How To Be A Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property [Paperback]

Curtis Seltzer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2007

How to Be a Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property shows you the ways to learn the value and liabilities of rural real estate-second homes, farms, undeveloped land, timberland and investment property. This book is written for buyers, not sellers. It's designed to give you the knowledge to buy at the right price and avoid post-purchase surprises. Most decisions to buy or not buy are made impulsively within 30 minutes of the buyer's first visit. Dirt-Smart shows you how to use your brain to protect your pocketbook from your heart. This book will save you thousands upfront and make you money down the road.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Curtis Seltzer, 60, graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School where his classmates voted him second funniest. He earned a B.A. from Oberlin College, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He's owned land in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Virginia. Since 1983, he's lived on a grazing farm in Blue Grass, Virginia. He's discovered that words and cattle are equally unprofitable no matter how many pounds are produced per head. He's worked as a reporter, energy consultant, teacher, arbitrator and speechwriter for losing candidates. He's been consulting on land issues since the mid-1990s.

Product Details

• Paperback: 757 pages
• Publisher: Infinity Publishing (February 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0741434431
• ISBN-13: 978-0741434432
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

BIOGRAPHY

Curtis Seltzer, 64, has lived and worked in the country for the better part of 35 years. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School in 1963 where his classmates voted him second funniest, which he continues to think he is.
He has a B.A. from Oberlin College, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was briefly enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the school of education of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, but left after intentionally flunking a course called, "Survival Techniques in the Educational Bureaucracy." He did not survive the real educational bureaucracy; neither did his professor.
He bought his first country place in the early 1970s, 60 acres of recently timbered woods north of Amherst. Subsequently, he's owned property in about a dozen states and has scoped property in 20 others.
He has helped clients find and buy timberland, farms, second homes, development land and conservation property. He facilitated the purchase of 5,000 acres in eastern North Carolina that is red wolf habitat and 3,100 acres in the Adirondack Park that was owned by Mutt Lange and Shania Twain.
Since the mid-1990s, he's worked with properties ranging from 600,000 acres in Canada to 3,000 acres in Hawaii, from 30 acres in West Tennessee to 55,000 acres in Georgia.
Curtis has written a book about labor-management relations in the coal industry and several book-length reports. He wrote a newspaper column for several years that won awards from the Virginia Press Association. He has written for the Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Monthly, Nation and the Financial Times.
He writes two weekly real-estate columns. "Country Real Estate" is self-syndicated to about 500 newspapers, magazines, online sites and individuals each Thursday. It is also sent to about 500 independent bookstores. It is copyrighted and available for reprint for a modest fee from [e-mail].
He also writes weekly for www.LandThink.com, the sister site of www.Landflip.com, the country' s largest buy-sell site for rural real estate. Both columns are cached here, but arrangement for reprinting the exclusive LandThink columns must be obtained from Ryan Folk at [e-mail].
Curtis wrote How To Be a DIRT-SMART Buyer of Country Property (2007) to help buyers understand how to research, evaluate and purchase rural real estate. At 750 pages, it is a comprehensive how-to guide.
Another book, Land Matters: The "Country Real Estate" Columns, 2007-2009 will be available in the summer of 2010. More than 120 columns are collected along with a CD of more than 20 essays that were aired by Virginia public radio, WVTF in Roanoke. Curtis has been doing these five-minute commentaries more or less weekly since the summer of 2009 for "Weekend Virginia."
Since 1983, he and his family have lived on a cattle-and-timber farm in Blue Grass, Virginia, where he can see both Devil's Backbone and Snowy Mountain.
His wife, Melissa Ann Dowd, is one of two lawyers in Highland County. She is the part-time elected Commonwealth Attorney, part-time Counsel to the Highland County Board of Supervisors, part-time Counsel to the Town of Monterey and has a part-time private practice, focusing on real estate, business and estates.
Their daughter, Molly, graduated from the University of Virginia in 2007 and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2008. She is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New York City and blogs (www.mollyseltzer.com). Both Melissa and Molly turn up every so often in "Country Real Estate."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential resource for buying country property, April 16, 2007

By 

Dan E. Moldea (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How To Be A Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property (Paperback)

Curtis Seltzer's book, How To Be a Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property, delivers. It shows readers how to protect themselves when buying country property.

It's a comprehensive reference book with a long shelf life. While state and federal regulations will change, Seltzer's basic approach to researching the risks in property and determining its value will never be out of date.

I never knew there was so much to know about farms, second homes and timber land--not to mention purchase-offer contracts, borrowing, lawyers, lenders, foresters, surveyors, contractors, inspectors, real estate brokers and sellers.

This is a huge book, but Seltzer makes the reading easy. He includes lots of personal experience and anecdotes from his consulting practice. He's also a very funny guy.

If you're looking for country property, buy this book first.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and indispensable, August 27, 2010

By 

Autodidact - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How To Be A Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property (Paperback)

Really glad I bought this massive tome that is packed with information, written in an accessible and humorous way, and if nothing else does much to readjust my expectations as a lifetime sub/urbanite fantasizing about escaping to 100 acres of total silence and peace. Much of the book is dedicated to issues related to farming, which has never been much on my mind, and after reading these chapters will never be on my mind. However, it never occurred to me that I could finance my land purchase through rental and there is a lot of information on that as well.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reference for buying land, January 17, 2009

By 

Alan T. Crane (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How To Be A Dirt-Smart Buyer of Country Property (Paperback)

Even if you are just thinking about someday thinking about buying country property, get this book. It is a gold mine of information that will help you make up your mind about whether country property is for you. And it is great fun reading too. Then if you do decide to go ahead, it may save its cost many 1000 times over by steering you around potential problems.