#006: Finding Your Land with Jonah Mesritz

Sometimes the community dream only starts to "feel real" when the time finally comes for forming groups to purchase land.  Putting down a large sum of money and taking that responsibility on with other people often brings up a load of fear and hesitation in addition to excitement.  The process may feel daunting, but today's guest, Jonah Mesritz, has helped numerous communities buy land and has helpful insights to support you into stewardship of community property. You'll learn how we started our first community in San Diego and what was learned from that process. Jonah shares everything from discovering what aspects are most important to you in a property search, to financing and purchasing arrangements that are vital to understand. Tune in for his great advice and our fun conversation on finding your land... and then what.

Jonah Mesritz is a cofounder of the Emerald Village, a thriving ecovillage in San Diego, California and a cofounder of the newly forming Terra Lumen Community in Southern Oregon.  He is a firefighter with the Orange County Fire Authority, a former Navy SEAL sniper and a licensed California REALTOR. Bringing to bear his experience investing in both businesses and real estate, owning and managing rental properties and “flipping” houses, Jonah has helped many new intentional communities to find and successfully finance community land without traditional bank loans.  He is passionate about supporting the communities movement and his Activated Villages Facebook page is a forum for discussions about creative financing solutions and sharing unique properties that are perfect for intentional community.

If you want to learn more about how to find and purchase community property or any aspect of building community, check out the Inside Community Podcast sponsor, The Foundation for Intentional Community. FIC is an incredible resource center with weekly events, online courses, classified advertisements, an extensive bookstore and lots of free educational materials. Podcast listeners can get 30% of courses with code INSIDE30 and 20% off books in the bookstore with code INSIDE20 You can learn more about this show and access transripts at ic.org/podcast. Your financial support of Inside Community helps us to continue to create meaningful and exciting content and I hope you’ll consider donating through our website while you are there.

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