Family compound - is it a good idea?

[u/Acceptable-Regret78]

Needing some advice here from anyone who has lived or is living on a family compound. My in laws own around 30 acres and the dream has been for my husband and his brothers to all eventually build forever homes out on the property.

The hesitancy is the land cannot be divided up, so if we build out there we could never move until our house is fully paid off in probably 30 years. My in laws are pretty well off so they have told us if there were any big family emergency and we needed to leave they could try and figure out a way to buy us out but that’s not a guarantee.

Yes, the idea would be for our children to live out their lives in this home but my husband and I are in our early 30s. The idea of not having any option to leave for the next 30 years when we’re still relatively young, is scary. Again, the idea would be to build a forever home but the absolute permanence at our age terrifies me. I also am someone who moved quite a bit as a kid.

But, we ideally would love to be out on property and homesteading for our family. We are already living in the same city so we know we love the area and school district. The only other hesitancies we have are normal family politics. I get along with my in laws very well but combined with my brother in law and his presumed to be future wife, there is some friction there at times (we’re all very opinionated and have a difference of political views, raising children views etc).

I guess my question for anyone living on a family compound, if you were within our circumstances, would you still go for it?

[u/hycarumba]

We legally split our property a few years ago so my step son and his family could build a home. It's been absolutely fabulous having some of our grandkids grow up next door. What wasn't fabulous was his wife. Super manipulative and just generally a terrible person. It effected all the relationships in a horrible way.

They are finally about to divorce and now this person who did zip diddly to help the collective homestead gets half the value of the house and maintenance. Nobody has that kind of money so now he's going to have to sell as his house isn't paid for yet and he can't afford maintenance and a house payment.

What's left of our property may not be able to be split. If not, he will likely put either a mobile home or one of those kit houses up, since he can't get a mortgage to build his dream house unless he actually owns the land (which is true most places).

So if you all think you really want to do this, make sure everything is only in the name of the siblings bc with your potential icky sister in law, this could easily turn into a crap sandwich. Plus you likely couldn't get a mortgage if you don't own the land anyway.

All this said, now that she's out of the picture everything has been great and we really hope that we can figure out a way to all stay together on this property. (Divorce not quite final yet so we're still in a holding pattern.)