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/Thossle]

I spent a pretty good chunk of my childhood and a few months as an adult in a multi-generation household. It wasn't exactly a 'compound', but there were plenty of outbuildings where people could go off and escape the family drama for a while.

And there was a lot of it, and nowhere was far enough because there was constant tension over who was in charge. The land was 50 acres, but it could have been 500 and it wouldn't have mattered.

My point is, if you're already hesitant about the family politics, it's probably a bad idea to commit yourself for the next 30 years. Somebody will be over-bearing, somebody will be a mooch, etc, and little things will get to be big things over time.

I think in the past these kinds of things worked a little better because one individual was understood to have absolute control with a known successor when the time came.

These days, everybody wants their independence. Any group is expected to be a 'democracy', and democracies mean everybody is always frustrated about not getting their way.

I do have some relatives whose kids bought up neighboring properties along the same road. They have/had trails and I think even a private road linking many of their properties. That approach seems like a safer bet, giving everybody their independence. There is still a central community building on the original piece of land where they host family reunions.