Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from how Stuff Works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
Speaker 1: can you get free or nearly free land and houses
Speaker 1: in the United States? Today? You may recall from your
Speaker 1: history class that it was once possible to get free
Speaker 1: land in the United States pretty easily. It was called
Speaker 1: the Homestead Act, and it was enacted in eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: The state of Alaska has an article on the Homestead
Speaker 1: Act and it describes it this way. In eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: Congress past the revolutionary Homestead Act that sent thousands of
Speaker 1: Americans West in pursuit of free land. Any man twenty
Speaker 1: one years of age or over was eligible to stake
Speaker 1: out a hundred and sixty acres of land for less
Speaker 1: than twenty dollars after filing their intentions. Homesteaders were required
Speaker 1: to live on the land, build a residence, and farm
Speaker 1: at least ten percent of it within five years before
Speaker 1: a legal patent for the land was issued. After Alaska
Speaker 1: was purchased by the US, homesteaders began claiming land in Alaska.
Speaker 1: Homesteaders ranged from dairy and agricultural farmers to miners and
Speaker 1: wilderness pioneers living a subsistence lifestyle. Though homesteading in most
Speaker 1: of the US began to rapidly diminish in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, it remained a viable method of settling Alaska.
Speaker 1: The Homestead Act was finally repealed in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: though Alaska was granted an extension until nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: In its hundred fourteen active years, ten per cent of
Speaker 1: US land was settled under the Act, including significant portions
Speaker 1: of Alaska. If you think about it, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful idea. The thought that you could drop everything,
Speaker 1: head west and get a free piece of land to
Speaker 1: start your life over. That's pretty significant, and it brings
Speaker 1: up the obvious question is there anything like that today?
Speaker 1: Is there any way to get free land or free
Speaker 1: housing in the United States in two thousand tennish The
Speaker 1: answer is yes, although it's not a hundred and sixty acres,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit smaller than that. But there are
Speaker 1: a number of municipalities in the United States today that
Speaker 1: are giving away free land in order to try to
Speaker 1: encourage people to move into the area. For example, there's
Speaker 1: a city called Beatrice that has the Homestead Act of
Speaker 1: two thousand, ten and on their website they say the
Speaker 1: city of Beatrice currently has three residential lots available. The
Speaker 1: lots are approximately eighty three ft wide and a hundred
Speaker 1: forty ft deep. The lots are located on the west
Speaker 1: side of Beatrice, there within the city limits. The lots
Speaker 1: all have access to a street, water, sewer, and electricity.
Speaker 1: There are no buildings on the lots. If you fulfill
Speaker 1: all the terms and conditions of the contract, you will
Speaker 1: receive the land at no cost from the city. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. Free land is available today in
Speaker 1: the United States. But what if you're looking for something
Speaker 1: a little more spacious, if you're willing to relax the
Speaker 1: formal definition of the word free and go to something
Speaker 1: like ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars. There's a remarkable
Speaker 1: amount of stuff available in the United States today, and
Speaker 1: most people, even if you're working minimum wage, you could live,
Speaker 1: you know, with their parents, or sleep on their friends
Speaker 1: couch for a year or two and scrape together ten
Speaker 1: or twenty thousand dollars. So where can you find a
Speaker 1: ten thousand or twenty thousand dollar house? The key is
Speaker 1: to look in America's most distressed cities. Right now, one
Speaker 1: of which would be Detroit. If you go to a
Speaker 1: website like realtor dot com and plug in a few
Speaker 1: input parameters for your search, you can actually find lots
Speaker 1: of houses, like a thousand of them that are less
Speaker 1: than twenty thousand dollars in Detroit today, and some of
Speaker 1: them are pretty nice, surprisingly nice, and they're available because
Speaker 1: Detroit's going through some really really hard times. The thing is,
Speaker 1: Detroit isn't alone. Almost any city because there's so much
Speaker 1: distress right now, has some real deals in real estate,
Speaker 1: and if you get on a website and look at
Speaker 1: real estate, you might be surprised at what kind of
Speaker 1: houses you can find at really really low prices in
Speaker 1: this market. And the exact same thing is true for land.
Speaker 1: You can find land if you are willing to look
Speaker 1: for it in the two hundred to five d and
Speaker 1: acre range. Now it's not gonna be urban land, it's
Speaker 1: going to be out in the middle of absolute nowhere.
Speaker 1: But still, you know these think about the people who
Speaker 1: homesteaded in eighteen sixty two. They were going out into
Speaker 1: the middle of the middle of nowhere and settling their land.
Speaker 1: So if you're willing to take that kind of adventure
Speaker 1: and willing to spend just a little bit of money,
Speaker 1: you can find lots of land today that's very, very
Speaker 1: reasonably priced. So if you're looking for an adventure, or
Speaker 1: if you're looking to relive the day days of the
Speaker 1: Homestead Act in eighteen sixty two, or if you just
Speaker 1: want to start over in life, get on the web
Speaker 1: and look at some of the amazing deals that are
Speaker 1: available today, either in the free realm or in the
Speaker 1: very very low price realm. You might be surprised by
Speaker 1: what you find. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, does that how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on
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