Depending upon the area, the best move may be a property with a house and barn - even if both are in poor condition. It is often easier to get permits to renovate and fix than it is to add a new structure.
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Everything #clanter said. Barn, fencing, pasture clearing/seeding/fertilizing, and arena costs WAY more than you think. Your return on investment is very few pennies on the dollar. AND, the fancy smancy new barns and pastures are undervalued by banks/mortgage companies/zillow, so it can be very hard to get a loan.
In contrast, building a new home, or renovating an old/tired one is easily recognized and valued by those companies and society, so you’ll add instant equity to the property.
In 2015 I bought a more-or-less turnkey farm. 15 acres, house, 4-stall center aisle, about 8 acres in fenced pasture. I paid about 500K. A good friend paid $225K for 12acres a little closer to town at the same time. By the time she had the trees all cleared, the pastures planted and a smaller-but-decent house built she was in for well over 500K and ran out of money to do the barn she wanted, and had to scrap together a glorified run-in shed with tack room. In the meantime, it was about 10+ months between buying that property and moving her family and horses home. In that 10 months, she was paying rent and also board on 3 horses. I was able to move the family and horses home the same week as closing, and with careful planning had almost no extra rent/board costs.
If I won the powerball tomorrow, I’d build from scratch. But if you’re on a budget, definitely go with purchasing something that already has horse facilities, even if they require fixing or modifying to work for you. Your money will go a lot further, and you’ll be more appealing to mortgage companies.
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Yes Yes Yes
renovation is MUCH cheaper and less hassle than new built (for permits, neighbors, etc.).
Another consideration is that if you ever want a mortgage or Home Equity line it is much easier to get one for a property with a house. Even if you have the $, a HELOC can help you with managing the lumps in expenses
Probably the horse facilities. The home requires a perk test, a well, electricity brought to the property, gas possibly. If I have researched the drainage on the property and local zoning allows the barn and animals, I’m all set if I have the house and well already. If not, then I run the risk of not being able to put a house on the land, or get a well going. I would reather concentrate on the horse stuff, and not worry about the house.
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I’d find a property that had the barn and pastures established and then build the house.
Money you spend on the house you will get back in property value going up. Money you spend building the barn will cost more than you get back.
There’s a reason developers build houses, not horse farms. 
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when they do “build horse farms” it when they have taken a section of land then subdivided into empty lots …that is how the lot I am on was developed in the late 1940s… a very large ranch outside the city that was chopped into much smaller lots (that was then surrounded by the city many years ago)
Man, SO much depends on the property, the state of an existing house, the state of an existing barn, and what you are willing to do or even WANT to do to make improvements to either.
We bought raw land that thankfully didn’t require a lot of clearing. It took 4 years to find this.
We had looked at other properties with 1 or both structures on it. The state of the house always turned us off - too small, would require too many updates, or just eww tear it down
But I’ve known people who loved looking for land with a house they could renovate because it was livable enough, and they were capable of doing the work and new would be involved (which is almost always more than you think)
Building a house isn’t for the faint of heart either, but we have a house we LOVE, not one we settled for
Lots of existing barns are very serviceable. Some don’t work for horses at all and need to be gutted and redone. Some are much nicer, and you could spend a LOT of money trying to duplicate another one. We had Dutch Barns build the shell for our pole barn, and we finished the inside, which saved a ton of money, got what I wanted (36x36 4 stall, wash stall (really hay stall LOL) and tack/feed room) without requiring more skills or tools than basics. It did take some time, but we had it.
For our search, my first requirement was the land. 8-12-ish acres, not 5 acres, not 30, not in a flood plain, not fully wooded. If it met those criteria, then the structures got evaluated. You can’t change the land, at least not without a lot of potentially very $$$ grading.
Purchasing land where you have to build a house can be contingent on it perking. You can get estimates from contractors on what the costs would be to get the well done, get electricity run, get a driveway put in, etc. You can request all kinds of contingencies and see if the seller is willing. I would run away from raw land with no perking already established where the seller was unwilling to allow that to be done before being a done sale.
And if you’re boarding, and buy without fencing, can you afford to keep boarding while you spend the time and $ to get fencing done? I know a few people who bought land that was fenced well enough, there was either an acceptable shed or they had one built, moved the horses in, and then go to to work on the house, then the barn. They did the shed such that it became part of the barn.
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Yes, how some people chose to live is beyond me, but I cannot possibly imagine asking someone to pay a cool half mil for a house that smells like cat piss. I dunno, maybe I’m a snob.
I am not handy. At all. I can identify which end of the hammer you are supposed to hold (slight exaggeration). When I was buying a house (not my current farm), I gave the agent a list: no baseboard heat, an actual laundry room or even laundry closet because w/d in the garage is appallingly common up here, nothing that is still languishing in the 70s, nothing that is billed as a fixer-upper or needed a lot of work/renos. She probably did think I was a snob because she wanted to show me everything because “it wouldn’t hurt” and “it’s vacant anyway.” I had literal moments when we pulled up and I looked from inside her car and refused to get out. A couple where I hit the front door and was like “nope” and she tried to convince me to walk through anyway. Lady, it’s my money, this is not cool. I think she was tickled pink when she showed me the house I bought, and I walked in and said “ohhhhhh… yeah baby.” It checked every single box. It only required painting and changing out light fixtures. Easy peasy.
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I knowwww!! One in particular really wasn’t even about that. It was just…OLD, and looked like it was built in stages by a committee who didn’t even look to see what was there before adding on. Low ceilings, no light, lots of things looked like veneer that was showing its age (or poor quality to begin with)
I do, but I don’t, get why realtors want to show us stuff that “might” work. Missing 1-2 requirements? Maybe, if the rest are just totally amazing, and they aren’t too awful. But if you get 1, let alone 2+ things that are just SO FAR off the mark that they can’t be made up for, whyyyyy?
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In addition to having sufficient chutzpah to be a RE agent in the first place, I suspect that they show “unsuitable” properties because enough buyers are under time or other constraints that lead them to settle for something that doesn’t meet their stated requirements. But, as TheJenners’ experience shows, usually if you just hold out and have the time to keep looking, persistence pays off.
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Was there any item in particular that went way over budget? I am still looking at houses that would be move in ready and missing some must haves at the barn but under budget so I figured I could add them later. Any items I should walk away if they’re missing?
I think they show unsuitable properties because those properties are their own listings and they want to sell them. Also they will be able to tell their client, the seller, that the house has had x number of showings.
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For me I’d want someone else to build the barn and the indoor. I could build the house I wanted.
Building from scratch, that’s scarier b/c you won’t really know how the land works until you’ve been there a bit. What puddles, where’s the wind coming from, just how the land functions. If permits allowed, buying the farm with the horse bits in place and just plopping a mobile home on it for a minute to let you learn what you want to do next. Friends of mine did that and lived in the most hysterically 1970sesque trailer for about 6 months- it was cheap to buy and easy to sell when their home was ready.
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i’ve built two horse barns and have also completely renovated a historic one. Going to say that it’s a whole lot cheaper building a barn that works for you from the ground up! Not as gorgeous, but more functional.
edit: o crap. zombie thread. sorry
In my opinion, it is harder to renovate a barn to meet your needs than it is to renovate the house. I spent months thinking about the design of my little barn before I had it built and 10 years later, there are only two small things I’d change. If you decide to build a barn, think of the number of horses you can easily care for and make your barn big enough for no more than that. I did this too keep my life simple because I have seen so many people fill their barns with more horses/boarders than they actually want to deal with. For me, 3 horses is the sweet spot. I’ve cared for up to 5 and that was too much work/ not enough fun.
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