Would You Buy Land You Can’t Use?

Are you familiar with the well known saying “Buy real estate like there’s no one watching”? No? Ok, the real famous comment is “Dance like there’s no one watching” but recently I’ve been thinking about the alternate real estate version.

This thought came to me during a recent stay in Carmel, where I discovered an intriguing piece of property: a plot of prime real estate along the ocean bluff above the Pacific.

The catch? While priced at “only” $100,000, the land comes with strict conditions – no building allowed (not even a bench), and mandatory public access via an existing beach path. In essence, you’d be buying property that gives you no more rights or privileges than any random visitor.

My initial reaction was cynicism. Was this just a vanity purchase – buying oceanfront property in Carmel purely for bragging rights? What could possibly motivate someone to invest in land they can’t meaningfully use?

But then I had another thought, what if buying this land, that gave you no external rights at all, fulfilled some internal purpose for you?

Perhaps you had a dream to own some oceanfront property in California and this was the cheapest way to do it? Perhaps it feels like an environmental act to continue to keep this land forever clear of human intervention and building? Maybe it’s for a reason I can’t fathom (although it’s still on the market so maybe others can’t fathom it either. . . )

This peculiar property made me reflect on the nature of personal ambition. There’s something poetic about pursuing goals that hold deep personal meaning, even when they offer no external validation. It’s about finding beauty in ambitions that satisfy our inner desires, regardless of whether they translate into visible markers of success.

I often tell people that the reason I write articles is for me, not because it builds my business. I can’t point to one business opportunity that came through my writing, but I do know it helps me clarify my ideas and hone, for myself, what I truly believe in.

Similarly there are people that run miles and miles because they love the running, not because they will win the Olympics or find any external success that way. Hobbies are often like that. Little slices of our lives that bring us extraordinary pleasure and peace of mind but often don’t contribute to our external success or help us build new relationships in the world. They’re our secret places, where the only metric that matters is our own happiness.

In a recent Atlantic article, Arthur Brooks explores how our society’s obsession with ambition and success can become addictive. Perhaps the antidote to this lies in embracing activities that serve no purpose beyond bringing us joy. These pursuits – whether they’re hobbies or seemingly impractical purchases – act as vital counterweights in a world constantly pushing us toward the next promotion, higher salary, or bigger house. 

So yes in fact, maybe I do believe in buying real estate like no one’s watching.

Because sometimes, the most meaningful investments we make are the ones that only need to make sense to ourselves.