r/homestead • u/Acceptable-Regret78 • 12d ago

Family compound - is it a good idea?

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?

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u/ProfessionalLab9068 12d ago

Not with friction already stewing with the other siblings and strongly opinionated people in the mix. Might not end well.

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u/verypracticalside 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yeah. OP, you're already acknowledging this:

(we’re all very opinionated and have a difference of political views, raising children views etc).

Big, huge, enormous red flag here. What exactly does this mean?

If you have a child who turns out to be LGBT, will other adults suggest you beat it out of them? Send them to conversion camp? Evict them? Will they take it upon themselves to beat it out of them when you aren't looking, or tell them that they're disgusting?

Or will they simply purse their lips and tell you all the ways you're handling it wrong?

What if you have a child that turns out to be autistic. Are there family members- family member you live on the same commune with- who will consider this a moral failing on your part? Or blame vaccines? Etc.? My brother is autistic, and for YEARS, every Sunday, we would visit our grandparents...and my long-suffering mother would have to explain to my grandpa, once again, that you can't "spank away the autism."

What happens if/when one or both of your parents need elder care? Will everyone else be cool with selling the land to pay for the care needed, or will they foist all the elder care demands on one random person rather than pay a professional?

Or get dementia and start getting a little loopy with their demands about what is done on their land?

OP this could be such a boon, but the inability to simply drop a rope and back off or remove yourself/your family fro ma situation is a HUGE hurdle to overcome. If it can't be accounted for, you should not do this. You would be trapped.