Narrow horse properties. Does it work?

Remember that you are going to want to be able to drive around the arena at times, with a tractor or such.

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I’ve seen this work with a small size dressage arena (20 meters by 40 meters.) I think you’d have to be very creative with a large arena.

Another perspective could be is this a now or potentially forever place. If it’s affordable and workable as a short/shortish term option, you may make different decisions than if you intended to make a long go of us. Both my first farm and current farm are not forever situation’s, but workable and have had relatively nominal investment to make them such. Perfect by no means but safe, workable and pretty aesthetically pleasing. For both places, I doubt that the next buyer would be interested in the horse amenities. My barn conversion from an outbuilding is adorable and very workable, but also would be quite easy to return to its prior state to attract a wider variety of buyers.

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Workable yes. Ideal maybe no. We have a similar parcel but only 3 acres. Our neighbors have similar properties. Our house is near the front with a concrete driveway. Then we have about 300 feet then the barn with paddocks. This is where an arena would go if I built one. It would go longways so plenty of room on the sides. Then a back pasture. A gravel road to the barn.

It would be a long walk to get thru the property if it’s 7 acres. Or maybe you use a 4 wheeler. For 3 acres we don’t need that. You spend a lot of money on driveways and fencing the perimeter. But not much on cross fencing lol.

I don’t know where this is, but that setback is a risk for you (2 meters) if my area is anything like yours.

Your risk: neighbors sell to development, or just to someone who wants to build against that property line, and you have houses within 2 meters of your property line. OR you end up with a backyard there, and trampolines right next to you. Or __. I boarded at a place where the arena sat on the property line. Next thing, the neighbor was rehabbing tractor trailers - yup, right there: bam, rolling up the back doors of the trailer, right along the rail… I moved out.

A dressage ring would need to be aligned the long way, so that you would have plenty of buffer to the fence line. It’s 150 feet, right? So the dressage ring would need to set lengthwise, giving you ~45 ft on each side. That’s a pretty good distance away from what-not.

So, doable? Sure! 7 acres is a big deep lot. Those narrow lots are popular in a lot of places, and they are workable. You get way off the road, which is a bonus, for your horses and arena. Depending on the configuration of the other lots around you, you may have limited risk of development - but not 0.

A note: I boarded at a place that managed to get the horse pens right against the property line. The pens were partially covered and very big (like 36’ deep). Because they were so large, the zoning code considered them to be “paddocks” and allowed it. That’s the kind of detail you will need to work out.

I don’t live where snow’s an issue, so no comment on that concern about clearing the drive in the winter!

We have just over 6 acres and the width is around 300 feet and the length is around 1k feet. The barn/paddock is at one end, the house is in the middle, and the riding ring/pastures are at the other end (we bought it so didn’t design it this way.).

I ride the 4-wheeler A LOT because no matter where I want to go/what I want to do it’s further than I want to walk to do a project/carry things.

For a property that is even longer I’d for sure invest in a 4-wheeler, golf cart, Gator/Mule, or even an e-bike. :grinning:

We are in Southern California so land is very limited. Our place is probably 90-ish feet wide. It’s less than 2 acres, but laid out efficiently and every part of it is used. No, there is no grass turnout, but that does not really exist here. :wink: 7 acres and narrow would be a LOT longer to the back, but if everything else about it is great, there would be ways to make it functional!

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Phew 150’ is narrow as heck. I’ve described my nine acres as a skinny rectangle but it’s 400’ by 960’. It’s doable but man… it’s gonna be tight.

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one of the places we looked at abutted a large ranch of all open ground, we passed on it just because we could not know just what would be built there. Twenty years afterwards I pulled that place up and sure enough there was a problem. A high school athletic stadium with surround parking lot ran all the way to the fence line. The high school marching band used the parking lot to practice. Also the lighting from the parking lot lite the place we thought about buying as if night was day

Just in case no one mentioned this-
Find out about your area’s setback codes for barns, wells, septic fields, etc. Visit your local permitting agency and ask them what you could build on the narrow property. They will have maps with existing neighbors’ wells and septics….
My property is not that narrow but I had problems placing my house where I wanted it due to neighboring wells. And as a result my back yard is my drainfield…. Which severely restricts what I can do with my back yard.

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I just measured my parents’ 5 acre lot - 180 feet wide. The white roofed square was my barn - about 24’x24’ attached to my dad’s shop. This is only the front half or so of the lot. This worked fine, but we didn’t have an arena because the property to the left was a riding school and I was able to use their arenas.