Get yourself some Vacation Land cheap, the OYB way!
by Jeff Potter
Up North Update 1/3/04: We drove up north today for a visit and took some photos:
Up North photos – Idlewild Photo Gallery
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Up North Update 12/8/03:
Kelvin and I went up and cleared a driveway for our property as well as a turnaround and parking area for our trailer. I met the neighbors and had coffee. DaveE came up later on. We went and checked out his new land as well. Kelvin had to go home so DE and I had dinner at the Log Bar then went and camped out under the stars next to the river on our lot. Splendid. Then the next day we went and hiked his property on out to the Pine River canyon and a couple hours more along that. Very nice all around.
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Newsflash!
We finally bought the little lot I describe below. Now, to start using our little plot in the woods, next to the beaver pond and trout stream. And time to say Hi to the neighbors 20 acres over. A new chapter begins!
Note, too, that our pal Dave E also finally put in an offer on 20 acres ten miles north of us near the Pine River. Got that stone to roll!
But here’s the Tale of the Vacation Land…
We’ve always liked going up north. It’s a Michigan thing. You’ll hardly ever hear a Michigander say, “Well, we’re headin’ to Indiana this Friday for a little…” (What do they do down there anyway?)
My relatives have always gone up and camped on state land. In one area, for the past 50 years they’ve made it THEIR land every deer season by driving in on a two-track and felling a tree behind them for the annual trip up north.
But we’ve never been part of the cottage culture or second home scene. Wrong side of the tracks for that, I guess.
Still, my folks and some of the gang have been renting a friend’s condo up there pretty darn cheap. Not our scene. That level of cheap is still, well, more than tenting.
Tenting is fine by us. Except for the other tenters. We’ve been striking out lately, what with screamers and wailers everywhere we go for tenting. No, we’ve actually had many fine times in campgrounds, but today it’s more like staying in an apartment complex for awhile than getting back to the boonies. Our state DNR people turned campgrounds into income generators awhile back by cutting site size in half. Nice.
And we’re finding that tent fees are getting silly close to motel rates, too. $15 for state sites and $25 for privates seems the new standard nationwide. And we note that campgrounds are starting to ban tenting: they know where the riff-raff comes from. We’re caught in the middle, as usual.
When I was growing up, I’d go stay at a cottage with friends sometimes. They had one of those great, classic places: 7-foot ceilings, tarpaper siding, newspaper for wallpaper inside. Pin-up girls. Oilcloth tablecloth. Their old folks’ place. Darn, I love that smell. We’d go catch catfish off the dock outside. It wasn’t quite up north. It wasn’t quite a lot of things, but I loved it.
Then our good friend Bob took over some true up north land from his dad. He just had to take over paying the taxes and the 10 acres was his. He and our pals built a yurt on it. I wrote about it in a past OYB. We’ve had some great times there. We’re old farts now. Bob and his young friends STILL have great times there. They have a good couple dozen folks partying at that place every New Years. A bit close quarters for us, and we’re not up to speed on our own stand-alone winter camping with the kiddies yet. Man, they love their sledding there. (It’s way steep woodsy terrain.)
Our friend DaveE has been threatening to buy some riverfront property, a real river cottage, for years now.
We’ve been getting the itch to find a place not too far away for ourselves. We want the closest ‘up north’ we can find, which is about 2 hours away. Why drive any farther than you have to. We like the idea of a reliable same-o place so the kids can maybe get to know other kids in the area. But, really, if you go to the same campground every time, that kind of happens already. At least at McClain State Park in the Keweenaw. We’ve been there 5 times now and I think lots of the folks there are the same each time. They make it a summer thing. You probably don’t have to buy something to get some roots. My relatives never have. Never could, for the most part. But folks from other regular state land hunting camps always come over and visit our gang each year. (Man, I gotta get up there again before the old guard fades out.)
Anyway, we’ve been sniffing and thinking about vacation land lately.
Then Martha’s folks tell us that the people who bought the cottage that her great-grampa built want to sell it and would sell it to us cheap with preference. We checked it out. It’s that great ole tarpaper style. I love it. But. It’s on a busy road. Right next to a new-fangled vinyl-sided house. With private land all around it. But! It’s only 2-5 miles away from tons of state land and world class paddling on the AuSable River wilderness Mason Tract. Ooo! Martha nixed it, though. Man, it’s also near some cool up north party towns that are quite well preserved. Houghton Lake is Tip-Up Town, man! Oh well.
There was also the idea that even $7K for a cottage was too much. I stood there looking at that place thinking “Man, even this is too much, is beyond me, boy, we’re low! I better get my still cookin’ to fergit mah blues.” I mean, if you can’t afford a tarpaper shack, that’s funny. At least I still got my sense of humor.
So we kept looking. A highschool buddy of Martha’s told us that they bought a lot near a great lake on a land contract from an old guy up by Baldwin. So last winter we went up and checked it out on a little weekender with the in-laws and great-gramma in the minivan in a blizzard. (That was something!) We basically fell in love with Baldwin. It’s a cute ole retro town with just enough amenities. Too bad there’s no moviehouse! Darn. Still, there’s the rest. We looked around at some other land the old guy had for sale. I studied the maps. Hmmm, it was smelling close. $4K for a half-acre of woodland to camp on. But the biggest thing was that it was near the Pere Marquette River. And 4 other worldclass trout and canoeing rivers. And tons of state land. And 30 minutes from Lake Michigan and Ludington. Pretty country all around.
I went to a local sporting goods store for some maps. The owner asked me why. I said I wanted some land. He said What you want to do is go to the local tax sale. Huh? He told me and I listened. I called the County Clerk and she sent me the info on the next big sale. I gradually learned more and more.
Tax sales are typically auctions where old farts buy the debt on properties and owners have a few years to pay up, with interest, or else they lose the land. Michigan has streamlined the process and most counties have gone along with the changes. If you skip taxes a few years the county can sell your land in a one-shot deal, no recourse.
Now, like Bob’s dad’s old land, there are jillions of tiny lots sold in the northwoods to people with big ideas. Then they don’t use the land and they try to sell it and no one buys it then they just stop paying taxes and it goes to the county. These taxes are about $75 a year on a buildable lot. Not much. But they let em go anyway. Of course all kinds of other properties are forfeited as well. In general it doesn’t seem like the oldtime situation of losing your farm for the taxes.
The counties seem to contract mostly with one auction firm. And these guys run a dual show. They sell live and they do it via eBay at the same time. They do lots of counties. Check em out at https://tax-sale.info. The state is also ditching its better parcels that it got from tax-defaulters over the past decades and for which it doesn’t have plans.
I had no idea what happened at these sales. I just saw the prices started at the amount owed for taxes. So buildable lots, even a few near rivers, commonly started at $500.
I spent a couple bachelor days up north (camping on state land) checking out the lots going up for auction. I found several really nice ones. My favorites all centered around a certain area near the Middle Branch of the Pere Marquette.
I drove around the area quite a bit one day, with my GPS, checking out land and exploring the scene. There’s 80 acres of US land nearby and thousands of acres just across the street. In the 80 acre chunk of woods that I was most interested in there were about 3 houses and 10 old trailers. It’s a few two-tracks that go off of a dirt road and head down to the river. I saw a guy walking a two-track and said Hi. He invited me over to his place. Nice guy. His kid and Weimereiner were with him. We visited and made friends. He liked my race canoe. He mentioned the great XC skiing around there. Darn, he might even be a bit of a hippy. He bragged on his house that he’d built up from a trailer. 20 years he’s been at it, buying up lots around his place, building his house. He still worked at the GM plant in Lansing but now he lived up north and drove down 2 hours for 5 days of work then back up for the weekends. Soon he’d retire. He wasn’t much older than me. Smart guy. He and his wife said stop over any time.
He also said it wasn’t possible to paddle their stretch of the river. I laughed. He laughed back. So that day I put in at the road and checked it out. I paddled that 5 miles down to the mainstream no sweat. Well, lots of sweat. I call it boatocross. With an empty kevlar C1 it would be fun. That’s all I’ll say. I saw many trophy trout though, and an otter. Nice country. Nice water. Lovely. Down on the mainstream, the rules start in bigtime and the fancy cottages line the place. Gimme the boonies!
So I showed up for the big sale. What a day! It was in Luther, the boonies. The Lions Club hall was packed.
Now, Baldwin is a unique area, I should mention. Its neighbor is Idlewild, which was the US’s biggest black vacation area in the Jim Crow era. Since then it’s been largely abandoned, but there are still more black people in the area than in any other rural area in Michigan.
So about a third of the auction crowd was black. I don’t go into cities much, so I get out of touch. It was nice to get some diversity by way of rural life for a change.
It was a big party. 400 lots going up for auction. All kinds of people interested. Rural people, yuppies, realtors. Plenty of cops on hand. The local fellers. Because it was a cash only aution. Or cashier’s check. No refunds. It was too rural for the Net hookup, though. You win, you get a free and clear quit-claim deed. Buy extra title insurance if you like. They sell it right there.
The auctioneer was great. A totally pro guy about my age, early 40’s. It was amazing how calm and slow he was, but yet he was fast as lightning. How’d he do that? He kept saying We’ll take as long as you like, any questions just stop me, and he would stop all the time and sweetly answer someone and deal with them with 100% focus. Then get rolling again. And his patter wasn’t even fast. It was a magic act.
The main rule is to have seen and been to any land you bid on. Do not buy anything you don’t know, he said. Don’t do it! Also, make sure you bid on the right number. He said at least one of you today is going to buy the wrong land. But let’s do our best to avoid that.
It was a community party. There were some big battles for big properties and big money and when they’d end the whole crowd would cheer. Everyone was a good sport pretty much. The auctioneer ran into a couple dense eggs and just stopped, paused and said I’ll see you next time, OK? OK? Which meant you were bounced. Very friendly, though. There was plenty of teasing going on. It was weird how fast and slow it was at the same time.
At one point I got up to use the bathroom. My bank envelope with $3K cash in it fell out of my pocket onto the floor with a thwap. A rotund, middle-aged black farm fellow sitting near me said “Now, you don’t want to be losing that now, do you?” We cracked up.
So I had scoped out 4 lots I liked. Except they were coming up in reverse order. At the last minute I decided to buy any of them that seemed to be closing at a reasonable amount and worry about it later. The action was hot. Some yuppies near me suddenly made faces and left without even bidding. They got beat before they started. My lots were halfway thru and many people had left. Suddenly a hot young Phillipino gal came and sat down next to me. Lots of perfume. She was wearing a business suit and opened a briefcase and set out a bidding number. No new people had showed up the whole time. She got out some papers, all organized with tabs, computer printouts, showing lots *I WANTED*. I panicked. It was a realty lady and I’d heard there was a big corporation from Washington state buying up lots of stuff. Then she started buying stuff, winning everything. Yikes. Then my lots came up. I don’t even remember what happened. That’s how fast it goes. My lesser choices didn’t sound right, then #2 came up and I heard the guy saying Going-going-going at, what? $700? I raised my hand just as a guy stood up in front of me, Il leaned hard and I heard Sold! The auctioneer looked at me and said Oh I see you there now, sir, sorry about that, but I said Sold, better luck next time. Then my #1 choice came up and she was in there. But so was I. A big old black man next to me was also in the game. At $2500 the lady dropped out. At $2700 the man dropped out. Going, going. Then voices chimed in from the back. At $2800 I dropped out. It went for $3200. This was 2 acres only 100 feet from that small, unregulated branch of the Pere Marquette. Not bad. I was bummin’ and itchy to come away with something. Then I remembered what the man said and I closed my briefcase and walked away.
But before I did I went up to the old man who won that #2 quarter-acre lot for $800. I whispered to him Want to double your money today? He said Call me later. I knew who he was. He was the big old guy who sold the lot to our friends. I’d talked to him on the phone. He’d written me a couple scritchy letters about various lots he had.
I drove back to the lots I’d missed and checked them out again. It turned out that my favorite lot really wasn’t the best. My #2 was. It was on highland but in a hard to get at location. I’d have to clear 100 feet of my own road. No sweat. Only a dozen trees. It bordered on US land. That was the good thing. And it was only 100 feet of high land to the river! I hadn’t seen that before. So I called the old guy later on. He said he was in no hurry to sell, he’d take his usual $4K for a lot. Or he’d take $250 down and $50 a month on a 8% land contract. He’s a great ole guy. He says no one sells land easier than him. A guy could make his payment picking up pop cans along the road. He’s my kinda guy. We get along. But too bad about making a deal. I told him I’d see him at the next auction. Then we went on our trip. When we got home there was a scritchy letter in our box saying he’d take my double-money offer.
So here we are. Maybe we can get a campsite, a cottage site, near a lovely northwoods river for $1600.
The funny thing is that maybe that’s even too much for us. Can’t win fer losin. But what the heck. Might as well jump in with all feet every which way. We might be poor, and poorer yet real soon, but I think we’re going to try to get our piece of dirt up north just the same. We’ll get by. And then we’ll have a place we can invite people to. It’s not as hilly as the yurt. It’ll be something different. Something to add to the mix. It’s worth suffering for. We’ll do what it takes. We’ll put our groovy ole trailer up there on it. Our cottage. Why not. And it turns out my neighbor will be that guy I met before, who was nice to the stranger. 3 neighbors like that in 100 acres, with a few weekend tenters like ourselves isn’t too bad. Maybe we’ll luck out.
