Buy A Home With Acreage Cheap For Horses Now During The Economy Crisis Mortgage Crisis

If you have a couple of horses and want to buy a home on acreage where you can live and keep your horses at home, all you should have to do is call a real estate agent and have him/her find a few available places that meet your needs.  Right?  Not necessarily.

There are a lot of real estate agents who don’t have a clue when it comes to horses.  And even an agent who understands the needs of horses can have a hard time finding good listings to show you, even though there may be lots of horses in the area and lots of homes on acreage for sale advertised as “great for horses.”  Finding a home for you and your horses can be very challenging and requires patience and persistence on your part.

In areas like Western Washington where I live, there is a large horse population.  It is an area with large cities, remote forest lands,  mountains, and rural farmlands.  It is also an area with damp winters and a fair amount of annual rainfall.  Some farmland near water courses is subject to occasional flooding.  Some soils are shallow with hardpan below and don’t drain well during wet months.  And some farmland has high water tables and can be wonderful dry pastures in the summer but be soggy all winter.  The same problems can affect undeveloped land. 

As a real estate agent and a horseman, I have listed and sold acreage homes for many years.  As often as not, the buyers looking for a home with a few acres either have, or plan to have, horses.  I like working with buyers of horse property, even prefer these buyers to most others, but they often mean a lot more work and time on my part.  The reason is simple.  When I search listings of available properties suitable for horses, I will make a list of those most likely to suit the individual needs of my buyers.  Then I will usually call the listing agents for more information.  Finally, I will often drive by the properties most likely to be of interest to my buyer.  It is at this time that I find that a good percentage of them are not very suitable at all. 

For horses, a well drained pasture in a necessity.  Otherwise, horses will quickly turn it into a muddy quagmire during the rainy season, especially around barns and corrals.  Pastures on steep hillsides may serve as forage during spring and summer, but cannot be tilled and replanted with the desired grasses.  For horses, there should be a decent barn, or a place to build one.  Old cattle sheds just don’t cut it.  And a horse property should have a good access that a hay truck can negotiate.  A 10’ road up a gravel switchback  with trees and branches on both sides is not always favorable to larger trucks.  Finally, fences for horses does not mean barbwire.

It is amazing to me when I read a listing and/or talk to an agent and am told a certain property is ideal for horses, has a good horse barn, and is in a beautiful setting, only to drive out to the property and find the following:
    1.  All or much of the pasture has wetland type weeds, meaning it’s going to be a muddy mess once the rains starts
    2.  Or the pasture is a rocky side slope of a hill.
    3.  The horse barn is a dilapidated structure, maybe just an old cow shed.
    4.  The road to the property is a narrow, steep right of way barely passable with a car, much less a truck and trailer or a hay truck
    5.  The pasture is fenced, but with barbwire originally put there for cows.
    6.  The pasture is crossed by huge power transmission lines that destroy any “pretty setting” it might otherwise have.

When a Seller, who may never have owned a horse, wants to sell, he may mistakenly assume his 5 acres will be ideal for horses.  When that Seller gets an agent who has never been closer to a horse than watching a western movie, the agent will also mistakenly assume the land would be great for horses.  And if there is an old broken down outbuilding of any kind, why, that too would be great for horses.  So they advertise the property as a horse property hoping to lure horse owning buyers willing to pay top dollar for their property.  As such, an agent who knows and understands horses, often spends a great deal of time and energy researching and driving out to see so called horse property on behalf of his buyer only to find it’s not.

But whatever your circumstances, and wherever you may want to live and house your animals,  patience and persistence will pay off.  There is good horse property available in most cases.  It’s just a matter of finding it.  In order to do so, first find an agent knowledgably about horses and their needs, and one willing to devote the time and energy necessary to find a place both you and your horses will be happy with.

When searching for an acreage home for horses, there are a few things to keep in mind.  What activities do you use your horses for?  Should your new home be near riding trails, or is its proximity to arenas or other equestrian facilities more important?  Are there a lot of horses in the area and feed stores, tack shops, and hay dealers nearby?
Is the property that interests you in an area likely to remain rural, or will everything around it soon become housing developments?  If served by a well, does it produce enough good water for all your anticipated needs?  Are there riding clubs, trainers, shoers, a good horse vet, and so forth close by?  These and other questions are important and you will want to be sure your agent knows just what you want.

Do you know what?  I’d rather be sitting around a campfire at a high mountain camp with my horses high lined close by after a long days ride rather than sitting here writing.  But the mountains are still snowbound, so here I am.

Happy Trails