Maybe this is best in a new thread, but if we don’t go the community route what’s the best way to find a place?
We’ve been googling and found horse oriented real estate, but they are definitely geared towards arena/amenities than trail access.
We aren’t that picky. There is a lot we can live with or fix, but we want easy riding access to a minimum of 20 miles of trail. That seems to be really hard to find.
Any tips are appreciated
might start by finding out where the trails or access to open land exists, around here there are numerous trails but I would look at a property that abuts to the National Grasslands where one can ride at will or on the trail system.
Clanter gave you a good start. You seem to have a “climate” model already. Look for places with that sort of climate and then places within that zone that might work for you.
For us our “agreed zone” (me from IL, MI, & WI and spouse from No. FL) basically runs along the route of I-40, at least until you get out to OK. Then it gets a bit dry for both of us. Along this route are a number of large and medium sized cities, but no real megapolis (Oklahoma City and Memphis are the biggest). In the East there are nice places on both sides of the mountains (or some in the mountains) with ample public land for riding. The TN side does a bit better than the NC side in that the Big South Folk area encourages equine use and the Great Smokey Mts. National Park allows for it. There are also several TN state parks that have equestrian trails. So do several Civil War Military Parks, such as Chattanooga, Shiloh, and Stone’s River. Get out to Middle or West TN and there are still opportunities but they are fewer. Cost of living is a bit higher out there than in East TN. I’ve never really done an analysis along I-40 through AR with this in mind even though we go out there every year for the National Cavalry Competition so I don’t know what is, or is not, available. You might also look along I-30 from Little Rock to Texarkana. We’ve driven this route many times with horses and found some nice places along the way over the years. It’s been a while so I can’t comment on current conditions. Once you get to OK and get out of the eastern mountains there you’re in Tornado Alley. It’s flat, hot in the summer, cold in the winter*, and (as the old song says), “the wind comes sweeping down plain.” The TX Panhandle is about the same. Once you get into NM there are some nice places (I think Santa Fe is about the coolest place in North America ;)) and prices and cost of living have a pretty wide range. But this puts you in the West and be very careful to learn about water rights.** This is about as far west as I’d go. I have a very good friend with a nice place in Snowflake, AZ (named for two Mormon missionaries, Mr. Snow and Mr. Flake, not for it’s annual snowfall). He thinks it’s great; I’m not a desert person.
You can find all sorts of climate data (temps, wind, precipitation, etc.) on the NOAA website. That would be a good place to start.
Best of luck in your search. 
G.
*On the Great Plains the only thing between you and the North Pole is a few strands of barbed wire.
**There’s an old saying in the West that, “Whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s fer fightin’ over.” Gospel truth, that. 
I personally wouldn’t want to deal with a HOA. I looked at a horse-centric HOA community in JAX, FL. I was speaking with a resident who said that in the time he was there, at most, there were 4 horses in the whole development. He uses his ATV on the beautifully groomed bridle paths. I did not like the restrictions, which dictated what type of house and barn could be built. I would not have been allowed me to keep my two call ducks.
We found a neighborhood down the road with no HOA. It had been built as a horse community 30 years ago, with dedicated trails throughout. There were only about 4 or 5 properties that still had horses, but no HOA to deal with. It was a very nice neighborhood, and we did end up buying a house there that we later flipped.
I have had my eye on this community in the NC mountains, for years. When it was first being developed, they focused a lot more on being an equestrian community; it looks like that’s not the biggest focus anymore. It’s too soon for us to be making any plans, but in a few years,we might check it out. We’ll be looking to make new human friends, as well as wanting good horse facilities, trainers, vets, farriers, etc.; I definitely want a community, especially as I get older.
This place is in The Toolies!!! The problem with that is the same problem that folks who built in the mountains around Gatlinburg faced: impossible fire insurance coverage. Many “went bare” and built anyway and when there was a big fire two years ago lost everything.
Pulling horse trailer on the roads in this area will be a challenge in good weather and a pluperfect bitch if the weather is poor. In an ice storm (a normal thing in the southern mountains of KY, TN, and NC) they will be impossible.
My wife’s best friend, before she became terminally ill, found a very nice place in the NC mountains but it, too, was quite isolated and when she became ill had to leave it and move to town. That was a major financial and personal burden that did nothing to help her with her medical problems.
These places are lovely to look at but poorly suited to equestrian pursuits and are questionable as investments.
Go further east and get on the edge of the mountains or further west into the TN Valley. Life will be much simpler.
G.
since OP is retiring (or retired) personally if North Carolina was the primary interest I would look at Camden South Carolina (or other areas in SC), I think I saw that South Caroline was in the top five of states to retire. Social Security income is not taxed and Withdrawals from retirement accounts are partially taxed. Public and private pension income are partially taxed.
https://smartasset.com/retirement/so…tirement-taxes
Camden is small at about 7,000 but near to larger city, about 100 miles away from the coast
has a horse park
The Foothills of Western NC/Upstate SC has a very large horsey population, with a huge variety of disciplines represented. Great vets, farriers, feed stores and other support services (fencing, barn builders, pasture maintenance, etc.) Hundreds of miles of trails… some require membership, some require you live or board on the trail system. Very active hunter pace and trail ride association, with 22 events each year on the local trail systems. There are some communities with central barns and acreage properties, and there are LOTS of private and commercial horse farms. You can drive around for hours and continually pass horse properties. Everything from live-above-the-barn set ups to multi-million dollar estates. Four small towns make up the center of it all: Tryon, NC; Columbus, NC; Landrum, SC and Campobello, SC. Plenty of B&Bs to stay and check things out
Summer is June through September and temps are in the 80s-90s with high humidity. Spring and Fall are a horseman’s dream. Winters are generally mild (40s-50s) with some short dips into the teens and 20s. Occasional ice storm or a few inches of snowfall that sticks around for a few days and paralyzes everything. But generally, a very nice, easy place to keep horses with many great months of riding weather.
We moved to TN from the Northeast 5 years ago to a farm, not a specific horse community. We purchased 68 acres, gut rehabbed a house, and are continually making improvement to things like barns, out buildings and fences. We are about an hour outside of Nashville, 2 hours from Big South Fork, and have access to many miles of trails from our own door.
I had worked in the equine industry for many years, doing trade shows and expos for work, and had the opportunity to talk with people representing equine communities and land sales in different areas. TN stuck in my head due to low real estate taxes, no state income tax, the availability to great medical care as we aged, and large amounts of land available for reasonable prices. We also wanted a change of seasons, but not the winters we suffered through up North.
We scheduled a five day trip to come down and look at real estate. I had initially contacted a realtor who came highly recommended from a Facebook page of trail riders. He was not available the first two days we were here, so we did drive bys of listings he recommended in areas he recommended. We came to find those areas were not what we were looking for- over developed already, and set up for explosive growth in the next 20 years- basically what we were looking to escape in the Northeast. We had done our homework though, and had a list of properties in another area we thought we would like. By the time the realtor was available to show us listings, we decided he had not listened to what we were asking for and decided not to look at properties with him.
We drove by the property we purchased on a Sunday, and were in the listing companies office first thing Monday morning. We saw the property immediately, and the agent we worked with also took us to 4-5 other properties in the same area. We made an offer within a week, went through the negotiation process and had an agreement in a few weeks.
Realtor.com is a great resource, as well as Google in general. You can use the menu to do specific searches based on your wants and needs. Research the area you are looking in thoroughly, and spend some time in that area to see if it will actually work for you and your lifestyle. We live in an area that does not work as well for people with small children, or people who want a different restaurant every night of the week, or who are looking to party and bar hop to socialize. Go into the local co-op or feed store and see what they have available. Call a local large animal vet’s office and ask about their services and farrier recommendations. Look for places that will service your trailer, tractor, four wheeler, etc. Find where the grocery stores are where you prefer to shop. For me, Kroger is a half hour drive, but it is not a deal breaker as I plan meals and multiple stop errand runs.
Put the effort into understanding what your needs are and do your research. I would love to have purchased closer to Big South Fork, but my husband needs easy access to an international airport, and Nashville’s airport fit that order. You will not find the “perfect” property because they do not exist, but if you do your homework, you can find one that meets your needs as much as possible and make it match even better once it is yours!
Another thing to consider is proximity to a national forest, as horseback riding is allowed on all forest roads and trails. Here in GA we have the Chatahoochie and the Oconee MGs with gazillions of miles of trails. And some good places to live, lots of cities and towns and farmland. Summers are hot and long but if you don’t coffee yourself with aggressive air conditioning you will adapt.
I board my horse in a “horse community” in NC. I love it and my best friends are within this community. They are very supportive to each other and that increases quality of life. Plus, the community is quite social.
However, it will come with rules you have to comply with. For example, all fencing has to be three-board fencing and painted black. Property maintenance is included, but worth it. The property value for this community has always increased and it is a great investment. Plots are between 5 and 20 acres, maybe 2 or 3 now don’t have homes. If I had the money, I would purchase a property in this community.
Thank you guys! This thread has been hugely helpful. We are trying to do this thing once and the suggestions have been great.
We are starting to try to narrow it down to a few states just to make it easier to look. Put together lists of musts vs wants.
The 8” of snow we have already has been hugely motivating. I’m ready to be someplace a bit less extreme in weather!
I bought land in a horse community in Aiken, SC for the same reason— HOA rules (and please, for the love of rationality and peace, read those suckers before you buy)— help your investment so long as (again) you understood and liked their criteria. And historically. these hobby farms have been good investments, even as similarly-sized farms outside of the development have appreciated less and less reliably.
OP, no matter where you buy, drive around some. IME, land-use law in the South is pretty loose, and the spread of hobby farms in an area where outsiders are coming into retire mean that you will find rich and poor living cheek-by-jowl. Not a problem, per se, but if those folks like to have loose dogs and those “mob up” together, it can be a serious problem for your livestock and limit the trail riding you thought you were going to do on the nice dirt roads around you. In other words, sometimes you need a horse development to provide the kind of trail riding and pleasant horse-keeping life you want, and sometimes you don’t. But that will be a local thing that you can get a feel for if you visit and look around.
I mention this only because I have known a few people who bought farms without paying a whole lot of attention to who their neighbors were and ended up with tough-to-solve problems. And by the same token: Meet your neighbors in a development. Ask how they feel about the HOA. If you “listen between the lines” you will know if the organization and people in it are functional or a hot mess. Also, you will figure out if you and your neighbors have enough shared standards to be good or if you will feel your hackles rise a bit when you see them because they are snotty or trashy or “doing it wrong.” Don’t buy into that without knowing; meet the folks before you invest in being close to them.
Bottom line: Pay as much attention to the people and the surroundings as the actual farm you’d buy.
Also, consistent, three-board fencing is pretty and profitable to you. That’s your HOA at work. But! If I were buying now, I would look carefully at any building restrictions. I would (and did) choose an HOA that did not specify a minimum size for the house and also one that didn’t say that the main residence had to be built at the same time as the barn.
The reason to do that is because, IME, the needs of people are changing. Here (and speaking to a good builder) it seems that the favorite set-up is a 1,200-1,500 ft2 house (maybe with just two bedrooms) and a 3-stall shedrow barn separated by a short breezeway so that you can walk out your back door in your jammies to do night check.
If your HOA requires, say, a 2,500 ft2 house AND you must build the house at the same time as the barn (you can’t build a barn and apartment first, with the main house to follow), I think you will be forced to spend more money than the market would dictate.
If you look at demographic and economic trends, I think you can imagine a contracting market for hobby farms and perhaps those buyers aging. I think the folks who will buy your farm when you are done with it will want less farm that those HOA rules developed before the 2008 crash dictate.
When I was housing hunting a couple of years ago, I was only looking in town, and most of the available homes were in HOA subdivisions. I ended up in an HOA with minimal rules, and that looked well maintained. I always look at the CC&R (HOA rules), and see if there’s anything I can’t live with. Never buy into a place thinking you can get a waiver for anything.
I looked at one, just driving around see if I even wanted to look at the available homes, and passed on one right away. There were those little signs in all of the common property areas, saying “Pay Your HOA dues”, the few people I saw out in their yards looked angry.
Just wanted to give an update. We have started a spreadsheet to track. Thought we found a perfect place in New Mexico that had perfect temperatures, decent rain fall, and… 68 inches of snow a year! So that is out
For anyone else doing the search here are the sites we’ve found useful so far:
https://www.bestplaces.net/climate/ - good weather info and you can search by zipcode which is nice for the places in the middle of nowhere.
https://weatherspark.com - helps you figure out the weather for places that averages just don’t work to get the real picture (like Michigan where it is 80 and 30 two days apart).
http://www.salestaxstates.com - help get the true cost of living
https://smartasset.com/taxes/property-taxes - Property tax calculator
Google income tax for each state (didn’t find a good site over all)
So, what was the place in New Mexico? If it snows two feet but then goes back up to 45 degrees and sunny and all the snow melts away so there’s no ice, until the next time, I could deal. It’s the freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw until all footing is encased in deeply potholed, ankle-breaking ice and cement-like snow, that I can’t deal with. Pretty, fluffy snow is fine.
Ojo Sarco, Rociada, Vadito, and Mora New Mexico had some nice horse properties and some beautiful riding. I still haven’t deleted them, but I definitely need to understand what all that snow is like!
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