As real estate prices drop, we keep thinking about where and when we want to buy. As much as we like this mobile lifestyle, we do want a piece of land where we can park the rig for a while and not have to pay rent. And we’ll need something to leverage when we’re old. So there are two ways we’re thinking of approaching a purchase whenever experts say prices are at rock bottom:

Property Idea 1: Buy two separate, smaller cheaper pieces of land (around 5 acres) in different regions of the country. Say, one piece in Colorado, and one near Luckenbach. Winter in Texas, summer in Colorado.

• The advantage: Staying mobile, and keep on living an internet-based self employment lifestyle.
• The disadvantage: Fuel prices. Moving around won’t be cheap. How long can we sustain a lifestyle like this?

Property Idea 2: Throw all our eggs into one larger piece of land, say an old ranch, that backs up to BLM or Forest Service property. Park the rig, settle down for a while, and utilize that land for some kind of outdoors-based business.

• The advantage: We would have a larger piece of real estate that we could sell off little by little as we get older.
• The disadvantage: Getting tied down again. Property taxes. Ugh!

I like to get other people’s ideas about situations like this. What would you do?