Boarding Barn Ownership Change?

[Amy3996]

A friend is going through this and it got me wondering… I know just about every boarding contract lays out expectations for what happens when a boarder wants to leave ( x number of days notice, etc.).

What happens when a boarding barn changes hands and comes under new management? Our local horse community is small and it’s become common knowledge that the property is for sale and who the buyer is. Current owners have said nothing to the boarders about their intent to sell so they’re all in limbo wondering what exactly is going on. Would you expect some sort of notice in the event that you didn’t want to keep your horse at that facility under new management? I understand that current owners and prospective buyers aren’t always at liberty to discuss plans while a sale is pending.

Just wondering if anyone has been in this situation before and what your experience was?

[2tempe]

Went thru this in Ohio some years back. Boarders were told re listing for sale. took a long time but sale happened and new buyer said I could stay. Most others had moved on giving notice as they found new places, but I planning to relocate to another state and didn’t want to move horse twice.
If I were in friends place I would ask current owners to verify possible sale. Anything can happen with new buyer so at very least I would hav some back up plan. New owner can make place private, take only boarders of XXX discipline, raise board, tear it down and build houses…

[OneTwoMany]

@Amy3996

A friend is going through this and it got me wondering… I know just about every boarding contract lays out expectations for what happens when a boarder wants to leave ( x number of days notice, etc.).

What happens when a boarding barn changes hands and comes under new management? Our local horse community is small and it’s become common knowledge that the property is for sale and who the buyer is. Current owners have said nothing to the boarders about their intent to sell so they’re all in limbo wondering what exactly is going on. Would you expect some sort of notice in the event that you didn’t want to keep your horse at that facility under new management? I understand that current owners and prospective buyers aren’t always at liberty to discuss plans while a sale is pending.

Just wondering if anyone has been in this situation before and what your experience was?

This is an interesting topic.

These types of transactions (the sale of a large property with an existing business) can take a long time to accomplish. Sometimes financing falls through, or there are inspection issues, or zoning/grandfathering issues. Sometimes appraisals are needed, accountants and lawyers may be involved. Both sides can find a lot of their time is absorbed with the process.

From a business perspective, if I were the farm owner, I would seek to keep the lines of communication open. But sometimes there just aren’t any updates that can be shared.

If I were the friend, I would probably ask current barn owner if the pending sale goes through, does the prospective “new owner” intend to keep the status quo or do they intend to take the operations in a new direction.

[Marla_100]

This happened to me some years back before I finally bought my farm. BO told us new owner wanted all boarders to stay
even though we knew he was a cattle farmer and had no previous experience with horse boarding. Then deal fell through
on buyer’s end as he was also selling his farm for a new highway coming through.
The problems for boarders is that until official notice is given and confirmed, you don’t know if BO is telling one thing just so
boarders don’t leave. We only heard rumors initially and were never really in the loop of what was happening in the sale.
Most boarders don’t want to be left hanging in the dark so ideally there should be updates from BO so there’s no surprises.

[DoodlesMom]

We went through this a little over a year ago, when we took over for our old BM.

The old BM was very communicative about what was going on with the property (it had been sold). So everyone knew that was happening. He approached us about taking over so he could retire (I was already assistant manager), and we told all of our boarders pretty soon after. We had a big gathering and told everyone what the effective date was, board increase, other changes, etc. We also sent an email detailing everything we had told them, just so it was in writing too.

We gave our boarders at least 60 day notice that we were a) doing away with field board, and b) increasing stall board slightly. We were in almost constant communication with everyone about leaving - if they wanted to leave, if they wanted to stay, how long they needed, etc. That may not be the norm, but we didn’t want to leave anyone out in the cold, and we certainly weren’t going to not take care of all of the horses for as long as we needed to.

We kept the majority of our boarders, so it ended up not being a big deal, but we just treated it how we would want to be told, should we have been on the other end.

[Jo]

I have some seriously rabid feelings when major barn changes are kept under wraps. Years ago, the management changed at our boarding facility and the it was handled extremely, extremely poorly. I (along with many others) decided that we couldn’t trust the care of our horses to people who couldn’t be honest with us and a large chunk of the boarders left.

Communication is one of the key things I look for in a facility/management. YMMV.

[Zu_Zu]

A back up plan should be formulated NOW !

If a new appropriate barn is located, seriously consider moving after giving notice.

IMHO

Good Luck to your friend ~ change is uncomfortable at best.

[Haylter]

Quietly come up with a 2nd 3rd and 4th options now. Until the sale is actually a DONE DEAL seller/buyer do not need to discuss ANYTHING with boarders. I have been through a sale and change of landlord…both went OK. Boarder always has the right to POLITELY CALMLY say “I have heard blah blah is planning to purchase this property and thought I would ask you for any information rather than take the ‘word on the street’ as gospel”

[2DogsFarm]

Plan B should become foremost on every boarder’s mind.
If & When a sale becomes final, current board contracts are void unless terms of the sale say otherwise.
BO/Seller can stipulate anywhere from 0 days notice to XX days for contracts to end.
New owner then provides new contracts, that may or may not be attractive to boarders.

[arbeegirl]

This happened to me two times.

In 2003, a very large boarding facility I was at sold. The entire time the seller kept the boarders up to date with the pending sale. Once the deal closed, the new owner had meeting with all boarders to answer any questions. He made it seem that everything would remain the same. Shortly after the meeting, things started to change. He fired long time staff and kicked out several long time boarders. I left about a month after he took over because the care went down hill fast. He had no prior experience with horses.

The second time was October 2019. The seller put the farm on the market back in 2017 and had it listed with two different realtors. Right at the listing was getting ready to expire, a buyer came in with an offer. The buyer wanted to close in 30 days. At first the boarders were only given 30 days but thankfully the seller fought for us to get 60 days so we had time to find places for our horses. We were also told that some us may stay so the seller had to give the buyer a seniority list. This way the buyer knew who to ask to leave first. Well, we never heard anything back from the buyer no matter how many times the seller requested information. Thankfully there was a barn not far from this location that was able to take 6 horses and the remaining 6 found barns not far either.

I would as the current owner if the barn is surely for sale and have a plan to move if needed.

[Edre]

I’ve gone through this twice. In one situation, boarders were brought into knowledge once the deal was close to being finalized - new ownership was introduced/walked around (this was probably around Thanksgiving). Sale was finalized second-ish week of December. Beginning of January, old ownership was out & new ownership had new contracts for all to sign. The second situation, boarders were informed that an offer had been made on property only after rumors really got around about it. After the rumor forced information sharing, the program owner did a better job keeping people in the loop (offer was contingent on village approval of development plans). In this case, it was a much longer/slower affair with much uncertainty. Even if the program owner kept people appraised of the details, they weren’t often “in the know” because it came down to waiting for village meetings/votes.

In the first situation, the new ownership were unknown entities to all. It was communicated early on (at time they were introduced) that they wanted to stay in the boarding/lesson business so boarders would not be asked to leave. However, we knew nothing about them/their business management/equine management. Unfortunately, I found both to be abysmal to the degree of outright neglect. I left at the beginning of February - so pretty much 10 weeks start to finish. The second situation, there was never a close date on the offer but boarders got so nervous about the insecurity (1. will the offer actually go through? 2. If the offer goes through, how quickly will we have to be out? 3. Will there be a grace period? – none of these questions ever had an answer) that they left as they found other barns/boarding availability, which ultimately forced the closure of the program (too many clients had left).

If you know the people involved & know you don’t want to do business with them, I would shop for a new barn immediately. Better safe than sorry. Talk to current ownership and see if you can get details from them - as noted, they may not provide them. (A good example of why is as I shared above, sometimes current owners can’t afford to lose clients - or more simply, don’t want to lose clients/revenue - before a sale goes through, and they realize or suspect that if details of new ownership come through, as in people don’t want to do business with those making the offer, they will lose clients.)

At the end of the day? Start looking for a new boarding option immediately. Depending on where you are, there may not be many out there, and if the program being closed is large, competition for them may be fierce. The second example I shared above was a barn with 40+ clients in a suburban area. You can anticipate that we all realized pretty early on we were competing with everyone else for the same few spots, which is what really began people leaving early, even without further details of impending closure.

[Zu_Zu]

any update ?

[findeight]

BTDT. Several times. It depends on if the business is being sold or the property it sits on without the business or both.

In other words, several possibilities

1 ABC Stables is selling their boarding business and all equipment but the actually property owner will remain Smith Ranch Inc. and new operator will continue to lease property from them.

2. Smith Ranch Inc owns the property including owning and operating ABC Stables and is selling everything but might split property and business to two new owners.

3 There’s a court ordered dispersal of either business, property or both as a result of death, divorce, tax liens, bankruptcy or other financial disasters nobody knows about.

In some of these situations, your terms of your existing boarding contract might be covered by new business operator for a short time but you can expect changes as ABC stables is no longer in business. Most often you get asked to sign a new contract with the new operators under new terms usually under a new business name ir vacate in the standard 30 days.

If it’s just the property that’s selling, usually have no idea if new owners will allow the business to lease their property and operate or not. No info because they don’t know. And they won’t know until after closing.

The worst case is ABC leases and Smith Ranch is seized by the court/ bank without ABC knowing anything about it. Court/ bank seizures can result in boarders being suddenly locked out.

Have experienced all of these and best advice is MOVE now. May not get locked out but within 6 months you will see major changes in operation and your contract terms under the new ownership. And you won’t like them. Trust me. Oh, it will sound good at first but it’s always a short honeymoon and when it ends abruptly all other nearby options will be full of this places former clients.

Bothers me that barn here is not communicating up front with boarders about upcoming changes. Like a store that’s nearing bankruptcy, services deteriorate rapidly as pennies get pinched and secrets kept to keep income coming in and once it happens, no refunds, returns, no orders delivered employees not paid. In a barns case the hay guy wants cash on the spot once the rumors of closing start spreading.

Move.

[Palm_Beach]

How smooth the transition goes is dependent on the legal structure of the property and business. Is the new owner buying just the property, and the old owner and the old business (Horse Boarding LLC) going away? Or is the new owner buying Horse Boarding Farm (the property) and Horse Boarding LLC? Are there employees of the barn who will need to be hired/retained by the new owner?

I imagine most people won’t want to buy a medium to large boarding farm and then have to start from scratch with finding boarders and staff. And the income stream from boarders is usually attractive to the buyers, who have to immediately start making mortgage payments, buy insurance, maybe buy equipment and supplies, etc.

So I don’t think there is a correct legal answer. And my decision to stay or go would be dependent on how much I like the facility. At least you know that part - the level of service is always going to be a question mark if you decide to go.

[Amy3996]

At this point, there has been no update from the barn owner about the status of the sale. My friend has decided to move regardless, and is looking for other options in the area.

As soon as she is able to find an opening at a facility that fits her needs, she’s planning to bite the bullet, give notice and move. Unfortunately, finding stall board in the middle of winter in WNY is not the easiest task. She’s decided to just lay low in the meantime to avoid causing friction with the current owners (with whom she’s always gotten along well).

When everything is said and done or there’s some sort of major development, I’ll update.

[Amy3996]

Wow, I completely forgot about this thread. January feels like an eternity ago. Sale on the property finally became official about a month ago. My friend held out until the very end - she left within 48 hours of the announcement that the sale had gone through. The barn where I board had some openings, so she actually ended up moving her horse here, which has been fun.

Buyer is a local trainer. She assured everyone that operations were going to stay the same as the previous owners, but that has not been at all the case. About 6 boarders tried to stay and stick it out under new management. To my knowledge, four have now jumped ship to other barns in the area in the first 30 days since the ownership change - three of whom ended up at the barn where I board.