It is in a proposed LL law to have no land ownership, only land leases from the govt. I didn’t see it mention 99 years specifically in the proposed law, but for this thread, let’s assume all leases will be for 99 years.
Right off the bat, one thing I could see happening is that people would prefer to build very cheap and modest homes or to not build at all but live in some sort of RV. Without an assurance of retention of your house, why put much effort/money into it?
They did include language In the law to say that leaseholders will be “fairly compensated for their investments in the land.” But how will value be assessed? I doubt there can be a public vote on every single lease, so you might just be relying on a govt bureaucrat to tell you how much money they deem to give you.
That phrase here in the US is very subjective thanks to the court precedents set in eminent domain cases namely Kelo v City of New London. Because of that it gives us here in the US a bad taste in our mouth but if you were to use independent property assessors not affiliated with the govt I think you would have a much better outlook on fair compensation.
I get the feeling that LL is pushing so hard to be a tech and business innovation capitol, that they forget that people will still have to want to live there. Why would anyone leave their overbearing country where they feel like they have no rights, to just go to a different overbearing country where they feel like they have no rights.
It’s not enough to just keep saying, “We are the free-est country in the world!” Over and over again. Here in the US, we have been told our whole lives that we were in the free-est country in the world. Yet the 2020 scam told us exactly which countries were more free and which countries were totalitarian police states. The US did a lot better than the UK, Australia, Peru, New Zealand, but there were quite a few countries that performed much better than the US. Serbia did pretty good, from what I hear. Also (potentially): Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Iceland, and Uruguay.
Brother you are speaking rny thoughts right now! The United States has for over 100 years touted that they are the freest country on the world and while this may have been true once upon a time it has not been the freest for many years as 2020 like you pointed out has shown. While one can’t necessarily pin point the exact moment we became no longer the freest I think it is a bit nuanced as one libertarian lawyer has said in his podcast. And it is a great propaganda and marketing tool for sure for the United States. My concern is that nobody will listen to this marketing ploy for Liberland as everyone will assume they will one day go down the slippery slope as every other nation has that has aspirations of freedom. Remember Ben Franklin’s quote, “We have a republic if you can keep it.” He said this as a reminder of other republics that had risen and fallen before his time Ancient Rome and Greece are excellent historical examples. They have all fallen because their people became morally corrupt over time with lack of awareness as to what the reality was showing them. We may not be able to predict the future but we can most certainly be able to do our best to prevent history repeating itself by reinventing the wheel as Liberland is trying to do now.
Haha glad to hear you are onboard with the idea that 2020 was a scam. Most people try to breeze over it like it never happened, the “head in the sand” approach. I worked in the medical field during 2020 and I know that any ethical medical provider (about 15%) quit their jobs during that scam just like me. Any who remained were completely untrustworthy as they were morally bankrupt.
Even though 2020 was the worst year of my life, it is looking more and more like a blessing as time goes on. It exposed the hidden hand of tyranny that was invisibly waiting to clamp down on us.
If I was able to interview the candidates for office in LL, I would ask some tough questions about how they felt about 2020 and the govt response to it. If they did not express outrage and disgust regarding this time period, in my opinion, they would be intellectually untrustworthy and unworthy of office in a “libertarian” country.
I totally agree with that statement to a point though. There is a podcast I listen to and one of the hosts is a practicing dr but his practice is doing Primary Direct Care. I am not sure if you have heard of this new approach to medicine but there is no insurance middleman! This needs to be the way Liberland approaches medical care!
I had not heard of Direct Primary Care, but I just looked it up. For those who haven’t heard of it, it is basically insurance paid directly to the care provider company instead of to a middle-man insurance company.
It is absolutely a step in the right direction, for sure. Personally I don’t have much faith in the care provider companies in the US as they don’t have a track record of acting ethically. But, perhaps there has been a lot of pressure on them to act unethically by the insurance companies and this would relieve a lot of that pressure.
I like the way I saw healthcare payments done in Thailand, all the prices for the different medical procedures are posted publicly in front of the office. You pay upfront before any procedure is done and the prices are very cheap.
But I can also appreciate that people want to have some sort of insurance for emergencies, like a bad car accident.
As somebody who is a licensed insurance agent in the United States the original purpose of insurance was catastrophic coverage be it fire insurance now referred to as property insurance. Life insurance for funerals and health insurance was originally only for catastrophic coverage such as cancer or a life threatening injury.
Prices publicly posting prices is essential in any society for trusting business. In the past all businesses posted their prices for services rendered we need to get back to that standard of transparency for all businesses wanting to do business in LL not by law or force but by the time tested market demand!
In our new country model, I wonder how much catastrophic insurance could be replaced by charity crowdfunding (I think we touched on that in a different thread).
Martin, to get back to the topic of leasing real estate only and no ownership, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think you’d be willing to live somewhere in America where you could only lease there and not own?
Yes we did touch on this some in a different thread.
Back to the main point here, I think you are comparing apples to oranges let me make my point on why I think this.
1 The US is an already established country and has 3.81 million square miles in land. Liberland is a new country with no one owning any land and is only 2.7 square miles.
2 You cannot replicate the US “Homestead Act” Because of the scarcity of the land in Liberland you cannot just open the land for settlement like you could in the American Old West you cannot spread out and live peaceably because of the population density and the property line conflicts and or order of succession in relation to legal easements.
3 Equal property treatment to all, what I mean by this is that no one person or group of people for investment purposes can just buy up land for cheap by either bullying those people into submission or land locking them from their own land or some other form of indirect coercion and then profiting off of it in some form later. I think this point is the most important because of the lack of land that is available.
Yes you are absolutely right I was making an incorrect comparison there. I totally agree with the stats you’ve shown and I think the LL govt guys are probably thinking along the same lines.
I will change the question: would you (Martin), right now, leave the US where you are (assuming) not completely happy with the govt and laws and (assuming) don’t feel high “freedom,” but probably mid-range “freedom,” where you have land ownership rights (yes technically not becuz prop taxes, but historically very low % chance of getting your land taken by eminent domain or other means), to go settle your family in LL (assuming proposed RE law was made official) with no feeling of future security because whatever you build on the land could potentially be taken from you or your children 99 years later as there is no case history yet? (Sorry this is worded so crazily)
Good countries still have to attract the best and brightest, and I don’t think LL will achieve that with the proposed RE law. I think they will attract those with no other better options, which usually never turns out well.
1 The biggest issue for me is income how would I support my family with no productive stable economy yet.
And
2 How would I as a non EU citizen be able to stay over there
They need to find a way to incentivize people to establish an entire economy and while that is no easy task I can see them doing it successfully but the biggest hurdle is getting enough people to live there.
No. Let me ask you this, can you truly own your land my answer is no because your are subject to the jurisdiction of a country, only if that land was not part of any country whatsoever could you truly own your land.
Yeah I hear you, technically you don’t really own anything. I used to tutor people in statistics and I try to do rudimentary risk analysis for things in my life. Potential for an eminent domain claim by the govt in America is a real thing but if you do a review of the specific property you are looking at (railroad, gas line, highway, etc) you can see the likelihood of this, and for many properties the chances are effectively 0%.
The thing about Liberland is there is no case history of how fairly they deal with property. How do Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Nauru, or Tuvalu deal with property ownership? Any review of lease-only style land stewardship should start with a review of other small countries (I will research this in the future). I’m betting they do not only lease land…
For me there are way too many net negatives right now to even consider LL as a realistic option. They have to remove the “House-of-Lords” and cap extra voting power at some limit before they will even be a contender.
Their logic for the lease only ownership comes from Singapore. I will be honest I haven’t done a ton research into it but I read that is their basis for the lease approach and Singapore seems to be doing just fine.
But yes the super House of Lords is a huge no for me.
I did an AI comparison of the countries I mentioned above and I didn’t see anything that interesting. All do private ownership via slightly different methods.
Singapore hasn’t been on my radar since they caned that guy in the 1990’s, so I did an AI prompt that will be a easy summary of land ownership in Singapore:
Singapore’s land tenure system heavily relies on a leasehold model, primarily due to the city-state’s limited land area (about 733.1 km² as of 2025) and the government’s strategic approach to land management. Here’s a concise explanation of Singapore’s use of lease-only land:
Key Features of Singapore’s Leasehold System
Government Ownership:
Over 90% of Singapore’s land is owned by the state, managed by agencies like the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). This stems from historical land acquisition policies, notably the Land Acquisition Act of 1966, which allowed the government to acquire private land for public purposes at controlled prices.
Leasehold Tenure:
Most land in Singapore is leased, not sold freehold, to individuals, businesses, or developers for fixed periods, typically 30, 60, 99, or 999 years (though 999-year leases are rare and often treated as quasi-freehold).
Residential properties, especially public housing (HDB flats), are commonly leased for 99 years. Commercial and industrial leases may range from 30 to 60 years, depending on the development’s purpose.
Purpose of Leasehold System:
Land Scarcity Management: Singapore’s small size necessitates efficient land use. Leasing allows the government to retain control and reallocate land for future needs (e.g., urban redevelopment, infrastructure, or new industries).
Economic and Social Goals: By controlling land allocation, the government influences housing affordability, urban planning, and economic development. For instance, HDB flats (public housing) house about 80% of the population, with 99-year leases ensuring affordability while retaining state ownership.
Revenue Generation: The government earns revenue through lease sales, land premiums, and property taxes, which fund infrastructure and public services.
Lease Expiry and Renewal:
Upon lease expiry, the land and any structures revert to the state unless the lease is extended or renewed, subject to government discretion and often at a significant cost (e.g., paying a land premium based on current market value).
For HDB flats, as leases approach expiry (especially after 60–70 years), their resale value may decline due to the diminishing lease term. The government has introduced schemes like the Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS) to redevelop older estates, offering residents new flats with fresh 99-year leases.
Private vs. Public Housing:
Public Housing (HDB): Most Singaporeans live in HDB flats, which are sold on 99-year leases. Buyers own the property but not the land, and strict eligibility criteria (e.g., citizenship, income caps) apply.
Private Housing: Private condominiums and landed properties may be leasehold (99 years) or freehold. Freehold properties are a small minority, often commanding a premium due to their permanence.
Commercial and Industrial Leases:
Commercial and industrial land is typically leased for shorter terms (30–60 years) to align with economic cycles and allow periodic reassessment of land use. Businesses bid for these leases through government tenders.
Rationale and Benefits
Urban Planning Flexibility: The leasehold system allows the government to reclaim land for public projects (e.g., MRT lines, new towns) without complex ownership disputes.
Affordability: By controlling land supply and pricing, the government keeps housing relatively affordable, especially for HDB flats.
Sustainability: The system encourages efficient land use and prevents speculative hoarding, ensuring land serves broader societal needs.
Challenges
Lease Decay: As 99-year leases age, properties lose value, causing uncertainty for homeowners, especially for older HDB flats.
Public Perception: Some Singaporeans prefer freehold properties for their permanence, viewing leasehold as less secure.
Renewal Costs: Extending leases can be expensive, as premiums are based on current land values, which have risen significantly.
Recent Developments (as of 2025)
The government has been addressing concerns about ageing HDB flats through initiatives like the Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS), allowing residents to vote for early redevelopment before lease expiry, with compensation and new flats offered.
Public discourse on X and web sources highlights ongoing debates about lease expiry, with some Singaporeans questioning the long-term value of 99-year HDB flats. The government emphasizes that most flats remain viable for their full lease term and that redevelopment schemes mitigate concerns.
Conclusion
Singapore’s lease-only land system is a cornerstone of its urban and economic strategy, balancing scarcity, affordability, and development needs. While it ensures state control and efficient land use, challenges like lease expiry require ongoing policy innovation to maintain public trust and housing stability.
Right off the bat I noticed that most of the problems and criticisms they mention have to do with residential property. My own concerns are residential; I don’t have a problem with leasing-only for commercial properties.
I would guess that LL is imitating the Singapore system so that they can also imitate the thriving business sector that Singapore has.
All this seems to suggest to me that residential properties should maybe be classified differently than commercial properties, and perhaps be left out of the lease-only system.
I think you offer a great solution Murf. I grit my teeth saying this I do agree that we would need property zoning even if it is just to delineate the differences between residential property and non residential property.
I think it is a great idea to emulate the successes of Singapore but it needs to be done pragmatically in residential areas though.
You know it’s interesting you bring up a dislike for zoning as I also strongly dislike how zoning is done in America. I just did a search about zoning and it looks like we (US) were the pioneers of zoning about a hundred years ago. I think I’ll start a new thread about zoning, just in case there is more to say about land leasing here.
You know I just had a thought as I was writing the new zoning thread: there might have to be some grey area in between commercial and residential. What about a farm? The farmer and family live on the land, but also they create products there (food). Should it be residential as long as the owner lives on the land for a specific amount of time per year, and then it can also be used commercially, but remain zoned residential?