Moving - horse property or residential and boarding?

[mvp]

OP, I live in Aiken now and have lived in Central New York.

Depending on what you consider affordable and if you want to live in a driving community, I think you can have what you want in Windsor, if not in Aiken.

I think the market here is starting to soften just a tiny bit. I say that not because of price drops, so much, but because of small, more-or-less well-conceived little farms that have stayed on the market for longer than one would expect.

We are just coming into the hot Horse Season now, so I think some of these farms will get bought. How much house and barn do you want/need? There are one or two little ones that aren’t well advertised that I know about.

I have been on both sides of the boarding business and usually been a boarder for 30+ years. I have lived all over the country. I wouldn’t move somewhere based on finding just one good boarding barn that did (or seemed to) check all my boxes. And I really wouldn’t try to find that barn (or even my new community or my farm) from out of state. Because there is no money in boarding and because the middle class is getting priced out of horse ownership, I think it’s going to become harder and harder to find a good boarding barn, generally-speaking. In Aiken, that’s a bit true because so many people keep their horses at home. But this is a Horse Mecca with lots of Horse Infrastructure, so you can find good-ish boarding and you certainly can find farm sitters. The environment here and reasonable land costs, plus the depth of the horse market here makes that good-ish boarding possible. Hay prices make it more expensive than you would think. But you can find inexpensive ways to do it.

Some notes about Aiken.

1. High speed internet is not everywhere. Some real Due Diligence is necessary here. If fiber optic cable is not already at the address, but someone says it is coming, do not believe anything you don’t see in writing.

2. Building your own place is shockingly expensive and slow. Figure that into your costs and try to build something already built if you can.

3. Taxes and utilities will be less than in NYS; property insurance seems high to me. Also, remember that “you get what you pay for” and that South Carolina is pretty poor state in lots of respects. It’s also very Red politically.

[horsegal301]

Regarding how much we want/need - don’t need a large house, but I don’t want to live in a manufactured/mobile home, which seems to be the majority of what’s for sale in Windsor. I’m seeing a lot of houses that haven’t been updated since the 80s with incredible asking prices, though. It is a little disheartening to feel like if we want a house that isn’t also going to need 50k+ in updates with a barn, we’re looking at $750k minimum.

We were in a 1300 sqft home prior to moving where we are now, and that was a great size for us, with enough room for a bedroom, guestroom, and an office that we can both fit in. It’s just my husband and I with no kids. I don’t foresee having more than 4 equines (no promises on the sizes), and would love enough room for an enclosed ring, as we don’t have one of those where we are currently unless you count a pasture. We toyed with finding a place without a barn and doing some sort of temporary set up since in reality, a shed with fencing would probably be enough for the little ones I’ve got right now.

Ideally enough space to rotate pastures, have a chicken coop/run, barn + small ring to school in. I just don’t want to feel totally packed in. 5 acres doesn’t seem like enough, but we’re on 20 now and it’s too much. We cleared some of the back field behind our pastures to give our one neighbor more peace of mind as her house and barn are set farther back and the previous owner was letting it get so wooded it was pushing her fencing around.

The part about high speed internet is definitely something I’ve found out. I joined a couple FB groups and I see them talking about fiber. We don’t even have that here . Outside of the city of Buffalo (and our neighborhood) is incredibly red, so at least at the local level I don’t imagine it would be much different in that regard!

I don’t know anything about building, but we have seen some new builds (but without barns) on sizeable pieces of land that are cheaper than what people are asking for older, outdated homes.