With a year of working together under our belts, The Land Report and Earth Asset decided to partner with each other to advance our mutual interests.  In addition to on-going multi-platform marketing collaboration, this year Earth Asset will author the first series of the magazine’s white papers.  Topics will examine issues of great relevance and importance to readers of The Magazine Of The American Landowner, including land conservation, since that is an area of Earth Asset’s expertise.

Set to formally hit the market on May 1st, Cathead Point is featured in the popular Spring 2012 publication of The Land Report.  The interest already expressed in the property has been overwhelming, though not surprising.  The Land Report reaches a conservation-minded audience perfectly matched to be the next owner of Cathead Point, and it was important to be sure to get the property in front of them in advance of the formal launch date.

Earth Asset is honored to be selected as one of the country’s leading real estate firms specializing in land by the editors of The Land Report.  Please see the editors’ full coverage in the just-released Spring 2012 publication.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I’ve always believed that feet on soil, or sand in this case, was the only way to really get a sense of a place, connect with it.  Nothing beats seeing a property in person to appreciate its character.  At Cathead Point, that character includes the timeless aromas of the lakeside cabin, the warm breeze off the water, and the sounds of birds and waves.  Having spent time there, I would’ve thought it impossible to appreciate these things without a visit.  I had not yet seen the brilliant work of photographer and videographer, Josh Krzywonos.  Josh spent three days at Cathead last summer, and has captured the very essence of what it means to experience Cathead Point in this amazing video.  Enjoy.

Earth Asset also secured the Vermont home page featured property slot for its Teal Farm listing.  That experience has proven that, dollar-for-dollar, LandWatch.com is the most effective marketing tool that I use.  Its traffic allows me to reach the broadest audience in a tasteful manner for the least amount of effort and cost.

The Michigan featured property slot has been tied up for quite some time, and with Cathead Point becoming available May 1st, it was ideal to secure this prime advertising space now.  There has already been considerable interest expressed in the property over the past year, as it is a well-known landmark. The sellers have owned the property for 30-plus years, and now that it is becoming available there is a lot of interest surfacing.  Earth Asset’s goal is to help the family find the next steward for their beloved family retreat, someone who will love and enjoy it as much as they have.

Earth Asset and the family agreed that letting people know of the property’s availability in advance of May 1st was a good way to capture early interest, and add to the already notable wait list that we have.  Parties on the wait list will be the first to receive an invitation to tour Cathead Point, as well as the brochure that is currently being completed.

Add to this the property’s 9 distinct watersheds, significant forest resource, wide variety of microclimates, high variation of soil types, healthy wildlife population, and internal private road network and you have an extraordinary property.

But, that’s not all.  This New England behemoth is already assembled, in private ownership, and comes with 30 years of uncompromised stewardship.

This largely pristine forestland, interspersed with rolling hillsides and pockets of edge habitat, is for sale.

It is not conserved, so retains the possibility for the next steward to reap the financial rewards of conservation.

It offers endless possibilities to someone interested in conservation and working landscapes.

Its potential is documented in the newly released Smokeshire Valley Preserve Land Capability Prospectus, authored by Earth Asset’s newest partner Whole Systems Design.

Media mogul John Malone became the nation’s biggest private landowner last year, weighing in at 2.2 million acres.  It took Malone two sizable acquisitions to surpass his fellow billionaire Ted Turner, who held the title for the previous 15 years.  One of Malone’s purchases was the 291,000-acre Bell Ranch in northeastern New Mexico.  The other was 1 million acres of timberland in Maine and New Hampshire.

Turner was said to be glad to see Malone make his latest acquisition, saying “We’re working toward the same goal – to be stewards of the land and make sure it’s preserved for future generations”.

Malone intends to continue sustainable forestry operations on the Maine and New Hampshire land.  He is also considering wind-power opportunities on the property.  Out west on the Bell Ranch, Malone takes the same “working farm” philosophy. He will raise cattle and horses there.

He has been quoted as saying that he wants to “break even” on his land, but there are more than economics involved.  ”There’s the emotional and intellectual aspect of walking the land and getting that sense of awe,” he says.  ”I own it, sort of, for my lifetime”.  Like Turner, he plans to conserve most of it through the use of perpetual conservation easements.

Smokeshire’s nearly 2,000 “New England”-acres are comparable to Malone’s 291,000-”New Mexico”-acres.  It’s a lot of land, and a lot of opportunity.  The buyer lucky enough to take over the SVP-helm will, I predict, follow the wise ownership practices of Malone and Turner, marrying conservation and working landscape planning to yield sustainable, beneficial results for land and landowner.

I have always been passionate about my health, and believed that my dietary choices were smart and beneficial.  I now know I’ve been wrong, more or less, for most of my life; I’m 41.  I’ve also been an athlete my entire life.  Over the last decade, I’ve become an avid trail and long-distance runner, love doing P90x, and do a lot of hiking, snowshoeing and back-country skiing with my dog-companions.  Despite my vegetarian diet and exercising on a regular basis, up until a year ago I could not lose some extra 40 pounds I had gained.   I was always tired, miserable in my clothes, and generally did not feel good about myself.  I thought I was doing all the right things, but I wasn’t.

About two years ago I became aware of Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and his approach to long-term health, disease prevention and cure, and weight loss through nutritional excellence.  He coined the word “nutritarian” to describe his recommended diet-style.  It was slow-going at first, but after a year of trying to be a nutritarian, and doing it about 40%, I made the commitment and became 100% nutritarian.  The changes in my life have been overwhelming, from dropping 40+ pounds, to having energy all day, to thinking more clearly, to having clear skin and A+ blood work.

I am a student of Dr. Fuhrman’s, constantly watching him speak, listening to his webinars, and reading his articles and books.  I am a true convert, just ask my family – they’ll warn you not get me started on being a nutritarian…I’ll talk your ear off!  In all seriousness, I convinced my mother to adopt this diet-style as she battles relapsed Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.  She’d be the first to tell anyone that eating this way has made an enormous difference in her success against the disease, so far.

The basis of this diet-style is eating the right foods.  The right foods, then, must be available – and they must be available 365 days.  Having access to the right foods is key.

How to achieve that in a way that is climatically sustainable, regenerative to our landscapes, profitable to farmers, and cost-sensitive to the consumer is what I am interested in exploring as a nutritarian who is passionate about land conservation and smart land use, and committed to fairness and equality. These ideas will be explored in an upcoming series of articles that will touch upon, among other things,  how to identify and value land otherwise considered unusable or valueless, designing super-food crops that can be grown in locations and at scales that are sustainable and profitable, and how to do this on a local/regional level year-round.

I will be working closely with Melissa Hoffman, founder of LivingFuture Foundation, on these articles.  She and I have partnered in this effort, and look forward to bringing our ideas and questions to you over the next several months.

Stay tuned!

I am excited to announce Earth Asset’s new collaboration with Ben Falk and his firm Whole Systems Design.  I am convinced that the synergy between our firms will elevate the work that we do on behalf of the planet, and our clients, to levels otherwise unachievable going at it alone.  The suite of services that Ben and I bring to a project are powerful and unmatched.  We are entrepreneurs, always hungry for the next challenge, and in search of how to do things better.  Our shared passion for thoughtful, informed land use is what attracted us to each other.

LivingFuture Foundation founder, Melissa Hoffman, and I have been collaborating on how best to develop and promote the idea of nutrient-dense crops in direct response to a number of timely, important issues – including the long-term economic viability of Vermont’s agricultural industry, our nation’s health care crisis, and preventing and curing disease through nutritarianism. Ben’s work is in line with this, and we have shared common philosophies and goals.

We are Vermont-based, boutique small business owners focused on land-related projects, but we each bring a unique and highly specialized skillset to our new partnership.  Ben “plans, develops, and manages land-based wealth preservation and security projects for those with the forethought to invest an abundance of present day resources to reduce their family’s vulnerability to future food, energy and other supply-chain disturbances, as well as peak-oil, climatic, economic and other events”.

He did this very thing for Teal Farm owner, Melissa Hoffman.  That is how I first came to know about Ben.  He is responsible for the permaculture orchard at Teal Farm, as well as its 100 year master land use plan.  We recently met at Teal Farm, and Ben could not believe how mature the plantings were.  He was especially blown away by the health of the Sea-buckthorn (aka Seaberry) bushes.  Melissa was pleased to report that she harvested enough this past year to produce several gallons of “Teal Farm Seaberry Juice” – something NOT to be missed!

Melissa and I shared with Ben our vision for the future of Teal Farm, as we work to find its next steward.  Given that Ben is not only a practitioner, but an educator as well, we were pleased to hear from him that there is ever-growing interest in permaculture design and management, but relatively few sites like Teal Farm at which to learn and train.  We were pleased because Melissa and I very much believe that the best use of Teal Farm is as an educational facility, with adjunct think-tank and global leader retreats.

Set along the western edge of the most iconic mountain in Vermont – Camels Hump – at the base of 20,000-acre Camels Hump State Park, with its renewable energy systems, green designed and built structures, thriving permaculture orchard, and mixed forest and fields landscape – only 30 minutes from Burlington, VT – we cannot think of a better place for learning, collaboration, and important policy making to take place than Teal Farm.

Ben and I just completed our first collaboration, which you can read more about under the upcoming blog, Just Released: Smokeshire Valley Preserve Land Capability Prospectus.

I look forward to doing important work with Ben, both here in Vermont and wherever else our services are needed.  The beauty of what we do is that we can do it anywhere. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this New York Time’s article, fashion photographer, Fabio Chizzola, shares his new passion: a 32-acre apple orchard.  Reminiscent of his childhood days back in Italy, the NYC resident is having a blast bringing back to life the old, abandoned apple orchard on the upstate farm he bought with his wife.  Not only is the farm a labor of love for Mr. Chizzola and his family, but in unearthing a stash of old photography equipment he learned that a previous owner shared his passions: farming and photography.  Mr. Chizzola says “I’m attached to the land”.

To read the full article, click here.

I recently completed phase one pricing and marketing disposition work for clients who own a landmark property that is largely conserved.  The property tax issues that I uncovered in that work reminded me of the importance of this topic, and the need to keep property owners abreast of key issues to be on the lookout for.

I thought it would be helpful to start with the basics of property taxation in this entry, and then address key issues in following entries.  I plan to address the topic “assessment of lands encumbered by a conservation easement” next.

A property tax is an ad valorem (according to value) tax levy on the value of property.  Most often, the value of the property used to calculate a property’s tax is its assessed value.  Assessed values reflect a property’s combined land and improvement value.

In the U.S., property tax on real estate is usually levied by local government, at the municipal or county level.  Depending on the size of the community, the assessing body can be one person, a group of people, or an outside firm contracted by the local body responsible for establishing the town-wide property assessments.

The assessor’s, or lister’s, office is where you will find the person or people responsible for setting the assessed values.  Often times, when you are dealing with low-density, rural communities the local assessor will be a volunteer; as opposed to a professionally trained real property valuation expert. Herein lies one of the greatest problems with the rural property tax system in the U.S. – at least in my opinion, and especially when you are dealing with specialty properties (luxury, green, excessively large for the area, etc.).

You cannot expect volunteers to do the work of specially trained professionals.   Consequently, you cannot expect the values upon which property taxes are based to be credible.  The end result is a property taxation system fraught with errors and unfairness.  If that weren’t enough, despite the fact that the errors and unfairness emanate from the taxing authority, the burden of proving the errors and unfairness falls on the property owner.

Based on my experience, property specific tax problems are predominately borne out of the lack of experience of, and inadequate training provided to, the parties responsible for determining the property’s value for tax liability calculation purposes.  It is the lack of experience and inadequate training that causes the more detailed problems that I find, such as inconsistent application of unit values across multiple tax parcels for a single ownership, misapplication of market data, and failure to properly account for a property’s conserved status or deed restrictions.

While property tax systems can be complex, let me simplify by saying that your property tax bill reflects the coming together of two important pieces of information: the tax rate and the property’s assessed value.  The former you have no say over, really.  The latter, however, is subject to challenge.

The property tax rate is set by the taxing authority.  It is often expressed as a permille (amount of tax per thousand currency units of property value), or a mill (one-thousandth of a currency unit).

It is important to pay attention to your annual property tax bill, and understand how it gets calculated.  Unless you are an expert in real estate valuation/ appraisal, you should find an expert in this field to help navigate you through the Q & A process in trying to determine whether or not your tax bill should be challenged (often referred to as ‘grieved’).  It is paramount to work with an advisor who understands the property tax system used in the location where your property is situated.

Many landowners turn to their real estate attorney to provide guidance.  While many attorneys have a firm understanding of the process for grieving a tax bill, most do not have the professional capability to tell you what you most need to know: has the taxing entity properly arrived at my property’s value for determining my tax liability?

If you want to grieve your tax bill, more likely than not, you will be challenging the assessed value placed on your property.  To increase your chances of a successful appeal, you will want to engage a valuation expert.  In a separate entry, I will discuss what you should look for in an expert, and the scope of work and work-product terminology you should be familiar with so that you are sure to engage the expert to do exactly what you need at exactly the right point in the process.

Why should you care about your assessed value and property tax bill?

• First, the assessed value has a direct impact on how much your property tax bill is. If your assessed value has been erroneously over-stated, it could result in a higher property tax bill and you will want to take timely action to maintain your right to appeal.
• Second, your property tax bill has a direct impact on your annual carrying costs.  Property taxes are often the highest expense.  Pay what is fair, but it is not always prudent to simply pay the bill without knowing the value was properly arrived at.
• Third, it illustrates diligent ownership.
• Finally, you want to ensure accuracy so that if/when you decide to sell the property you can be assured that the tax bill reflects a fair and credible value for your property.  Any sophisticated buyer will review the property’s tax history and annual liability.