Is anyone here involved in a land co-op?

I'm interested to hear your experiences. There is an organized group of individuals that I am passively involved with in which we are looking at cooperatively purchasing a large parcel of land. There really is not a decision yet as to whether or not it will lead to establishing a community, or whether it will simply allow for the cost to be drawn down for the benefit of land ownership at a drastically lower price to us. Just curious to hear some experiences.

THANKS, DU! You always seem to come through!

that was nothing but a heartache, and I lost money too. The main problem as I see it was that the leader of the group was not very businesslike or very organized, was very bad at driving decisions forward, and got waaaaaaay too caught up in all of the 'earthy crunchy community stuff' and not enough guts to make the tough decisions. It was nothing but a big hole in the ground when all was said and done.

But I think with different people maybe that kind of thing would work. Make a careful, reasoned, objective assesment of the leaders and see if they really have the stones to pull it off. Ask the hard questions about how they have been successful with organizing in the past. If they have big ideas but have never accomplished something, then beware.

rather than as you say "earthy crunchy community stuff" although I am certainly not entirely closed on the idea. Everything you describe is exactly the reservation(s) that I have about this. However with the exhorbitant price of land in these parts, it's almost the only way to go anymore.

was that even at the time I was reasonably successful in my professional field, i.e. I had lots of experience getting projects done in the corporate world, so I knew how project management worked and I knew what getting a large complicated project done was like. BUT, because it was a completely different domain area I utterly failed to apply my "getting things done" noggin and just kind of thought, "well, maybe that's how things get accomplished in this arena."

D'OH! No no no. Getting things done is the same skill whether it's software development, housing development, or political organizing. I just wish I had realized that at the time.

I work for land development company (Marketing) and we employ an attorney and he knows his stuff.
Sorry I don't have more advice but I'm involved with the selling side of the business.