I am not necessarily moving - I love my current farm. But family is getting both older and younger - older relatives and new babies in the family, and I don’t live close to them. So starting to consider options.
For those who have moved and purchased farms, how did you find your property? Online searches and preferred websites, social media, connecting with a realtor?
I’ve moved multiple states onto horse property twice, and both times I saw the property that we eventually purchased on realtor.com before even finding a realtor. You can dial in your search for distance from a specific point, then acreage, and include keywords (barn, stable, horse, etc.)
Zillow is another engine to use, and has the benefit of houses that might not be on the market (owners can set a “make me move” price.)
Towns often have their own GIS page with property info and satellite imagery, which can be really useful.
If there’s a state/city/region horsey FB group, that can be one more avenue to explore, and you might find property not yet on the market or listed as FSBO with a “in search of” post.
A realtor who is horse literate is vital, once you’re really ready to pull the trigger and move. It’s amazing how much property is marketed as “horse friendly” where HAAAAHAHAHAHA no, wow, it’s really not. You don’t need to go see everything yourself, your realtor can do quite a lot of that legwork and take properties that absolutely won’t work for you off the list.
Good luck!
Searching realtor.com is a good place to start, especially if you’re still in the “just thinking about it” stage. I personally don’t care for Zillow. Realtor.com is more user friendly, although with every web site “improvement,” it gets less so.
However, once you get serious about looking, you really need to work with a good realtor. When I bought the place I have now, my realtor sent me the listing and I said, “Love the house, but it has no acreage.” She said, well, the sellers also own the two adjoining parcels and while that acreage isn’t listed, they are willing to sell it if the person who buys the house also wants the property.
Without the realtor, I would never have bothered looking at this place because it didn’t have enough acreage. With the realtor, I got a heck of a deal on the adjoining property and enough room to keep my horses. I ultimately ended up boarding when I moved, but I could have kept them at home if I had wanted to.
I’ve been perusing realtor.com and horseproperties.net primarily. On realtor.com, they have the filter for “outside features–>Horse facilities” but as noted, some realtors think zoning and some acreage = horse facilities. Or a literally dilapidated old relic of a cow barn that is FALLING DOWN and only good for salvaged rustic barn lumber could be “reclaimed.” Lol. Sounds like the keyword thing might be better - thanks!!!
I used Zillow for the most part. I put in the state I was interested in, the part of the state you want can be focused on if you use the draw feature, filtered it to house, lot size and in remarks put horses; it may bring up potential horse properties with no barn or fencing and may skip actual horse properties because the word “horses” isn’t in the description. Same if you put barn in the key word, usually brings up old run-down barns or workshops etc. I found horseproperties.net to not have all horse properties that might be for sale in an area, it also brings up potential horse properties with no facilities. Finding a realtor that is knowledgeable about horse properties is great if you can find one.
Land And Farm is another nationwide real estate clearinghouse site that is more apt to have actual farms and ranches.
Divorce Court, we bought our place below market value from a couple needing quick settlement to finalize their divorce
SNORT 
@LilyandBaron definitely make use of any GIS resources the town offers when looking at property. You can usually see who your neighbors are, scope out any possible incursion over the property lines, check out any wetlands, and take a look at the topography. All the tax stuff is also often there. It’s a little wild how much info is just out there, really, but it’s a great resource.
A lot of realtors at funerals …
We are in a horsey area, so equestrian focused realtors are fairly common. While I could find the properties just as easily as our realtor through my own searching, they knew all the backstory on every farm we looked at-the good, the bad, the ugly.
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