Thank you for your ideas! I'm afraid I had not provided enough information though. :( Here are my thoughts on them:
Selling and cutting losses: That would be dispiriting. I paid all this money and still don't have anything to show for it. Better then to wait until real estate prices are up again, even if it does take 10 more years. In the long term, I can still come out on top.
"Rent it out for a local farmer's market" - do you mean to set up a marketplace for farmers? I don't think there are many farmers nearby. It's just houses all around. Which also means that people in them are away for the most part of the day, so there wouldn't be many customers, not during the civilized hours of the day.
Farm it myself - I see quite a few problems with that:
- The plot is quite small. I cannot grow much stuff there, so it should be valuable stuff that will last for a long time.
- However I do not have any good storage available. No cold cellars or large freezers. Even if I did buy a large freezer (no idea where I would put it in my already cramped apartment), how long would it take for the freezer alone to have paid back?
- Also, the place is about 20km from where I currently live. That means that a single trip there-and-back again would cost around $7 in gas. Farming something would need lots of attention, so lots of trips.
- Plus, I live in Latvia, so summers aren't extremely long. This sets a cap on how much can be grown (no double harvests here) and it also means that we like to spend what free time we have in the summer for doing, well, summer activities and relaxation. Weekends are as a rule spent in the remote summer house, and workday evenings aren't much available either (we work full time, so there's just not enough time).
Now, maybe there is something that can be grown which doesn't require much attention, but then I still need to find that thing. :P
Rent it as a vehicle storage: I've thought about that myself, but the question is - to whom? Since everybody in the area lives in their own little house, they also as a rule have either a garage or some sort of shed for their cars. For my storage to be better than keeping the car right next to their own houses, it would need to have some really serious advantage. I can only think of security, which again costs a lot of money.
Storing exclusively recreation vehicles - dunno, maybe, but I haven't seen many of those around. I would think that people who can afford such things can also afford a house, so they'll just keep it in their own garage anyway.
Anyways... any more ideas? :)
Oh, and btw - I forgot to say that the plot of land also has access to electricity, which is a bonus.