A friend is interested in buying land with barn to keep her three horses. She would continue to live in her house 15 minutes away and commute. Possibly build house in future. Opinions, ideas, personal experiences and anything else you can think of? This is country land and has some neighbors within easy view.It feels somewhat uncommon but I’m sure all kinds of situations exist. Thanks for any input.
I am not sure what you are asking.
I know of more than one situation where the barn does not have a house on location and all seems to be fine.
Not sure what part of the country you are in, but one down side is waiting at the barn for service providers (vet/farrier) with out a warm house to hang in while you wait.
Safety of horses and keeping a watch on them is the biggest worry. If horse gets hung up on fence overnight they’re on their own
til someone shows up. theft of horses is another worry. In my area of Florida we’re having more pasture slaughters for meat by
poor immigrants.
Is there a close neighbor that could help w/ oversight? Would owner be feeding twice per day?
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@trubandloki makes a very valid point.
15 minutes is not far, but in an emergency could feel like Forever.
Does friend intend for neighbors to be her support system & keep an eye on her horses?
I worked - 4D/wk - when I brought my horses home. And for the first 9yrs I had them here, until I retired.
About a 15min commute to & from work.
A trip I made every working day, so horses had eyes on them mornings when I fed & when I got home.
In the 8H I was gone all heck could have broken loose.
A couple neighbors had #s to reach me, but they worked & had lives too, so not my substitute farm help in an emergency.
Does friend have the wherewithal to put a trailer or RV on the land?
Then at least spending a night or weekend would be possible.
And if nursing a sick or injured horse, necessary.
My horses are in my back yard. I sleep at night. I know, crazy. If one gets caught on the fence after I do my last check, unless there is a loud ruckus out there it is going to be stuck overnight. Same is true for while I am at work all day. I leave for work in the morning (as does Mr. Trub) so those neglected horses are home alone while I earn money to pay their bills.
If the OP’s friend is going to be there twice per day, doing chores and riding they are likely going to see their horses as much as most people who have them at home do.
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Two firsthand experiences:
When I moved into the absolute best boarding barn where I ever kept my horses, there was no house and no one living on site. The owners bought the property with horse facilities and no house. It had previously been used as an off-season farm for a polo player; not sure how that worked exactly. The current farm owners were in the process of building a house, but you know how that goes. Contractor and local government issues put the house over a year behind schedule. I knew there was a risk going in, but the benefits outweighed the risks for me. It was a safe farm with trustworthy owners. By taking a chance on them (I was their first boarder apart from a close friend of theirs), I got in at a fabulous boarding facility early on and was happy there for many years, until the owners eventually sold the property.
Second experience: I used to regularly farm sit for a client who had a house in the city, but bought a parcel of unimproved land in the countryside for her horses. She put in a driveway and a well, got electric hooked up, built a nice barn, and had the whole thing fenced. She drove out there 1x-2x a day to care for her horses, and it was quite a commute. Her long term goal was to build a small house or apartment, but I never saw that happen while I knew her. While there never was a major issue, that situation made me less comfortable just because of how far she lived from the farm.
We currently keep our horses on some land we bought that’s 2 miles down the road. There is a mobile home on the property that is empty we will probably rent out to a horsey person in the near future so it will make me feel better to have someone living there. We kicked around moving over there but if we do that we will probably build toward the back of the property. We did have one incident where the horses got out and we still don’t know how it happened so I put up a couple of game cameras to monitor things just to see if anyone was messing around while we weren’t there.
I have thought about putting up some security cameras that I could check 24/7 but not sure we need to go to that expense right now. But that’s a thought for your friend. Something like this. You can also get cameras that run off batteries so you don’t need to run hard wire to them
https://www.amazon.com/Expandable-Wi…NsaWNrPXRydWU=
We just moved into our new construction last month (yay me!). But the entire 6 months prior to that we had the horses out there without anyone living out there. I drove out twice a day for feeding/care/riding/etc. I admit I was nervous the first few days or if the weather got bad suddenly (but they do have a run-in). But overall, I do think it’s very doable.
As others have pointed out, even though I now live there they are unsupervised all day while I work. And they probably wouldn’t wake me up at night if something were to go amiss. So it’s not all that much more time (other than me gazing out the window while they graze thinking about how lucky I am). The neighbor across the road had my number and would have let them out of the barn if it caught fire or something.
I personally wouldn’t have loved doing it forever, but that comes more down to me having to drive out there in horrible road conditions in the winter sometimes.
It can be hard to finance a property that doesn’t have a house on it. This will be a factor both when buying, if you aren’t making a cash offer, and when selling, because you’ll need a cash offer.
Does the barn have developed water and electricity? If not, this can be expensive to add. Is there a bathroom? If not, then you don’t have septic. This can be expensive to add and on some properties may not be possible to add. Check that it has cell service.
Is the parcel zoned in such a way that a house can be added? Any idea why no one ever built a house on it before? There’s a reason other sites were more desirable than this one, not necessarily a bad reason.
I would want to have some sort of building where it is comfortable to stay on the property for hours at a time, if not also overnight. Reasons could be waiting for a vet, waiting for a contractor, watching a horse that’s not quite right, stranded during an emergency, whatever. This could be a heated tack room in the barn with a comfy chair near an indoor bathroom, a small guest apartment, or an RV. RVs, especially if you don’t mind them being stationary, can sometimes be surprisingly affordable secondhand.
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