IF an equestrian community were opening up near you

[Libby2563]

@SharonA1

@Libby2563

The devil is in the details though. What if the indoor isn’t well-maintained, people can’t agree on footing type/depth, some people monopolize arena space/time, etc? What if the caretakers are not trustworthy? What if the turnout areas at the communal barn are unsafe? Yes, these issues come up when boarding, but then if you can’t live with it you just have to look for a different barn. You aren’t also selling your house.

But, what is different here? You don’t have to sell your house. You just go look for a different barn. If you don’t want to use your “back 5 or 10” or whatever, you stop paying rent on it and let it go back into the community.

I mean, you don’t HAVE to sell your house, obviously. But if you bought in the community relying on using the communal horse facilities, I imagine you wouldn’t be happy to have to look for boarding or facility use elsewhere. Especially if you were still paying ongoing fees. Even if you weren’t, wouldn’t those facilities have factored into the price you were willing to pay for the property? Maybe you can no longer afford your mortgage if you also have to pay board somewhere else. (I’m not saying I’d plan my finances that way, but somebody might.) Also if everyone slowly gets disgruntled with the facilities and moves their horses away, the community ceases to function the way it was intended, as others have described happening IRL.

To me it’s just not hard to see how the stakes would be higher if you’re buying a property both for itself and for some communal amenities that might not work as expected and that you’d need to pay more for / drive farther to replace if they don’t.

[SharonA1]

@Libby2563

To me it’s just not hard to see how the stakes would be higher if you’re buying a property both for itself and for some communal amenities that might not work as expected and that you’d need to pay more for / drive farther to replace if they don’t.

I don’t want to belabor the point, because … why… But, isn’t this the case when you buy any property, anywhere (or board a horse anywhere)? You come in expecting a certain environment, and pay for that environment accordingly. And sometimes it changes or you change, and you move away with some combination of bittersweet sighing and disgruntling as you go. Hopefully it was a fair bargain for the time you were there.

I guess the thing I am struggling with is my perception that people are thinking about more risk vs. benefit for property in an equestrian community than for buying property independently. Not saying those concerns aren’t valid, because they are, but yours truly is still unpacking the benefits vs. the risk.

[Libby2563]

Maybe we just see it differently? If you buy a house and choose a boarding barn, those are two separate decisions that need not affect each other that much (except relative locations or budgeting). Lots of people will stay in the same home but change boarding barns over the years. If you buy a farm without communal facilities, you’re basing your decision mostly on aspects of the property that you own and can control. If you buy a property in an equestrian community, there are more moving parts that you can’t control. That, to me (and it sounds like to others here), increases the risk.

[SharonA1]

Libby – can I just tell you, re: seeing this differently… On another board, I had mentioned pool and hot tub as included in the community facilities (confirming that this would be for people, not horses, mind you, as COTH likes to take things with a very granular view), and a responder said that a community hot tub sounded like a disaster. My response was that the responder clearly had not grown up in California in the 70s, because I personally have very non-disastrous impressions of community hot-tubs in California in the 70s. (Not involving myself, of course. Most of the time.)

Anyway, I think we have successfully picked this thread topic over. I believe it is ready to be put to bed. I must go put on 37 layers and go see the cookie monster, though it is too cold for me personally to ride.

[fivestrideline]

lol community pools and hot tubs CAN and DO become disasters. BTDT - having access to a clubhouse with pool or gym or hot tub would factor 0% into my choice of a home… except for how much I’m not willing to pay for them. Now, if membership was optional, and I could choose to opt in or out, I’d very likely opt in if the facilities were up to my standards! But I would not be making budget and lifestyle choices based on the availability of that membership. If I was moving into an equestrian community, I would absolutely be making budget and lifestyle choices based on those factors… having to shop for a different boarding barn after moving the horses “home” would not be acceptable to me.

I’ve lived in several places where the communal facilities were heavily advertised as reasons to choose that community. Only one was maintained in such a way that the facilities were useable (and that was only the pool). Gym equipment breaks and management chooses not to repair or replace, same for the pool/hot tub. Dog park turns into a poop field and the fencing is unsafe. Etc. Then an email blast goes out saying “fees are rising to maintain XYZ”… facilities that will remain “closed for repairs” for months, only to reopen with repairs done as cheap as possible. And there we go, right back to square one.

Personal experience says no way I’d move somewhere with an HOA or any sort of outside control of my horse life connected to my housing situation. Maybe if I was only planning to have horses/live there for less than 10 years - ie, planning to retire somewhere else - but that’s a long way off for me right now! These communities just never last, not to the standards they were intended. And not just the equestrian ones!

[JanM]

The only real amenity at my HOA subdivision of 53 homes, is the pool with the pool house/club house. They are expensive to maintain, big problems with trespassers and vandalism. People give the gate code out to anyone they want, and there’s no way to prove who did it. Also, lots of rentals here (18 of 53 homes are rentals), and everyone who ever rented has the code. Very few use the pool, but some keep claiming that having it increases property values. I made a mistake buying here, but can’t move without going to either a fixer, or a worse location, or renting an apartment.

The pool here has nothing but the gate code, and too short fence to keep trespassers and vandals out. The HOA board members are the ones who want the pool, so the votes are mysteriously exactly the number they need to get their way. No way I would ever do anything here but pay my dues, I simply live here, and that’s all.

[trubandloki]

@SharonA1

I guess the thing I am struggling with is my perception that people are thinking about more risk vs. benefit for property in an equestrian community than for buying property independently.

Because there is more risk because you are putting all your eggs in one basket.

If you buy a house and board your horse at some random boarding barn, if one goes sideways on you, you only have to fix that one thing - find a new boarding barn or sell your house and find a new one.

If you buy in a planned horse community and things go bad you are having to figure out the logistics of finding a new boarding barn and selling your very specialized housing situation.

I do have a question, you keep talking about people renting/leasing these five and 10 acres pieces near their house, what happens if people are not renting them? Does the HOA have to raise fees to maintain them in case someone else comes along and wants to rent one?

Some of my thoughts on this topic are based on knowing what friend deals with. Friend owns property in a neighborhood that was built as a horse community. Large lots all zoned for individual small barns, etc. The neighborhood did not have community riding ring or indoor or such, but it was built with some riding paths around the perimeter and various places.
Friend is now one of two houses in the whole community that has horses and there are some people in the neighborhood that like to complain endlessly about how horrible the horses are.
The riding paths no longer exist (because they were basically at the back edge of people’s yards, so things were planted, fences were installed, etc.).

[Christa_P]

@JanM

The only real amenity at my HOA subdivision of 53 homes, is the pool with the pool house/club house. They are expensive to maintain, big problems with trespassers and vandalism. People give the gate code out to anyone they want, and there’s no way to prove who did it. Also, lots of rentals here (18 of 53 homes are rentals), and everyone who ever rented has the code. Very few use the pool, but some keep claiming that having it increases property values. I made a mistake buying here, but can’t move without going to either a fixer, or a worse location, or renting an apartment.

The pool here has nothing but the gate code, and too short fence to keep trespassers and vandals out. The HOA board members are the ones who want the pool, so the votes are mysteriously exactly the number they need to get their way. No way I would ever do anything here but pay my dues, I simply live here, and that’s all.

This seems like it could be a relatively easy fix. Put up a better fence and get a programmable lock where each house gets a different code, and that code is changed or deleted if the occupants of the house change, or the homeowner requests a change.

Even just changing the code annually so only the current owners have access might help.