Is This Land?

5:37 AM – February 21, 2017

It’s dark thirty and I’m back tapping away on the iPad, thanks for joining me.  While attending the SVN National Conference in Florida I was walking with my daughter Aurelia, who is 6 going on 30 and is quickly figuring out what The Land Group does.  She tells me “we sell dirt” regularly and she loyally wears our Land Group hat embroidered with the tag line.  This is cute beyond words for the record.  Clearly she is headed to be my boss someday and I will welcome it.

The other day while walking back to our hotel room, she jumped into the grass off the sidewalk and asked “is this land?”…”can we sell this?”.  The questions was so simple and direct it kind of caught me off guard, as I initially thought well yes, but I don’t know if we can sell it as it could be a ground lease underneath this hotel and non-transferable due to the rights of the leaseholder, that being the hotel.  Trust me I didn’t say that, but in the few seconds it took me to come to my senses, I realized how simple the question was and I said, “yes we can sell that patch of grass”.  I asked her if she wanted to buy it and she giggled her decline, no sale, but it got me thinking.  Later in the conference an advisor asked me about our business model and how it related to land use, and it made me realize, I wonder if most of us recognize how much land is even in the world and how it is used. Not having all the answers at hand, I figured I better do some research.  What’s interesting is how many answers there are as to how land is used globally.

As not to take up too much time this morning, I will break this discussion up a bit and over the next few blog posts will explore how the 36 billion acres are utilized on planet Earth.  Hold on to your seat! This topic will certainly ensure readership will drop from 6 to 4… Onward!