I know two people who purchased their property by writing letters to all the owners in the area they liked and saying"please contact us if you are considering selling". It obviously worked.
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JustâŠtalk? 
Some owners donât want anything to do with the process and yes, will make you go through their agent. Others care about who their property goes to. FSBO sales mean you HAVE to talk to the owner, unless you want your agent doing all the talking. Calling up (or emailing or snail mail) an absent owner of land thatâs not even for same = talking to the owner.
Owners donât bite, and if any agent discouraged an owner from being present, they wouldnât be my agent if I was selling, and I wouldnât be buying if I was on that end.
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we get at least three letters a month also I can only cut the front yard on early Sunday mornings otherwise people will stop to ask is your property for sale, do you know of any that are coming the market?
Admittedly some of the attention is concerning the property next door that is being ârenovatedâ by the current owner (going on ten years now)⊠problem is he used that property and others as collateral for a business loan, business failed⊠so he has done nothing with the property. To this point he has been able to keep the loan payments current and the lender refuses to do a particle lien release to allow him to sell the property, they want all of their money not some
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I simply cannot fathom FIVE âfrom the ground upâ builds. Could you take us through your biggest advice and what youâve learned? What mistakes did you make early on and learn from? After years of looking for the right property and never finding a place enough off the road, with neighbors far enough away, a house the fit the land, a nice piece of land, some acreageâŠwe finally gave up and bought a place that required building the horse facilities. I work full time and find this project to be extremely challenging - expensive, time, knowledge and decisions. But, it is the only way to get what you really want - your requirements" list.
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We bought raw land. 45 minutes from home. I worked full time about halfway between the 2, but my horses were boarded minutes from home. DH worked full time, and the majority of the time we were building, he also contracted out of town, so mostly it was just me. Thankfully for a lot of that contracting he worked 4x10, so came home Thursday night, and spend most of Friday on site, and then we did our stuff Sat and some of Sunday before he had to drive (or fly) out again.
Itâs definitely something to consider, as building means you need to make your presence known VERY regularly, and preferably not at a reliable time. Youâd be AMAZED the crap contractors try to hide from you :rolleyes:
Having made mistakes designing our house, the biggest of which was assuming the company building it was actually competent at designing LIVING spaces, and watching my brother and his wife work through the process of designing their forever home, I would say work with an architect whose houses you have seen, either in person or in lots of pictures. They need to be asking you as many questions are you ask them, otherwise they will never really understand how you LIVE, not just âthingsâ you want. They need to help you design and situate a house to fit the land and your desires, not just one or the other. Donât want June 1 5am sun shining right in your eyes, but would love Dec 1 7:30 am sun lighting your room? Do the windows right.
Designing equine facilities is no different - find someone who specializes, and asks as many questions as you do. You also really need to know the land - where does water actually run - not just where it lands, but where does it travel. Lay out the barn so you get maximum Summer breezes and minimal Winter winds, with minimum Summer sun in stalls, but max Winter warmth.
Donât want June 1 5am sun shining right in your eyes, but would love Dec 1 7:30 am sun lighting your room? Do the windows right.
our house is aligned east/westâŠbut there is not one window that does not have direct sunlight at one time of the year. Front/back/sides/ends⊠all have a period of the year where the sun enters
As for reviewing photos rather than actual structures, my oldest daughter professionally takes listing photos of properties⊠she can make even screwy stuff look inviting (and doing so without computer manipulation), yes photos are better than nothing but use caution
One of the many things that I would have done differently if doing this all over again would be using a landscape architect, have them do a planting and structures layout âŠsure would have added order to the hazardous layout we have
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I designed my farm house around a focal point, a kiva type fireplace in a corner of the living room.
Was placed so the winter sun would illuminate it as it was setting.
Like most farm houses, no one is there after daylight, but most everyone comes in the evenings, early evenings in the winter, to a well deserved rest.
That was one preferred spot for that, with many windows around it to gaze into the pastures.
That was one preferred spot for that, with many windows around it to gaze into the pastures.
we have large floor to ceiling windows that face the pastures/paddocks⊠good for checking on the animals, however the negative is that they can see you also as they line up along the fences looking at their watches mumbling about It is Time To Eat WHEN are you coming out to FEED US?
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When done well, this is a huge bonus! Not a lot of people consider this. Nobody wants your favorite room baking in sun in July.
As for reviewing photos rather than actual structures, my oldest daughter professionally takes listing photos of properties⊠she can make even screwy stuff look inviting (and doing so without computer manipulation), yes photos are better than nothing but use caution
Of course, but if you canât visit the house. This is more about how are things laid out, what does storage look like, rather than how attractive is it.
One of the many things that I would have done differently if doing this all over again would be using a landscape architect, have them do a planting and structures layout âŠsure would have added order to the hazardous layout we have
that is a luxury we would have loved to have done for sure.
Same here. We donât have curtains because weâre out in the country, and the 1890s house has the original arched, tall windows with great moldings so it seemed like a shame to cover those up. But that means the horses watch the windows and even whinny when they see us. LETâS GO, PEOPLE, WE KNOW YOUâRE IN THERE."
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My husband and I bought our property in 2001. We had boarded horses for a few years, and had experienced pretty typical boarding barn issues - some care related, some people related. It took 6-8 months to find the right place, and we looked at a number that were less than accurately described. When we found it, things just seemed to come together. Be patient. Also be realistic about what changes/improvements the property needs. Very few properties are âperfectâ. We looked for âworkableâ, with the expectation of making some improvements over time.
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We placed the sand pile right across the windows and can watch the horses taking naps.
Horses watch TV in the evenings.
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We had two days to shop because we were moving halfway across the country. My DHâs new job is near the state line, so we looked at 6 properties each day, one day in each state. Day 2 farm 3 was The One and we were pretty much sold walking on the property.
that said, the horse facilities were minimal at the time. I have since replaced all the fencing, built new paddocks, built an indoor and additional 5 stall barn, and much more. No property is perfectâŠI just had a vision of what could be that I was completely satisfied with.
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So, so true. You have to have a lot of imagination. The land is pretty much the most important part-- you can fix / replace structures. (Yes you have to budget for this.)
The attached pic shows the main barn on our property when we first bought the place. It was a mess, with 3-4ft of manure piled inside, and a 10ft tall pile of loose hay in the center hall.
But I could just picture what it could be like. With a lot of labor, itâs now beautiful and functional. Did most of it ourselves-- got a contractor to fix the foundation and replace the siding, and make the sliding doors, but everything else was DIY so it wasnât actually very expensive. Way cheaper than knocking it down and putting up a new polebuilding of that size.
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I looked off and on for a few years. I got serious when the boarding stable owner told me she was going to sell. Then I put my house on the market, it sold in five days, and I had a week to get another place under contract. This was in 2006. I looked at about six places without finding one I liked or could afford to fix up. The place I ended up buying had just been listed that day. We drove over, and since the listing agent didnât return our phone calls we just knocked on the door and talked to the sellers. They let us in, and I made a full price offer an hour later. A sign never even went up, so when their moving truck appeared there were apparently a lot of surprised neighbors.
The house was just okay, but had a good floor plan. I had the old and rickety barn removed and a modular barn put in its place. Redid the fencing. I moved my horses in about six months after I moved in, when I had things ready for them. Iâve totally remodeled the house in the time Iâve been here, but more to make it my taste than because what was here was horrible. I wish I had more land, but in reality my place is pretty perfect for me since I am a widow and do everything by myself (I do have a handyman for bigger projects).
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We looked for almost three years before we found our property. We made probably 5 offers that failed for various reasons during that time. The listing for the property we finally bought was posted at lunchtime (I was checking listings multiple times a day by that point), I told our real estate agent about it and we got to see it by 4 pm that afternoon, and filled out the offer and presented it in the ownerâs driveway before we left. We got verrrrrry lucky - the owner was an elderly lady extremely emotionally invested in her property and my husband and I just clicked/resonated with her.
All that said, it was not the perfect horse property right out of the gate. It is a working 22 acre hay farm with the mix of fields/wooded that we were looking for, with a 3/4 acre spring fed pond, the farmhouse is large and has great bones but is in some disrepair, the existing barn is good for storage/workshop space but not for animals. Two years later, we are still renovating the house, and site planning for the animal barn, an outdoor arena and garage. My horses are still boarded elsewhere.
This is in the tri-state NE region. Recently (since COVID), we have had more than few people tell us our property is like gold now - our market is experiencing very heavy interest from city-dwellers looking for bigger country properties and there is absolutely nothing available. I consider us very lucky to have found this place when we did!
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You need that one way glass that they use for police lineups! Then the horses wonât know you are home.
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It took us over a year to find a property. One rejected offer, thank god they did! The house we have is perfect. It wasnât when we bought it, there were no horse facilities but the entire back is fenced. House was a foreclosure and needed work but we knew we could do it. Ended up having to put in an offer even though current house was not sold. Scary as heck but our house sold in a day. Then we had to outbid the competition, luckily we outbid them by 1,000 over asking and it was done. We built the barn and arena but I donât regret any of it. For us it was hard, two people do not need a 4,000 sq foot house. And most places were that large. So our small house with lots of outside room has turned out for the best. Good luck!
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problem becomes horses can detect sounds as far as 2.5 Miles⊠and they can hear when you turn on the coffee maker so they know you are awake
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Iâm on my fourth dream-farm. First one was, well, my first; four acres and a little boarding barn. Second was part of a campground I owned. Third was a big 40 acre training/lessons joint. Now Iâve downsized to about 13 acres with two horses and a pony, an outdoor arena and a few miles of space to trailride in the neighborhood. Iâve loved them all. Good luck!
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