It is expensive to build from the ground up and time consuming, but you get what you want! We did this in stages, building the house first after clearing and improving the land (planted the pastures) then built the fence and barn over 6 months. Thankfully I had a farm to keep the horses on only 8 miles away. We are glad we did what we did but if we sell probably will not get out of our place what we put in it.
[QUOTE=NoSuchPerson;8550735]
The problem with building from scratch is that you have to spend a lot of money right away just to get functional.
When you start with a place that’s at least livable and minimally suitable, even if it isn’t ideal, you gain a little breathing room and the opportunity to spread your improvements out over time.[/QUOTE]
This I think is the best advice. I’m busting my ass on my house right now because our market is hot hot hot for houses… And there is an 8 acre bit literally right outside of town, level and cleared, and has two rental houses on it. Noooooo pics inside the houses in the ad, and the write-up says “poor condition” :dead:. I know one has to be horrible because I had driven by and gone oooo hoarder-house, icky. The other looks like the original farm house so maybe just falling down but not dirty… Get one livable, live in it, get the horse stuff put up, move horses, arena, then start building a house. That is my fantasy right now hahaha. Seriously the land is lovely, but since it’s a tear down, it has been on the market for a while. It is currently priced maybe $20k more than what I can reasonably expect to get for my 1350 sq ft house in town.
Fantasy or not, still busting my ass on my house :lol: :lol: :lol:
A point to consider… Not only may insurance be hard to find for less than a fortune, but if you have a dream of building this, your county may not even allow it and the ones you are finding are grandfathered. I don’t think mine will, so I’ve scratched my barn apartment dream. Permanently. cries quietly in the corner
[QUOTE=Goforward;8551250]
TrailRides4Fun I’d be all over 40 acres and a house and barn for $500,000.
Forty acres with a livable house is double that here!
Typically 10 acres with a decent house, workable barn and good fence is $650,000 and up here. If it’s less than that, you probably don’t want to live in the house or put your horses in the barn. Or, it’s nice enough to use but it’s an hours drive to the grocery store.[/QUOTE]
You won’t find a 40 acre property for that kind of money here either :no:
You misunderstood me,., thats what I have, and have developed ourselves.
There is a lovely horse property in my area on the market right now.
2 parcels totally 11 acres with a 5 stall barn and a house of similar size, style, finishes to my house for $520,000.
The house parcel ^ on 3 acres they want $300,000 for it.
The barn parcel, with a small run in, a sand ring and fenced,
they want $220,000 for.
11 acres total, both parcels together, they want $520,000.
40+ acre parcels are A LOT harder to find and definitely sell for more $$
There is one 35 acre parcel here with a huge house, stables,
ring, etc (no indoor) but set up for training,.,
well over a $1 million :yes:
I don’t have the option of staying where I am for much longer. The owners are getting out of the horse business. I could buy the farm if I had big bucks but it’s just too far out of my budget and needs a lot of work even if I did have the money. It’s just at the point where every thing is starting to need refurbishing. It needs fence and barns painted, driveway work, all pastures need to be seeded, the footing is ok but will need help in the near future, the trees need trimming…the list goes on. It’s in a prime location so that brings a prime price even though it’s not in the best condition.
In our area it is hard to get permits from the county to build a barn apartment and barn. We have had two neighbor’s try to do it and give up after spending thousands of dollars trying to comply with all of the county regulations. If you are allowed to build, permit fees for being allowed to build include impact fees, sewer fees, water fees and so on. In my daughter’s part of Maryland, she was told to expect to pay at least $25,000 to her county if she wanted to build a small house on a lot.
We bought our place because the horse infrastructure was really good. House, not so much! The plan was to fix up the house . . . or knock it down and build a new one. Things haven’t gone to plan . . . first we improved the arena. Then we bought a new horse trailer. Bought a new horse. House is the same. Think painting it might help . . .
Buying something already built will always be cheaper than building yourself.
Something else to consider if you do go down the build it yourself route is the time from designing to permitting to building and then to habitating. Around here, design would run you several months, then permitting runs about 6 months (and that is paying for expediting and running into no problems) and then building can take you the better part of a season. After all the structures go in you would still need to reseed and rest pastures as they would be torn up from building.
I think you might want to be willing to forgo one of your “must haves” in favor of a lesser price tag. Fencing, while expensive, is significantly cheaper than having to build a barn. Arena footing, while expensive, is cheaper than putting in a new septic (usually). Elbow grease is very cheap as is paint and hours spent with a brush hog or weed eater. You might be able to find a place that is rougher around the edges and spend the next year or two bringing it back to life. That is what we are doing and a year and a half in to our project farm and are about halfway done with our extensive to-do list (and we both work full time so we can only work on weekends).
[QUOTE=costco_muffins;8552138]
Buying something already built will always be cheaper than building yourself.
Something else to consider if you do go down the build it yourself route
is the time from designing to permitting to building and then to habitating.
Around here, design would run you several months, then permitting runs
about 6 months (and that is paying for expediting and running into no problems)
and then building can take you the better part of a season.
After all the structures go in you would still need to reseed
and rest pastures as they would be torn up from building.
I think you might want to be willing to forgo one of your “must haves” in favor
of a lesser price tag.
Fencing, while expensive, is significantly cheaper than having to build a barn.
Arena footing, while expensive, is cheaper than putting in a new septic (usually).
Elbow grease is very cheap as is paint and hours spent with a brush hog or weed eater.
You might be able to find a place that is rougher around the edges
and spend the next year or two bringing it back to life.
That is what we are doing and a year and a half in to our project farm
and are about halfway done with our extensive to-do list
(and we both work full time so we can only work on weekends).[/QUOTE]
I agree^
The infrastructure is generally A LOT more expensive to
do, than the ‘fixes’ and the ‘tweeks’ that make it more personalized.
I agree with everyone else. Buy as much done as you can–particularly when it comes to big ticket items that you won’t get back dollar-for-dollar if and when you sell (arenas, etc.).
When we were shopping we either found gorgeous houses with falling down fencing and crappy barns, or nice barns and old, dated, ugly houses. The properties that were nice all around were, like you said, millions of dollars.
We didn’t feel like dealing with months or years of renovations so we built from scratch on raw land, which has been a giant pain, but absolutely everything is EXACTLY how DH and I wanted it…and sometimes it’s hard to put a price on that 
However, I don’t know that I’d recommend the route we went to anyone else 
Like everyone has said, you’re probably much better off finding a place with the horse facilities you want. The house can be updated/renovated down the road, but since you’re a trainer I’d think having a barn/fencing/pasture that is usable right away is going to be more important. Good luck and have fun shopping!
Permitting was a major PITA for putting in a 2 horse barn for me, but, I knew that going in and my farmette shopping included visiting/reading online the horse rules for every town’s zoning, conservation, health regulations. Here in New England, the word “grandfathered” means a lot – can’t speak to other areas. So, while the original barn on my place collapsed in the mid-90’s, I can get a zoning variance to rebuild it on that same site, even though that site violates all current health/conservation rules. Several of my neighbors have pushed through horse permits, barn building permits, etc., by showing historic photos of the property being used as a farm.
This is a roundabout way of saying that another advantage to buying even the worst existing horse property is that it can improve your chances for getting permit permission to do oh-so-many things. But, check that out with the locals while you’re researching not just the rules, but the way the town tends to enforce them, and any pending changes.
just to add to what others have said. We could never have afforded to build for the same $ we spent to buy.
Was our property perfect? No, we needed to add hay storage and a run in, and it would be nice if the ring was larger, the barn bigger, etc. But we were able to close in March 15, move in within a week, and take our time renovating things. We prioritized projects, and will do 1-2 a year for the next several years until we’re done or broke, lol.
A good friend started farm shopping about the same time we did, in the very same area. They ended up buying land to build from scratch. They were very frustrated with the experience and it’s still not done. They finally moved into the new house about 3 months ago, and the barn is still not finished, so the horses aren’t home yet. So we spent less than they did/will overall, for a bigger house and bigger barn (and riding arena). They were paying rent and board plus mortgage for a lot of that time, and due to land constraints, and budget shortfalls, it’s still not 100% what they wanted in the first place.
They had trouble getting loans for all the horse-parts of the property (barn, fencing, etc) and while the finished product, this summer, will be very nice, I’ve been enjoying an equally nice property for the last year.
so, while it’s initially expensive buying an established horse property, it’s well worth it in the long run, to just “tweak” or add on as you have to, but it’s livable from the beginning, and much less expensive overall.
We looked for a long time and had a similar experience. Either the house was nice and he land/barn was falling down or was nonexistent or the barn/horse part was nice and house was awful.
We ended up buying a house on land and are building from scratch. While this is going to be expensive, we found that it would be less than renovating a house. Most places we looked at needed around $100k to make them livable while we estimate our place will take about $70k to make horse ready.
Ideally we wanted a nice house and barn but those were far out of our price range or out of the areas where we wanted to live. We jumped on our current place because the house was nicer than anything we had seen and we knew we couldn’t afford to do those upgrades ourselves
I had to wait most of my life to finally get my own place. It’s the main thing I longed for since I was old enough to collect every stray animal around. Now Im 56 and my husband is 64, not greatest shape anymore. I had to take a long hard look at how long I might actually be able to enjoy, and take care of, our own place. Si I was pragmatic and bought a 7 acre (too small says my childhood dream) Pecan grove. It has a cute 2000 SF 70’s house, complete with real wood paneling - two rooms white wood paneling. (LOL) Oh well, I could care less about the house. It works and I kind of love its retro self. It has a SMALL inground pool -hubby’s wishlist, and established fruit trees and blueberries and Pecan trees - all for hubby. It also has several giant outbuildings for the farm equipment (I have a tractor! And multiple things to attach and drag around and do I don’t know what with! Yay! )
It came with one fenced pasture about 3 acres, one 1 acre paddock, and one (too small) run in shed. Now I have built a 36x36 barn and fenced another pasture of 3 acres. This place is all we can probably handle, so grown-up self is happy. (Child self is still dissatisfied) We couldnt have swung more financially, and frankly couldn’t care for a bigger place for too many more years. So all in all, I think I’m happy.
I’m also starting to consider renting something suitable until we can either afford something better or happen to find the just right fixer upper. The last thing I want to do is buy the wrong property, developed or not.
Buy or build
What state/area are you in? I am in the same boat and found what I feel is perfect to buy but am leaning toward building. I own my 120 acres outright and hope to be able to manage it without financing. I’d be happy to share the info with you if you are in ny
Good luck with finding something to rent. That was what we did initially. There were VERY limited options for rentals (and we live in a horsey area with lots of options for sale, if you have the $$$).
The first we looked at was nice, but the owner was trying to sell it, and refused to pause listing it while would be renting (for 1-4 years). Since I didn’t want to have the place sold out from under us, and have to find a place to board 6 horses in a month, we walked away.
The only other full-year rental available was smaller than we wanted, but we took it anyway. The house was miserable and the property not well maintained. We could have fixed more than we did, but it’s frustrating to pour money into someone else’s property. After a year, we got so frustrated with the property we decided to just buy.
We looked at several, and everything in our price range needed significant work. We love our current place, and can enjoy living there and using it, even while we tackle the projects to make it better.
If you do rent, remember to ask if the owners are tacking on additional fees per horse. Many do a 2K a month for up to 2 horses, or something like that, but want another $200 month per additional horse. I’ve seen that in multiple listings, and the place we rented had that policy, so just something to keep in mind. Also, if you’re renting, the owners may not let you board, or have other restrictions that wouldn’t be a problem in your own place.
OP the cost of building will vary greatly depending on just how raw the land is and what little surprises crop up when you break ground.
Just installing fencing and running water and electricity out to your barn and pastures can get expensive really fast, especially if you want fencing that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
As to building the house and barn, permits and any associated testing and certification that you need before you even break ground can get expensive real quick. Does your area have any endangered wildlife? Not the first time someone has ended up with useless land due to habitat protection/endangered wildlife (that’s a particular issue in our area).
We recently bought a new place and considered both building and buying. We ended up buying a place that had a good house, outdoor water and electric setup but no fencing, no arena, no round pen,no garage.
Remember, if you build you’ll have to absorb the site and building costs while still running your business from a different location while the build in underway,
