edit
Could you do a middle ground? Pop a tiny home on the acreage with some bare minimum but safe horse amenities (maybe just fencing and a run in shed plus storage shed) and give it a few years. If you find alignment with the rest of your life, then make the big investment? I couldn’t tell from the OP if you would have to buy the land to access or if your family may allow access or renting?
8 Likes
Even if you are not going to start the farm life yet, do you want the job you saw advertised? Can you do a few years of young adult adventure with that as a home base, rent your place to live, not build yet. Will the land project wait for a few years?
3 Likes
I don’t understand where the debt or the urgency comes from. You can take the job, live on the property in a double wide (like all the neighbors) and just put up minimal shelters and fences. Be wary of sinking more improvement into a piece of raw land than you can ever recover in sale.
What is your business goal for this “horse farm”? Do you expect to board, to train, to breed? Being very remote in a low cost of living area can be good to keep costs down for breeding if you have the contacts to get your young stock on the market back in civilization. But there will be no clients for lessons, training or boarding.
Anyhow, before you commit to the property you need a business plan that is more than “going into debt to build the dream tween barn.” A farm is a business. It needs to support itself or make a profit. As opposed to a millionaire’s hobby farm or acreage that is just a money pit. It doesn’t sound like you have that kind of disposable income
Do you need to buy the farm from your family?
If both you and your husband have good paying full-time professional jobs, who will.do the work of building and then running this horse farm?
If this job is in a low cost of living area, it’s likely underpaid relative to the same job elsewhere. And while a minimum $10k raise sounds nice, it’s a drop in the bucket. You can’t even buy a quality horse for $10k.
8 Likes
is there high speed internet service at this farm? My son bought a farm in Penn, he was able to get high speed internet to his farm by paying to have a cable pulled across a river
10 Likes
Good God, I can’t imagine how much that cost. I read about people willing to run cable from their house to the road themselves, so that ISP wouldn’t entail the costs, and the ISPs still wouldn’t do it.
1 Like
a lot less than the rent he was paying for his office in Manhattan, he used a drone to get a line across that was used to pull the cable
1 Like
I would not upend your life or sink a bunch of money into improving a property that doesn’t belong to you. There are so many things that can go wrong and prevent you from inheriting the property, and even if everything goes according to plan you’ll still be splitting it with your sister. Not to mention all the ways that something like this can ruin perfectly good family relationships.
Would your family member consider selling you the land now to keep it in the family? Or, another way of thinking of it, would you go out and buy land in the same area if this family land didn’t exist? Personally I know I would never be happy living in such a rural area, it just wouldn’t be a good fit for me culturally no matter how good a deal I got on the property. I wouldn’t discount the flexibility you guys have now to move wherever you want/need to.
20 Likes
100% agree with this. I was going to vote “do it” until I read that the land is not yours but “would be willed to you”. Screw that, a lot of things can happen between now and then that would sever that relationship and now you’ve put your heart, blood, soul, and MONEY into a place that’s going to get pulled out from underneath you.
No way, hosea.
9 Likes
The ISP in my area wanted us to pay for some enhancements to the system to get them to run lines down the street. It would have been crazy expensive. I don’t live in an overly rural area either. Just a short street near a town line that has never had internet/cable on it.
Just tossing this out there to go along with making sure there is high speed internet at this place before you make other plans.
1 Like
Maybe I’m ignorant, but can’t you just get Starlink now?
2 Likes
No idea.
Edit to add - Per my Google research Starlink has limited availability and unreliable connection speeds…
Huh. I know it’s being touted as the best thing for remote barns that want wifi/internet cameras. My mom uses it at her remote home and loves it.
I’m giving Tmobile’s home internet a whirl, so far so good and pretty affordable.
I am just passing along what I found when I just googled it. I have never heard of it so I have no personal experience with it.
2 Likes
might be one of the Few times were a sell by Contract For Deed might be worthwhile as the land’s value would be set now rather than in the future, monthly payments can be set very low with a finial balloon payment set into the future.
One thing that has to be considered is age of parents and their financial position, if they are aged ending into state welfare there is what is called Look Back period provisions Medicare on how assets have been handled to recover costs
https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/medicaid-look-back-period/
1 Like
Don’t disregard your preferred lifestyle and the socialization and culture you seem to want in your life.
Not everyone likes country living far off from any amenities and the people that enjoy them.
I will tell you my story, as I did similar, but rented not built a barn and leased school horses from the riding center I had been involved since a teenager, starting colts and giving lessons there.
My stables were in the middle of a small village that had lots of tourist traffic, so there were plenty of customers for my barn.
Started with 12 horses and in two weeks was up to 31 and there was enough business for more, we were surprised!
Made money hands over fists for the year I ran that business, very satisfying all around.
I found out, being barely past 20, that was not the life I really wanted after all for the rest of my life.
I needed more than work from before daylight until after dark with horses, satisfying as it was.
There was no personal advancing on my riding or time for any other than work.
With that good start as a very profitable business model the riding school center took over and I moved on.
Best decision ever, glad to find soon what I really wanted in life over what horses and farms in a far off place would have provided for me.
I realized I was very good at that lower level in the horse industry, but way not as far as I needed to be as a rider to be on my own and didn’t want to restrict myself to that.
I found an excellent riding instructor program with top competitive horses and followed that path of growth, best at that early part of my life.
You can, as others have said, give that farm a try with minimal investment, as I did given the opportunity, but it sounds like that dream is one that maybe is not fitting what else your current self really wants.
As you ponder and I found out, tying yourself early in life to our dreams is satisfying … for the first months/years. Just be sure it is really what you think your future self may want as a possible path for the rest of your life.
I would say, in your current situation, maybe your other wish for a different environment for you and your partner is worth considering, as you can also at a later time try the horse farm idea, once you know more how life comes along, if starting by settling there is not quite where you want to go now.
As a smart fellow told me once, smart, thinking people will do well.
Whatever they decide, they will make it work right anyway.
As you are doing, think this thru, pick brains where you can, as here.
Once you decide from all your options, go happily on to make it work.
A bit of good luck also helps.
6 Likes
Is there anything on it?
Free land in rural areas isn’t necessarily a good deal. I grew up in rural central NY - land is very cheap there. And it’s not far from other places…but too far for a commute to a city with job opportunities, or for someone to travel to board a horse or take lessons. So, it’s very limited as anything but a backyard farm. Which may be all you actually want it for – but by the time you build everything and fence everything…is it really cheaper than buying something established?
And 60 acres is a lot, unless you’re putting it into hay or doing something else with the extra 30+ that you really don’t need to keep horses on. What’s the plan there?
I own 20 acres, and keep 3 horses on it. I have only about 4 acres in use for horses including the barn and a small outdoor arena. If the land was configured differently, I might like an extra acre or two of pasture, but no way would I want to pay for fencing for more than that, or maintain the pasture for only 3 horses. It’s more than necessary unless I could bale it for hay (which - is not cheaper than buying hay for 3 horses unless you have a farmer very nearby to do it for you and sell back. Hay equipment is too expensive plus the time to actually make hay.)
5 Likes
I would not do this unless you can go ahead and buy the property. You’ll be splitting the inheritance with your sister, and may be faced with buying her out at a higher cost (or maintaining the acreage you don’t own!). That’s IF the whole thing goes down well, these types of arrangements can go sideways even in the best of circumstances!
Building a farm is no joke. This is not the time to do it - get out of debt, travel, do dumb spontaneous things while you can! Have you live this rurally before? It is a very different lifestyle, especially if you’re tied to a farm and can’t go on vacation. Even moreso if you’re not rolling in cash and need to budget ruthlessly. It can get BORING - family drama and conflict with the neighbors can become the only entertainment very quickly (I say as someone who is quite happy to park it in the middle of 100 acres and stay there forever 
).
Also, find out just how much bandwidth your boyfriend needs to do his job. You may find it’s not available in the area and that answers that. Starlink and satellite internet cannot currently handle gaming or heavy draw internet usage (like zoom and some engineering software). Heaven forbid you move out there and get settled and BF loses his job due to bad internet. I’ve seen it happen. If there’s stellar cell reception on the property (5G and full bars), you might be able to make it work over data, but check now!
9 Likes
I agree with fivestrideline.
If you do decide to move forward with the property, you need to get a lawyer in place and draft up all the details you have spoken to them about. This could go bad real quick and you could lose a lot of money.
5 Likes
Another one thinking the exact same thing. No way, no how.
3 Likes
