Personal finance forums run on the same short list: REITs, dividend stocks, rental properties. Raw land barely comes up. When it does, someone calls it illiquid and the thread moves on.
That’s a strange gap, because Canada has more land than almost any country on earth and most of it is cheap enough that a first-time investor with modest savings can actually buy a piece. Not a condo in Vancouver. Not a rental duplex in Calgary. Bare, undeveloped land with no tenants, no furnace repairs and no property manager taking 10%.
You buy it and wait. That’s most of it. It doesn’t make for good content, which is probably why it doesn’t get written about.
What You’re Actually Buying
Raw land is a parcel with nothing on it. No structures, usually no utilities, sometimes no paved road access. In Canada this typically means agricultural land, forested acreage in a rural county or recreational lots near a lake region that hasn’t priced itself out yet.
The numbers surprise people. Ten-acre parcels in parts of Ontario, Manitoba or Saskatchewan list for under $30,000. Some remote acreage in northern provinces costs less than a used car. Set that against a rental property in Toronto, where $700,000 barely gets you in the door, and raw land stops looking eccentric.
The Carrying Costs Are Almost Nothing
Undeveloped rural land in Canada is taxed at agricultural or unimproved rates, which in most counties runs $200–$600 per year on a modest parcel. No mortgage interest on improvements that don’t exist. No landlord insurance. No maintenance budget.
Buy 20 acres of bush in rural Ontario for $40,000, hold it for 10 years, and your total out-of-pocket beyond the purchase price is probably $4,000–$5,000 in property taxes. One bad tenant in a rental property can cost more than that in a single year.
Population Growth Has a Long Tail
Canada added over a million people in 2023, the fastest rate among G7 countries. Most of that growth lands near urban centres, but cities don’t absorb pressure forever. As core areas get too expensive, people move out: first to suburbs, then exurbs, then towns nobody paid much attention to ten years ago.
Land on the edge of that expansion gets repriced. Not quickly and with no guarantee about where growth actually goes. A 40-acre parcel an hour outside a mid-sized city has a different ceiling than the same parcel three hours out.
People who bought rural Ontario land in the 1990s and sat on it through the suburban sprawl of the 2000s did well. The ones who bought near Barrie or Collingwood before 2020 did better. Neither group was doing anything clever. They were early and they held.
You Can Do Something With It While You Wait
Idle land is one option. But depending on the parcel, there are ways to offset your carrying costs:
Forested land can be leased to logging operations or managed for selective harvest. It won’t move the needle much, but it can cover the tax bill.
Farmable land can go to a local farmer on an annual lease. Cash rents in the Prairies for cultivated agricultural land have risen steadily over the past decade. You own it, someone else works it.
Recreational access — hunting, fishing and ATV trails — pulls in a few thousand dollars a year for some rural Ontario and Quebec landowners through seasonal licences, without much effort on the owner’s part.
Carbon credits are still developing in Canada, but forested landowners can participate in voluntary markets through conservation or reforestation commitments. The framework is patchy, but the direction is worth tracking.
None of this funds a retirement. It’s just the difference between a dormant asset and one doing something small while you hold.
The Actual Risks
Illiquidity is the main one and it’s worth being direct about: if you need to sell fast, land is a bad asset. Rural parcels have fewer buyers, financing is more restricted (most lenders want 25–50% down and charge higher rates) and there’s no rental income to cover carrying costs if your circumstances change.
Zoning gets glossed over too often. Land near a growing city doesn’t automatically get rezoned. Municipalities run their own official plans and some actively push back on development pressure. If rezoning is part of your thesis, read the actual planning documents, not a seller’s description of what might happen.
Due diligence on access and encumbrances is more involved with land than with residential property. Logging road easements, utility corridors and in some areas First Nations land claims can affect title in ways that don’t show up in a casual listing review. A real estate lawyer with rural property experience is not a nice-to-have.
Who This Works For
Raw land suits people who can hold for a decade or more, who’ve visited the parcel they’re buying and who aren’t counting on it for income in the near term. It can sit flat for years. There’s nothing to optimize while you own it.
As part of a broader portfolio, around 15–20%, the case is reasonable. As the whole portfolio, it’s a harder sell.
Worth Knowing About
Canada has land, a growing population and a finite amount of well-located acreage. That combination has tended to support land values over long time periods, unevenly and not everywhere, but over the kind of horizon most investors claim to think in.
The investment is dull. Nothing to post while you own it. But dull and cheap to carry is worth something, especially right now.
Work with a real estate lawyer familiar with rural property law in your target province before signing anything. Provincial land registries, LandSearch Canada and Landwatch are reasonable starting points for listings.