This Land is Our Land*

Hey readers. It’s been a little while.

I’ve been traveling for the past couple of weeks, and letting myself follow my inspiration to write - or not. I promised myself that this Substack would be in service more to myself even than my readers, the one place in my work-life not driven by a need to sell, promote, or pander. Sometimes, that means not writing, when I’m clear I would only be writing for all of you and not for me.

That feels like a vulnerable and taboo intention, but hey, I’m working on my service conditioning. And here I am back again, with something I think will interest us both.

In these last two years, I’ve written a lot on community. Amongst my favorites:

Now I’m entering a new era in my own life, one that will bring the practice of interpersonal cat-herding/being into center stage again. In the next months, I’ll be working on 3 projects:

• A yearlong program developing community leader emissaries (“Champions”) to new locations for a nonprofit

• A program under a separate team, doing the same work for a public audience

• A 25- to 30-person co-living community in Asheville

At the moment, the last project is on my mind, as its development - which has proceeded in fits and starts for several years now - is again on a rickety track to somewhere.

In this article, I’ll catch you up on the project, as the story of its coming-to-be may be useful for others looking to create co-living or land development projects.

In the next article, which will be for paid subscribers only, I’ll give a full guide to bidding, buying, and assessing land. Next in the series, we’ll get into my current personal project - developing the HOA and cultural covenants for the community.

Let’s start with…

The Asheville land project, currently named WNC, LLC (“We’re Not a Cult, LLC” - yes, I made a lawyer file that) began gestation about two years ago. Geof and I were exploring co-locating between our current property in Bastrop, Texas and Asheville, NC, where some dear friends of ours had a community.

We sat down to tell our co-owners in Bastrop that we planned to put a tiny house on our friends’ land and spend a couple months of the year there. Before we could get the words out, they told us: “We want to move. Texas is too hot, and we don’t want to raise kids here.”

Geof and I looked at each other, and then at them. We said, “How about Asheville?”

In the end, everyone on our property decided to move together. Two friends in Berkeley joined the team as well. We had our seed group - 9 people, of which 7 are engaged decision-makers (the two elder parents are mostly along for the ride).

In this process, possibly the biggest stroke of luck - aside from finding 9 people that get along well together (read my last article for the elements I think contribute to that) - was Geof. He was raised with property-developer and contractor parents, and has been able to spearhead the process of finding and assessing land.

The project proceeded in fits and starts. At first, my mom was involved, wanting to buy land that could be suited for conservation. After months of searching and visits, we went under contract for a gorgeous 320-acre piece of land in Black Mountain. Conservation biologists signed off on the value of land; Geof did hundreds of hours getting bids from grading, road, bridge, well, geotech, septic, surveyors, and electric contractors; a heroic effort by both the sellers and real-estate agents got the property down to a price mom would accept. The money was in escrow; Geof and I had a flight to Asheville on Monday, September 30th to sign the final papers.

On September 28th, access to the property was wiped out by Hurricane Helene.

We mourned, and then went back to the drawing board. After another epic search, we found a 150-acre property just 15 minutes from Asheville, at high risk of development (thus good for conservation). We went under contract again. Again, the process of getting quotes from conservation, grading, road, well, geotech, septic, and electric; drafting legal agreements; talking to the forestry service and various NC and national conservation organizations about tax programs and development requirements - hundreds of hours of unpaid work from Geof.

Again, within a week of the due diligence period expiring, we ran into an insurmountable hurdle. The first conservation biologist we hired said the property, whose forest was choked with invasives, could be rehabilitated. The second - more experienced in the area - said it could not be.

Back to the drawing board. But now, having spent more than $25,000 just on due diligence fees and contractor quotes (we’ll talk about these in the next article), my mom pulled out. We had to decide if we were going to continue the search alone.

Our community is a beautiful thing, and - I believe - it’s rare to find a group willing to do what we’re doing with humor, openness, and mutual support. Geof and I decided to put in a larger stake to make the project possible without mom’s support.

We kept on looking. Here, I need to give a shout-out to the best real estate agent I have ever had the honor to connect with, Kate Hanford. If you are ever looking for land in North Carolina, especially anything in the agricultural or land sector, HIRE HER. She’s stuck with us way past the point of financial feasibility on her end, believing in the project and even helping us coordinate contractors to assess land we find. She gives me hope for humanity.

Kate helped us find our third property, an uncommonly flat 12-acre parcel 20 minutes from Asheville. This one was murdered, also in its last week, after hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of due diligence work, by the lack of a right-of-way agreement that the seller told us he had locked down.

I’ll tell you, by this point, it was hard to keep going. We had the people; we had the money; we couldn’t find the land. Geof and I had a crazy idea. If we couldn’t find what we were looking for, what if we dreamed BIGGER?

There were literally no other good-looking parcels within 30 minutes of Asheville, with or without existing houses, that would fit just our community. But there were two that could fit a larger community.

Fuck it. We expanded our view. I started assessing interest in people who might want to buy parcels in a bigger piece of land, and join a neighborhood.

There was enough interest to merit an attempt. We went into due diligence - again.

Our fourth property is 30 acres in Marshall county, 35 minutes from Asheville. It’s a little further than we wanted, but location ended up being the least important of our considerations. At some point, we had to meet with our existing community and figure out where to compromise.

The land is two hills (tentatively called either “Twin Peaks” or “The Tits”) with a valley in between. Our community can go on one hill, our neighbors - who will be chosen for temperament and skills, not just ability to buy in - on the other. Most of the flat land will be reserved for farming. The property fronts onto a minimally-traveled state road, so thank god, no ROW issues.

Now, again, we are in due diligence. Geof drafted a land plan. Our incredible land planned, Rob, edited it. Yesterday, he presented it to Madison County’s land board. They were - thank God - more amenable to our sort of project than Buncombe County’s has been, especially after Rob shamed the local land planner into admitting that his “we don’t want your weird progressive Asheville development” attitude at the start of the meeting was born from a) only having held his job for a year, b) never having heard of condo law before, and c) not having been involved in the development of the state’s new largest alternative healing and retreat center…which is based in Madison County. 😂

With tentative approval from the land planner and the fire marshall, we are on our way into contractor-quote-land. I’ll write on that later this week, in “A legal and financial guide to buying co-living land”.

My current project is gathering people and planning our social covenants. I’m engaged in many conversations with potential landmates - send more my way if you know of anyone interested! - and working with my neighbor Mai to develop HOA norms that we’ll workshop with our existing group. I had a great conversation yesterday with a pair of seed farmers who might be up for running the orchard and farm. There are amazing people in the world, and I hope to end up living with them.

We are still hoping to move to Asheville before next summer. It has felt more and more like a pipe dream as time goes on. But if it’s possible, we’ll make it happen.

I always dreamed of living in cohousing. I never dreamed of creating it, or something like it. I didn’t expect to marry a man with hidden skills as a land developer and community creator; I didn’t think I’d inherit enough money to front the cost for land; I didn’t anticipate wanting to move with several acres-ful of people when I chose to change locations.

Life takes us weird places.

Thanks for being along for the ride.

Your loving thought-dom,

Sara Ness

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