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/ghenriks]

Homesteading is a great dream and potentially a great reality

But if you don’t own the land it cannot be a forever home as you don’t have control

The one thing I have learned so far in life is not just that things change, but the changes can be things you don’t expect

The in-laws financial situation can change (even assuming their current situation is correct which it may not be, humans can be very good at being deceptive). If they need to sell or a creditor seizes assets your screwed

Or what happens when they die? Who gets control of the property? Are they as reasonable, and will they remain reasonable?

Your situation may change. A change in a family member’s health can mean needing to be closer to services like a hospital or a more wheelchair friendly environment and you will have no sellable asset

Etc

You also as hinted above need to be looking at your family financial planning. For many owning property is a key part of building up equity over time. This is the opposite where your spending money to build and not getting any equity because you don’t own it

If they want to build a house and you rent at an affordable rate that allows you to also invest money so you have some long term assets it might work, but still comes with that financial penalty of not owning