Housing Trouble

You have to have money to move, and if the reason you lost your house is because you had no money... To take one of these towns on, I'd want to know if there were any jobs. Otherwise, my family and I would be in the same difficulties we were before we moved. You have to have a source of income to buy a home, even if it is free land. The towns need to find jobs for the people they want to move in.

I can see several reasons people don't take advantage of these offers. 1) At least one of these places require you to build a house to get the free land. If you can afford to build a house, you can afford to stay where you are. 2) Thinking of myself, I don't imagine there's many jobs for an Information Security Manager in Curtis, NE or alot of Kansas, so moving to those places would be a disaster for me. 3) Because if one took them up on the offer, one would live in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, etc...

There's a lot of things to be taken into consideration before embarking a major move like this: Is the local economy going to be able to support them and their family with a job? If they lost their home to foreclosure, how will they be able to finance the construction of a new home? Can they handle living without all the modern conveniences for a time? Are they going to be ok emotionally moving away from friends and family? I'm not so sure I could willingly step out on limb and risk everything at this time in my life. Both my boyfriend and I have health issues to take into consideration. Our parents are gone, but our daughters live here and won't want to move. And to be honest, the economy really stinks, and will for some time into the future. But it does sound intriguing--thank you for sharing!

I suppose if I could afford to build a house and wanted to move to those areas, I'd do it. However I'm much more interested in buying a currently standing house in this school district. I really do not want to move out of this school district until after all of my kids have graduated.

Hiya laglen, That is a lot of places to offered to go and take up roots and settle there. But maybe those People who have lost their Homes right at this moment don´t feel much like going anywhere. Could be too that the Banks won´t give them any help. If the Government gives them help maybe it would not be enough either. Depends on everyone´s situation I suppose. With Children they are going to find it even harder I would think. Even the ones that have not got Children yet would probably think twice too. I know I would. Any offers in this Country are to go and rebuild Villages but the Villages are too broken down and need so much support from outside People to get the others to live there. So it is not working very well either. One Constructor built a whole urbanization of Flats almost in the middle of nowhere. Then they left him high and dry for the laying of cables, Waterpipes, gaspipes and telephone lines and the paving of streets and street lighting. End result is a "Desert" Urbanization where no one can afford to live even though the Flats are much cheaper than the ordinary ones. I saw it coming back from Madrid and it´s quite impressive to see how solitary it all is. People could be living there if it were not for pride and avarice of "other" People that have dropped out and left him there with no more money to finish it all off properly.

The stipulation is to build on the land they are giving away. Building from scratch costs money, and many people who are losing their homes do not have the money to build a new home. Though, there are some that probably could afford to build from scratch............ Even so, the land is out in the middle of nowhere. There are no jobs close enough to get to unless one flies a plane or helicopter! I did check into that, but it is much more costly to build (at least for me) than it is to own. I was incredibly blessed and found a house for 7,400.00. They give you so much time to build, and if you do not build on it within the allotted time, you may lose the property.

Take Beatrice Nebraska Another thing missing is jobs too. The wages look comparable though. But no jobs listed. If a person is going to move to free land they need a job to get any use from that land. A commute to the largest city is 41 miles. There is nothing that would appeal to a large city dweller.

The land itself isn't the problem. It's the development on the land that's costly. Getting credit right now is incredibly hard. Getting a loan to build a house is next to impossible. What do the banks have to reposess if you skip out with the money...an empty lot. That's why most people couldn't use the free land. They couldn't get the loans required to build on it.