I have land and want to start a community. Where do I begin?
Begin with three answers in writing: who holds the title, how a person joins and leaves, and how decisions get made. Communities that skip these run fine for two years, then break on the first hard disagreement. Settle them first, then start small with people who already show up for the work.
By Rye (Rieki Cordon), Founder, ReGen Civics. Published . Updated .
The six decisions that come before anything else
You already have the hardest thing to get, which is land. What you need now is the structure that lets other people commit to it without either side taking on risk they cannot see. Every one of these six can be decided at a kitchen table in a weekend. Every one of them is expensive to decide after people have moved in.
| Decision | What it settles | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds title | Whether the land can be sold out from under the group, and who carries the mortgage and tax risk | A founder's divorce, death, or change of heart ends the community |
| How someone joins | Trial period, what a member contributes, what a member gets | The group has no way to say no to a poor fit, and no way to recover from one |
| How someone leaves | Whether money comes back, at what price, on what timeline | Departures turn into lawsuits, and the fear of departure freezes every other decision |
| How decisions get made | Which decisions need everyone, which need a small circle, which need one person | Every small choice costs a full meeting until people stop coming to meetings |
| Who pays for what | Mortgage, taxes, insurance, roads, water, repairs, and who approves new spending | Resentment builds quietly for two years and then arrives all at once |
| What the land is for | Food, housing, retreat, restoration, business, or a stated order of priority among them | Two members are building different places on the same ground and neither knows it yet |
Why most starts do not make it
Diana Leafe Christian spent years documenting community startups for Communities magazine and put the survival rate at roughly one in ten. Her finding was that the failures rarely came from money or land. They came from structural conflict that nobody had agreed how to resolve, and from founders who assumed shared values would substitute for shared agreements.
That is good news for you, because structure is the part you can write down. Values you cannot legislate. Membership terms, exit terms, and a decision method you can, in an afternoon, before the first person parks a trailer.
About 1 in 10 share of new intentional communities that survive past their founding years
Start with a season, not a settlement
The most common expensive mistake is inviting people to move in before anyone has worked together. Housing is the biggest commitment in the whole arrangement and it is the first one people reach for.
Run a season instead. Pick one real project on the land with a deadline: a food forest going in before the rains, a water system, a barn, a market garden. Invite eight to fifteen people to commit to that one thing for three months. You will learn who follows through, who disappears when it rains, and who quietly becomes the person everyone asks. Those are your founding members, and now you know it from evidence.
This is the shape our own program takes. The ReGen Civics incubator runs 13 weeks with a cohort of land projects, because a season is long enough to reveal how a group actually behaves and short enough that nobody has sold a house to find out.
Money comes after structure, and it is not only cash
Once title and membership are settled, funding gets much simpler, because a lender, a grantor, or a member buying in can all see what they are joining. Before that, they cannot, and most will pass.
The other half of the money question is that most of what a land project needs was never money. It is hours, tools, a tractor for a weekend, a survey, an excavator operator, plants, lumber, a person who knows septic. Communities that only count cash tend to conclude they are broke while standing in a valley full of people who would help.
Two pages here go deeper: legal and financial structures for intentional communities covers who can own what and how members buy in, and crowd pooling covers how to ask a community for the non-cash things and actually track them.
- Member buy-ins, where joining members purchase equity or a long-term lease
- A mortgage held by the entity rather than by you personally
- Grants, which fit restoration and education work far better than housing
- Mission-aligned loans from lenders who understand land projects
- Crowd pooling for tools, hours, materials, skills, and knowledge
A first year that works
If that sequence looks slow, compare it to the alternative, which is three years of goodwill followed by a dissolution nobody planned for.
- Months 1 to 2: write the six decisions down. A page each is enough to start. Take them to a lawyer in your state before anyone signs.
- Months 2 to 4: run one season project with a deadline. Keep a list of who delivered what.
- Months 4 to 6: name the founding group from that list. Sign the membership and exit terms you drafted.
- Months 6 to 9: put the entity in place, move title into it, get insurance right.
- Months 9 to 12: open to new members on the terms you wrote, and let the first ones join under a trial period.
What ReGen Civics does with landowners
We are a fund and a game for regenerative land projects. Land stewards come through our 13-week incubator to build governance, design how value moves through the project, and prepare for funding. Projects keep full ownership. We support and we invest, we do not take your land.
As of mid-2026 the network holds 42 land projects across 8 bioregional hubs, and the people doing this work are reachable in the community forum without applying to anything.
Questions people ask
How much land do I need to start a community?
Less than people assume. Groups of six to twelve run well on five to twenty acres if water and access are solid. Water rights, road access, soil, and zoning decide what is possible far more than acreage does. Check what your county allows for dwellings per parcel before you plan anything.
Do I have to give up ownership of my land?
No. Common paths keep you as owner while granting members long-term leases, or move title into an entity where you hold a defined share. Full transfer to a trust or cooperative is one option among several, and it is a decision to make with a lawyer once you know who the members are.
How many people should I start with?
Three to seven committed adults is the workable founding size. Fewer and one person leaving ends it. More and you are running a decision process before you have one. Grow past twelve only after your membership and decision agreements have survived a real disagreement.
What does it cost to start an intentional community?
If you already own the land, the entity formation and legal review typically run in the low thousands. Infrastructure is the real cost: water, septic, power, and access can each run tens of thousands depending on site. Budget the legal work anyway, because it is the cheapest insurance in the whole project.
How long before people can live on the land?
Legally, that depends on your county's rules for dwellings, septic, and occupancy, and those rules vary enormously. Practically, plan on a year between first conversation and first residency, and use that year for a season project and the written agreements rather than for waiting.
What is the most common reason these fail?
Conflict with no agreed way to resolve it, followed by unclear money and unclear exit terms. All three are structural, all three are cheap to fix in advance, and all three are close to unfixable once a group is already in the middle of them.
Next step
- Apply to the incubator: 13 weeks with a cohort of land projects, building governance, economic design, and a path to funding. Season 2 starts September 2026.
- Read how the fund works: How capital reaches land projects, what we screen for, and what investors receive.