How would this work?
If I want more land, but my neighbor already has their three acres and some extra land… how would I get more land?
There is not endless extra land accessible to each house.
How would shared spaces work?
I am the type who picks my paddocks daily. I would not want to share with someone who does not like to keep the paddocks clean. Or is this a service that is part of what is included in the HOA?
I will say, having a barn community is one of the things I miss the most about not boarding. That, along with having amenities that I can not afford but would love to use, would be a great thing.
Likely not enough that I want to move into a community like you describe.
Who defines and enforces “basic principles of good care”? This is the same issue I have with HOAs - who defines and enforces the rules/standards. I can assure you that bare minimum for me is ‘fancy overkill’ for a lot of horse owners. What if Susie is in charge, and she thinks blankets are abuse? Or that horses HAVE to go out on lush, fertilized pasture even if they are obese/IR?
This I understand. A well-run co-op or self care situation is perhaps a better/more realistic version of this - a lot of people might compromise on the horse thing but have some Not On My Lawn feelings about their home property.
ETA: HOAs work well in condos and apartment style living where the majority of the space outside your walls is shared with other residents. Having fees and rules about how those spaces are maintained and used makes sense. Same thing with boarded horses on a property - fees and rules for shared space. HOAs devolve rapidly when they start encroaching on private property, IMO - and they’re rarely run well long-term in those situations. Add horse people into the mix and it’s a recipe for disaster
In my dream world (i.e. this would never actually work) I would essentially do this with a couple horsey friends - we could each have our own farmettes, arrayed out around a shared arena/gallop track/schooling area. So we could all have our own horses/do our own things, be within walking/riding/driving distance of each other, and share the training facilities, trails around the properties, etc. We’ll say it’d be 4 - 6 lots total? So not anything economically or commercially viable, more just a friendly equestrian compound, LOL.
So, just like any other real estate. I have access to what “rental” land is contracted to my property, and to what other land in the community might be available for rent that I want to sign a contract for. If I must have more land but no other lots are available, I might decide to either not buy in this community or, if I have already bought but my needs have changed, sell up and go find a property outside this community, that has more land.
If I am keeping my horses on “my” land, I am not sharing with anybody unless I want to. If I am boarding my horse in the community barn, it is true that I would have to suck up however the community barn area maintains its paddocks, just as with any boarding situation. (But between you and me, T & L, I used to boast [probably obnoxiously] about how I could walk across my horse’s paddock in March in New England wearing my nice work shoes, so, I’m with ya.)
I would not be interested in renting the land, I would want to own it outright. I really don’t like HOAs, so it would be better if it were set up another way. Perhaps individual lots not in an HOA, and the land the shared facilites are on could be owned by a trust and require an annual member ship or something to use, or be gifted to the town, or a non-profit that deals with open space, with deeded equine usage.
Me too, Incantation, but acreage suitable for horse-keeping, especially in an area close enough to civilization for vets/farriers to be willing to visit, in this region, and paying for private arenas, etc, can be prohibitively expensive. If one fabulously wealthy investor buys a big chunk of land and dedicates most of it to conservation/agricultural land, but sells off a number of smaller house lots/townhomes to pay for shared amenities, people who might otherwise have felt horse ownership was getting too expensive, and/or too much work, for a variety of logistical reasons, might be able to stay in horse ownership because they are paying for a smaller lot but can rent a bigger one if they want, or can pay board.
Peeps. Please don’t get too badly hung up on the term “HOA.” There are many kinds of HOAs.
There are a set, reasonable care guidelines (like no restriction on amount or type of food but horses must remain within a body scale of say 4-6.)
Land is bought and you can either pick acreage with self care barn or houses/townhouses with use of either full care stalls or self care stalls.
Limit one horse per 1.5 acres.
No HOA but part of the package is “rent” on either just the riding arenas and trails or the stall/s as well (depending on where you buy). For an example of how this works - this is very similar to how Fairhill training center and many trailer parks are set up. You own the building (stables or trailer home) but basically rent the land. That rental goes into “public” space upkeep (roads, trash removal, some grass, and tracks at Fairhill/roads, mailbox set up trash removal at trailer parks). EDIT for clarity - In my scenario you would own your personal land, but pay a monthly fee to access amenities. I realized the way I worded it, it could be inferred I meant you do not own the land your house is on, either. I just meant you don’t pay a fee for someone to tell you what color to paint your house, just pay for amenities.
If I were younger, I would want acreage but I don’t want to take care of acreage now so I would want home and barn. I would enjoy having other horse people around and having my horse in my backyard but not having to walk out there all the time to care for her. I would like having the arena and trails at the ready but not having to keep them up myself.
This is actually not far from what I have now- horse is 5 miles away, we are on the same page about care so she’s looking good. I have access to trails around the property, as small arena on the property and we are allowed to use the outdoor arena, with jumps, at the farm across the street. It’s a lovely arrangement…maybe when I reach a certain age I’ll see about renting the second house on the property and really make my dreams come true.
This just struck me as amusing…I mean, how does it work now? I can’t just annex my neighbor’s yard because I want more land! And he’s a renter…not only that he’s old and infirm, pretty sure myself and my horse could take him and his little dog in a fight…but then again, if I did that, who would mow the lawn? Man, decisions…
That’s the problem with the equestrian communities in Aiken. This “average” non-horsey job professional can’t afford to be in one. The ones here start at $400k and up.
But the HOA is the hang up for me (well that and being sandwiched in with a bunch of people in a neighborhood, yuck). I’ll never understand why you would make the biggest purchase in your life (for most folks) and then pay an HOA to tell you what you can and cannot do with it. If I want to park 12 dead cars on my land and paint my house orange and purple I’m going to.
On a sort of flip side, I own a plant nursery and brokerage but we used to also do landscaping/ hardscaping. HOAs are the 2nd hardest entity to get payment from (the 1st being government jobs but that’s a whole nother thing). We quit doing work for HOA’s because it was a PIA to spend so much time chasing down payments.
It is that simple, in the entirety of the nation, renting land is the same:
1-find location
2-confirm availability
3-confirm you can afford it
4-pay money
If the company I worked for wanted to expand and rent out more space, they cannot because there is no more space here…and it isn’t in an HOA or anything…
But I guess for me, one didn’t need to state how much land is available - it’s all hypothetical so you can assume land is always available and you have infinite wealth to pay for it…then it is that simple.
Understanding how much land one has, one would be able to rent out, how that would work, in my opinion, is moving past hypothetical to looking at real decisions.
Maybe we are just looking at it from different views - I’m looking at it from purely hypothetical so in my scenario in my head it also never rains during peak riding times…because this place exists in Camelot…
That’s why Sharon said don’t get caught up on the HOA piece - or rather the phrasing of the HOA. If you like, think of it the way Fairhill training center is run. I am sure you have been there and see where all the barns are and where the training track is, as well as the race track. All those barns the trainers buy and then pay a fee for upkeep for the common areas and the track. There is a committee to discuss such things and policing, what not. No one is telling those trainers they cannot paint the barn bright pink or giving other restrictions - the money just goes into upkeep.
Does that make more sense for the scenario being discussed?
Hmm or both? Personally, it would fit people like me planning a mix of small scale breeding and riding, and would make weaning easier… Breeding at home, take mama or baby to the community barn at weaning time and keep your riding horse there as well either full time or during the winter if it’s a place that having an indoor would be a bonus? Just a thought.
same for me when I had my own businesses, did an airport access control system, this was a project in excess of a million dollars, they were dragging their butt in paying until I asked them did they want to chain the gates open or closed since they were they paying for the system I surely did not want them to use it… they cut the check
HOAs were terrible to work for, we sold those accounts off just to get away from them
if you progress with this, there should be regulations regarding stallions, here while not an HOA but a city
" Male equines (horses) capable of breeding will be confined in such a manner that such animal will not be dangerous to human beings, and all breeding will be under the control of the owner or handler."
You have to own property in the designated area, and at least pay into the minimum usage of riding arenas/trails - say $100/month (this is mandatory - price of owning the property there)
Minimum acreage (or usable acreage) per horse.
Additional $200 gets you a self care stall and use of X field (as in, your horse gets turned out, not necessarily THESE 3 ACRES are yours).
Additional $200 gets you full care stall. Extra amenities extra (such as bandaging, blanketing, special food, other such things that some barns charge extra for)
Provided stalls/land available, you can rent more. at above prices (maybe your own field is min 4 acres for $500 and $100/acre after that).
So, theoretically you can have the 5 acres and move weanling to the barn for weaning/work/exposure. You can move an injured horse that needs stall rest there, go away for the winter and “board” your horses there, all kinds of possibilities.
