Country Real Estate Columns

 PLEASE NOTE: Thirty days after a column’s release date, it is no longer free. Individual publications, websites and brokers pay $25 for the right to reprint any column. Syndicates and brokerage chains pay $50 per column. Copyright stays with the author. Include author credit when reprinting. Send checks Curtis Seltzer, 1467 Wimer Mountain Road, Blue Grass, VA  24413.

#1   Buyers need to screen and scope country property
#2   Land buyers need to know their dirt
#3   Tips for hunting hunting land
#4   In a recession, does land offer refuge?
#5   Rural subprime borrowers are hit, but most rural property is not           
#6   Tips on finding country property
#7   Drought imperils second-home markets, prices
#8   Buyers need to know when their price is right
#9   High fossil-fuel prices will impact country real estate
#10 Trespass may be easier to forgive than forget
#11 Tips for making your country place safer
#12 Raising sheep: Good idea or baaaad?
#13 T’is the tail before Christmas
#14 Timberland is a valuable investment in a volatile time
#15 Land buyers need answers to environmental questions
#16 Tips for buying an old farmhouse
#17 Whatever happened to acid rain?
#18 Seven reasons to buy country property in 2008
 #19 Stormy Weather Brings Buyers and Sellers Together
 #20 How to buy a country retirement place
 #21 Is migrant wealth replacing local work in the countryside?
 #22 Real estate: Let us now appraise appraisers and appraisals
 #23 Conservation easements on land need to be thought through
 #24 Buying land on impulse puts buyers at risk
 #25 Land in the country provides sounds and silence
 #26 Maple sap runs free, but celebration takes work
 #27 How to sell country property in a crummy market
 #28 Remodeling and remuddling your place in the country
 #29 A dump is a terrible thing to waste
 #30 Staged property: Buyers beware
 #31 Stocks vs. land: Which is the better investment?
 #32 Property sellers can help themselves: Think outside the hole
 #33 Why do men buy country property?
 #34 Maintenance never ends and never should
 #35 Grazing beef cattle: Happy tails to you
 #36 Property buyers: Putting the "do"in due diligence
 #37 Ginger Kanadoo: Are any real-estate agents really this bad?
 #38 Country property is not a buyer's market
 #39 Be "choicy" when making buying decisions
 #40 Sooner or later, we will change
 #41 Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. Fabulous has got to go!
 #42 Property auctions are going, going...going stronger than ever
 #43 Floodplain buyout: Maybe its time to stop rebuilding
 #44 Obama and McCain on real estate and rural issues
 #45 Ponds impound more than water
 #46 Oil's up, gas is up: Here's the leasing low down
 #47 Americans wanted land 250 years ago, and still do
 #48 Looking for land up in Michigan
 #49 Real estate is all about negotiation: here's help
 #50 Making a living in the country: You're here, now what?
 #51 Real-estate deals may involve sticky ethical relationships
 #52 Real-estate investing: Don't buy a stinker
 #53 Firewood costs more than you think
 #54 Carbon, carbon everywhere: Storing for dollars
 #55 This land is our land
 #56 Sellers: Sticking on price keeps you stuck
 #57 How to sell land: A buyer's market begs for seller-financing
 #58 Panic reigned: What to do about the hay?
 #59 Real-estate tax policies: What would McCain and Obama do?
 #60 Here's the scoop: There was a fourth debate
 #61 Bub was here: Now what?
 #62 Building dirt: Louis Bromfield, a novelist with some novel ideas
 #63 Thanksgiving is no turkey
 #64 Rethinking stocks: Put land in a real-estate IRA for retirement
 #65 The Knight Before Christmas
 #66 Land ownership helps rural economic development: Can we Land a Hand?
 #67 Consider buying rural land in 2009
 #68 Is 2009 the time to buy a second home?
 #69 How green is my acre?
 #70 Country news: The message is anything but medium
 #71 Rural America is ready to stimulate
 #72 Your money: Fear is pretty risky
 #73 You need a farm truck on your farm team
 #74 Back to 1900 is not the way back to the land
 #75 Trees and loggers: Television's stab at reality
 #76 Is rural America cursed with isolation?
 #77 Outbuildings are always good for something
 #78 Why do we buy property?
 #79 We walk and talk: A Bub in the woods
 #80 Vacation-home sales down; land values up
 #81 Building a green trophy house: A memoir
 #82 The only tax dodge you will ever need
 #83 Country roads were never like this
 #84 Loss of farmland: What does it mean?
 #85 Failure in the walnuts did not build character
 #86 Farm hands tell tales
 #87 What does a national real-estate bottom really mean?
 #88 After Memorial Day, what should be remembered?
 #89 When sellers need to sell fast, they need to do the buyer's due diligence
 #90 What this country needs is a high-quality $20 grease gun
 #91 What makes land valuable?
 #92 Digging a grave fills a hole with a hole
 #93 Here's a simple approach to determining market value: TAV analysis
 #94 Rattlesnakes and Kim Jong-il make my Fourth of July
 #95 Here's a different view on views
 #96 Road rocks don't rock and are hard to remove
 #97 Classifieds raise questions, issues and eyebrows
 #98 What's the difference between speculating and investing?
 #99 Will economic weeds produce the wave of the future?
 #100 Dearly Beloved: Have I got a deal for you!!!
 #101 Rural America: Not healthy, wealthy or wise
 #102 If unhealthy food is bad for us, why do we eat it?
 #103 Labor Day labors for meaning
 #104 Every harvest deserves to be savored
 #105 I fall for colors: "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
 #106 Rural real-estate markets are stuffed up
 #107 Baby Boomer come-heres and been-heres form rural communities
 #108 Land matters: Resentful sugar maple attacks The Cluckery
 #109 Halloween: No child's been left behind, only tricks
 #110 Grass-fed beef is an old story with a new tale
 #111 Wheeling and dealing goes country
 #112 Thanks should be given for November's noise
 #113 Blue Grass negotiates with New York City
 #114 Land heals the stress of giving
 #115 Santa finds a JOY job
 #116 Ghosts of old New Years haunt the land
 #117 "The Ponz" tells his side
 #118 How Blue Grass might approach terrorism
 #119 No pipe "unthaws" before its time
 #120 Was I horsing around? Neigh.
 #121 Does the future hold one car per household?
 #122 Do rural brains really drain?
 #123 I shovel, therefore, I am.
 #124 Here are 20 rules for country fashion
 #125 I smell spring, though I admit to some ambigitty
 #126 Kiddie lit: Where have you gone "Oh, oh, oh."?
 #127 Bargaining with tourists is hard work
 #128 Good luck turns up twice
 #129 Tweedledee and Twitterdumb: Social notworking in the country
 #130 Trout fishing in America is really about trout fishing
 #131 Roadside trash presents dilemmas
 #132 Beauty might lurk in the heart of the Beast
 #133 Goldman Sachs: Why is the SEC trying to pin a tail on this donkey?
 #134 Unauthorized immigration needs to be fixed
 #135 Every act of choosing is about who we are
 #136 Reunions continue conversations and might start others
 #137 Rogue Party reveals The Secret Plan
 #138 Memorial Day recalls legacies
 #139 Power outage generates dimly illuminated thoughts
 #140 TruthsRUS cleans up uncertainty spill
 #141 Dogs are left, and The Umbrella is posted
 #142 It's hard to celebrate independence with a common cold
 #143 Savoir faire should be savored when it's real and even when it's not
 #144 Has global warming come to Blue Grass?
 #145 Ben Lawden wants three million acres
 #146 Country weddings are my specialty
 #147 Hay there, Hi there, Ho there, you're as welcome as can be—on the wagon
 #148 Bub comes to Blue Grass: He vents, I listen
 #149 Fairly functional farm family fights for facts
 #150 Hay seeds fight over sign
 #151 Brooms are nicer than vacuum cleaners
 #152 Funerals play to different audiences
 #153 Farm fixes require thought and strategic dawdling
 #154 Number 47 was a smash
 #155 Sociability requires coaching and practice
 #156 Old is not new, thank goodness!
 
#157 Taste is always a matter of taste 
 #158 I'm asked to run
 #159 Sharing space raises issues of war and peace
 #160 It's time to share Thanksgiving leftovers

 #161 Santa provides aid and comfort to the naughty and nice
 #162 Claus was set to write tell-all book
 #163 A long day's driving into night
 #164 We sing about lost love on December 31st
 #165 Finally, New Year resolutions that are guaranteed
 #166 The Swami is asked to serve
 #167 Winter sets in, and the loonies arrive
 #168 We are about to do big things, if you only knew
 #169 I hope for a semi-dwarf, fruited plain
 #170 Romance is not my middle name
 #171 Losing is not a lost art
 #172 The promise of promise is hard to keep
 #173 Columns support both past and present opinions
 #174 A bite for a bite leaves everyone bitten
 #175 Give them guns—and doughnuts, too
 #176 King Quad is me
 #177 Colonel Mo needs help
 #178 It’s easier to assume guilt than innocence
 #179 Bad fences bring out good neighbors
 #180 It’s not the money; it’s the time
 #181 It’s dangerous to be parenting under the influence…of certain books
 #182 Mom deserves her “somewhere” this Sunday
 #183 A trial would have been bad, but better
 #184 The end of the world might be here, or not
 #185 To quit or not to quit, that is sometimes the question
 #186 Reading is fundamental, and writing is too
 #187 Undeserved annoyances merit remembrance
 #188 Fathers try to rise above themselves
 #189 An unsteady hand rests on an unready tiller
 #190 No end is easy
 #191 What should I bid for another’s past?
 #192 Dig and doze is not about grooving and sleeping
 #193 We need more than a paint job
 #194 I join the tea party
 #195 I create no jobs, so far
 #196 We can learn from a bear’s market
 #197 Summer camp glues the blues
 #198 Grownups do cleanups
 #199 Snooki is no bridge
 #200 Dry grass provides limited security in a risky world
 #201 His desk was his castle
 #202 You never know about reconnecting