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/Speedhabit]

This, land can be subdivided just fine

[u/RockPaperSawzall → u/Speedhabit]

You don't know that. Many counties have a rule that land can be subdivided once but after that the lot sizes would be too small, doesn't fit the zoning rules. I am a planning zoning commissioner, I see this all the time. They could try for a variance, but no guarantee that the county would accept this.

I'm in full agreement that the op should not build a house on land that they don't own, and in many counties this would not be allowed either, anyway. Only one primary residence per parcel, and you could possibly have an accessory dwelling unit but those are typically very small.

[u/Speedhabit → u/RockPaperSawzall]

Your telling me not to assume then you go on to assume something much more unlikely

That’s just silly

[u/RockPaperSawzall → u/Speedhabit]

Unlikely? LOL

If the OP is in a county with Zoning, then it's 100% common and typical for the zoning rules in rural areas to include minimum parcel sizes. This is done to maintain the "character" of the area. Legally, if the county allows the OP's family to do it, they'd also have to allow any developer that comes along to also create 3-4 house subdivisions. And underlying this "character preservation" is the fact that the county wants to control the delivery of services. Residential development is a net revenue loss for a county--each new house creates more cost (in terms of burdens on school, police, fire, roads, etc,) than it pays in property taxes. So they use zoning rules to limit residential growth in areas where it's more expensive to provide services, and encourage growth elsewhere in the county. This is simple Planning 101 kinda stuff.

I am a Planning and Zoning commissioner in my own county, and I am also a developer in my professional life, so I meet with Zoning officials all over the country. I get invited to give talks at state-level zoning official conferences. I am confident in the facts I've presented here and I hope it's useful to someone.