Originally Posted by McIntosh

OK, that cleared up a lot. Thanks.

About the property thing:
In places like Scandinavia, even if you have own a plot of land, you can't do much with it, other than build a house according to the regulations/laws.
We wanted to put up a little windmill here (about 5 feet tall) to generate electricity. That's illegal here. You can't cover yoru roof with more than X-amount of % with solar panels. (We even have carbon taxes on windmills, for crying out loud!).
Your fence/bush around the property can't be higher than XX, you can't just builæd an addition to your house. If you want to build a tool shed, you ahve to get a permit and follow another billion set of rules. Your house has to be a certain colour. The list goes on and on.

The worst might be that at any time the city or state can decide that they want your property. They will pay you for it, but THEY decide how much you'll get for it. Not a damn thing you can do about it.
This happened to some friends of mine not too long ago. They got less for it than they could have sold it for privately.
And, of course, you pay huge sums in property taxes, which I've always thoguht to be absolutely insane. I know that tax goes to roads etc in the US. But here we already pay 55-65% income tax plus 25% sales tax on everything.

Just always thought that it is very unfair that you pay for a piece of land,a nd you basically can't do much with it - AND you get to pay tax on that, too, every month.