Les Scher is, or was, an attorney, and has a lot of helpful detail in that area. But he wasn't addressing gulchers in particular.
Gulchers have some additional concerns about the secrecy and security as well as the legalities of ownership.
Whether you develop a mega-Gulch or simply buy a parcel adjacent to fellow gulchers' you should very seriously consider putting the land in some name other than your own, and perhaps in some name not easily connected with you.
Why? Because governments are vicious. And because civil forfeiture is one of their current forms of insanity.
By setting up a Gulch, you'll be doing something politically incorrect and possibly dangerous. Unless you're going to just flat out let the world know what you're doing then do it right in their face, you want to use every means possible to keep a low profile.
Using a trust, corporation, or other independent entity to hold title to the property is one way of doing that. In addition, offshore trusts and corporations might offer some extra security. An offshore entity can be established by you, wherever you are, but will exist as a legal entity entirely outside of the U.S. It will receive its mail and conduct its business on an island or in a European nation, outside the easy reach of the U.S. government.
We caution that these are also imperfect solutions, at best. And as non-lawyers, non-bankers, non-IRS agents, non-DEA agents, we don't consider ourselves in a position to give advice on how all the above folks and agencies will operate. Your property any property is in danger any time a determined government thug decides it's worth his while.
That said, however, it's at least a little harder for some seizure-mad government agency to grab title to your property when the title is vested in a foreign entity, and they have to negotiate with a foreign government to grab the loot.
It's not impossible, of course. If a gummint agency wants you bad enough, they'll get you by hook or by crook. There are also two other drawbacks to offshore ownership: a lot of businesses offering to set up offshore trusts and corporations are pretty flakey; and offshore ownership might, in itself, raise suspicion that you're "up to something."
This is not a magic bullet and may not be for everyone. Still, it's worth looking into, as offshore entities are increasingly coming into the range of middle-class people.
Here are a few resources to check out. We don't recommend any of these businesses or advisors; you must investigate them for yourselves. But these can give you an idea of what's available, and get you started on further research:
Information on offshore trusts and corporations:
International Trust Laws and Analysis A book by Walter
H. and Dorothy B. Diamond Published by Warren, Gorham & Lamont
If you're extremely serious and are not interested in being led
astray by either flaky business peddlers or well-meaning political propaganda,
this $395 book contains lawyer-level or investment-advisor level information
about trusts including specific information on many countries. (Amazon.com
lists it as a special order item.)
Donlevy-Rosen & Rosen, P.A., Coral Gables, Florida 305-447-0061
http://www.protectyou.com/OFFSH_TR.html
A law firm specializing in asset protection. They provide some specific
legal info and warnings, as well as a description of the uses of offshore
trusts
Offshore Locations
http://www.falc.com/ver0898/location/offvenue.htm
Some good general background and warnings, as well as leads to some
of the most popular countries for offshore corporations and trusts
Adam Starchild's offshore investment information
http://www.cyberhaven.com/
Articles and other information from the well-known libertarian offshore
maven.
Escape Artist
http://www.escapeartist.com/
Fantastically varied information about both living and investing in
a variety of countries. Doesn't appear to have any ax to grind just
lots of links to helpful sites, including home pages of many small tax-haven
countries.
Offshore World
http://www.offshoreworld.com/
An online business offering various types of offshore asset protection
Offshore Information Services, Anguilla
http://www.offshore.com.ai/
Vince Cate, the expatriot American who operates this business doesn't
actually specialize in asset protection. His "thing" is helping
people set up businesses based on the island of Anguilla. But his services
include establishing an offshore corporation, and his site has links to
other helpful offshore resources.
A point to remember about government
Even if you use a trust or corporation to provide an insulating layer between yourself and the ownership of the property, the property itself may still vulnerable to confiscation by government for a variety of "crimes."
Here's how we (again, non-lawyers) understand the situation. Under current forfeiture laws, property can be confiscated regardless of who or what owns it for certain types of crimes, such as drug dealing or manufacture. While, in practice, no government agency would, say, grab a cruise ship just because a passenger brought a callgirl on a voyage, they certainly would seize your house if a renter operated a house of prostitution in one of your properties.
On the other hand, for "crimes" like tax resistance, the IRS can theoretically only take a property that's in your name (or that it can prove you put into another name for the purpose of "illegally" avoiding taxes). So in that case, not owning property in your name does give some protection.
Although forfeiture laws and court judgments about them seem to change with every twist of the wind, it's probably a good general rule to say that, if your Gulch property is legally a single entity (e.g. a solely owned ranch, or a corporately owned "vacation resort"), then a "crime" committed anywhere on the property could result in the forfeiture of the whole. In that case, one careless resident or one corrupt government agent with a bag of cocaine to stash on you could cause the destruction of the entire community.
In that sense, individual property ownership sounds a whole lot safer, as well as more complicated for enforcers to mess with.
To sum up
By preference, we'd opt for some form of individual land ownership, rather than any form of group ownership, however cleverly structured. But of course, this is a matter of personal preference; your inclinations and needs may dictate something very different. In any case, we'd urge each individual to use a corporation, trust, relative's name or some other means of complicating the ownership of each parcel within the Gulch. Anything that lends itself to decentralized and difficult-to-identify ownership.
Within a plan of individual ownership, there'd still be nothing to present an organizer from setting up some sort of corporate or communal business venture. But the parcels on which couples, families and singles parked their homes would be relatively safe. Governments could seize one property, or several, but would find it very difficult to seize an entire Gulch.
We repeat that we don't pretend to be lawyers or real estate experts, however. Whatever option you choose, the only thing we can say is to research it carefully for yourself.
As with all other parts of the Gulchers' Guide site, we welcome your ideas, experience and expertise in the question of Gulch ownership.
BACK TOBuying and Developing a Gulch Property
ONWARDS TO:
VI. Living,
*Part I: What
individuals should bring to the Gulch
*Part II: Jobs and services : Crew
People Wanted
*Part III: Money and barter : Crew
People Wanted
*Part
IV: Medical Care
.................Herbalism
*Part V: Food: Crew
People Wanted
..............Gardening,
An Intro
VII.Security : Crew People
Wanted
VIII. Communications: Within the Gulch and with
the outside: Crew People Wanted
RETURN TO Gulch Index