The future of your property is in your hands, at least for now. If you own your land and have no easements attached to it, you completely control the future.
In the first series, we discussed land values and aesthetics. In the second series, we discussed easements and habitat fragmentation. In this series we will discuss the future of your land.
The pride of land ownership is difficult to explain to those that do not own land. The responsibility of ownership is even harder to explain. Responsibility means decisions you make today could last forever or at least multigenerational, and that could be either positive or negative. Part of the responsibility includes making the correct decision the first time. Pride of ownership is the result of those decisions you made.
As a landowner today, what will your grandchildren desire and cherish in the future? Will they care about quality brush, big oak trees, sunsets free of hu-man footprints, or will they have other priorities? What about the next owner of the property if you decide to sell it? Will they want to keep it the same as you did, possibly improve it, or will they sell it off in pieces and market the sand, rock, wood, grass or suck as much water out of the ground as they can? As a landowner in Texas, luckily, we have those rights and responsibilities today, and they are referred to as the bundles of rights previously discussed.
Landowners have a big weight on their shoulder if they want to be good stewards of the land. If they want the land to be productive today, tomorrow and into the future, they must measure each decision carefully and fully understand the consequences of those decisions because they will last a long, long, time, good or not.
As a consulting habitat and wildlife biologist, I work with this process every single day. My clients have either purchased the property from a stranger or inherited it from family, so we are left with the results of the previous owners’decisions. Improving good habitat is much easier than improving poor habitat. Time is a limiting factor for most so making the desired changes in the allotted time is often the challenge in my line of work.
Will an overhead transmission line be a part of your property’s future? Will selling an easement and losing that portion of control for your grandchildren’s future be perceived as a good or bad decision once you are dead and gone? Will the money you make today from selling the easement really outweigh the permanent restrictions on the land be the best decision you can make for them? The decision is yours to make so make sure you fully understand the consequences. The future is really in your hands; make sure you are completely informed and prepared to make those final, lasting decisions.