If possible, buy at auction and of reputable people who are not
boomers, or at least buy at forced sale; that is how real estate is
sold when it must be sold. Choose lots level with the curb and on
high ground, lest the expense of grading and sewering eat up your
profit.

Keep in mind that in buying land for speculation one really buys the
opportunity to tax other people, by taking part of their earnings in
the shape of rent or price. Do not then be deluded by boom schemes
in inaccessible or desolate places; choose rather that land which in
the natural course of events others must have in order to work or to
live.

Home buying in small communities is safer than in the outskirts of a
large city, because public improvements are much less costly. If you
put $500 in a $5000 home and carry the balance on mortgage, an
assessment of $1000 for streets or sewers, which helps the vacant
lots, will probably put you out of business. Whether for use or
speculation, buy in an established neighborhood or where the
circumstances and neighbors are such that restrictions or
expenditures will make its character sure. The increase in your land
value depends first upon the presence, then upon the efforts, of
others; it is by their labor you hope to profit.

Therefore, buy property on leading thoroughfares; except in a very
small section devoted to the residence of millionaires, the price of
residence property has a limit; even there the merest accident or
the whim of fashion may destroy the value, but there is no telling
what figure business property may reach.