Building new homesteads

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Hey you all. I happen to live in a area where sometimes 1000-5000 acre ranches are being seperated into 100-500 acre tracts and sold. What I was wondering is if a guy bought one of these tracts. Broke it down to 10-30 acre tracts. On each tract built a 2 or 3 bedroom house, plus a barn, a goat or cow milk barn, a chicken coop, put in a orchard, pig pen, garden area and what ever else you might find on a homestead. Then put it on the market. Do you think there would be a big demand for a homestead that is ready to move in to?

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 24, 2001

Answers

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that most of the time these ranch tracts are usually cheaper to buy than if you just happen to come across 100- 200 acres for sale from an individual.

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 24, 2001.

Hi Russell, sounds like a great idea. Where are you? I was only too happy to buy an operational 10 acres, barn and house, ready to go the day we signed. Just needed a lot of upgrades but the animals did pretty good even the first year, with wired together gates etc. Only thing is, can you keep the price where the average family could afford to get into one of your ranchettes? Water and power and road access are considerations, as are taxes and zoning. Good luck. Maureen

-- Maureen Stevenson (maureen@mtaonline.net), June 25, 2001.

Russell asks: "Do you think there would be a big demand for a homestead that is ready to move in to?"

Not really. Let's face it, most of us who are actually homesteading don't come in to this overloaded with cash. Most of the one's who make it do so because they have no or minimal debt. What you're talking about are nice little pre-packaged mini-farms. I don't know where you are but I can't see 20 acres with a 3 bedroom house, a barn, and a milk barn, AND orchard, garden area, chicken coop, hog pen, etc. etc. etc. going for less than $80 to $100k. And I think that's being generous, I suspect it'd go for more.

What you are describing sounds like a suburb with a really big yard, not a homestead. It's tract development. Even if, with the best of intentions, you try to make it a homesteader friendly tract development, it won't take long for the yups to move in and start wanting restrictions against people's livestock, living patterns, etc. etc. etc.

Sorry, I don't see any way that "homestead" and "tract development" can mix. Most of us are too individualistic - and ornery, I guess - for that sort of thing to be attractive. I know *I'm* sure not attracted to the idea.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), June 25, 2001.


I agree with Sojourner. Your development costs are going to limit potential sales pretty much to the elite crowd and they probably won't care about most of the "homestead" type stuff. What makes a homestead feasible for most of us is the sweat equity. I don't think you want to do all that development for free.

-- Skip Walton (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), June 25, 2001.

Its already being done to lure retirees and monied city dwellers to country living.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), June 25, 2001.


Russel, 2 to 5 acre tracts, owner financing, no restrictions, ag zoning, power lines, phone lines, a road with two wheel drive conditions, low down payment, no building codes; need I go on....

-- mitch hearn (moopups1@aol.com), June 25, 2001.

When I moved to Virginia eight years ago I was surprised to find subdivisions which catered to horse owners. They seem to be popular in this area. The lots were a minimum of five acres. However, they don't allow some of the other typical farm animals such as pigs because these developments are geared to the more affluent people who happen to like owning horses. You might give this a shot if you wanted to cater to farm animals. I don't think the other idea would fly because the price would be too high to attract people who would like to homestead although I will admit that if I had found something like that here in Virginia when I was looking for our place I would probably have done it as long as it allowed me to keep as many dogs as I wanted which was my number one requirement since we are dog breeders. You never know.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), June 25, 2001.

If you simply built the house and small barn (i.e. garage) you could call it anything you like... homestead, rural living, mini country estate, hobby farm. Big demand? I'd guess that this would depend on a great deal of factors... location being near/at the top.

cheers,

-- Max (Maxel@inwindsor.com), June 25, 2001.


I just hate to hear about the bigger tracts of land being subdivided...

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), June 25, 2001.

Russ- where are you? I don't want to know your zip code, just general climate and what state you're in to get an idea of your laws about water. Would these homesteaders have water now? How quickly would additional demand start to strain the supply? Even if there is plenty of water there, would they have the legal right to it? Western water rights are a big legal issue. This hasn't been a problem in the east in the past but I just read that the Great Lakes governors & Ontario have signed a treaty to keep Great Lakes water from being shipped West without their say-so. So my first concern would be WATER. I also agree with worrys about attracting people who like to see cows but want to sue when they smell them.

-- cindy wells (bwells@nauticom.net), June 25, 2001.


Hi Russell, If the "subdividing" idea you presented wouldn't work, what if someone was able to gather a couple of homestead inclined families to purchase the tract together? Sever parcels later, after everyone's got their homes up? Just a thought, I'm not very knowledgable regarding severance laws.

-- Rheba (rhebabeall@hotmail.com), June 25, 2001.

Thank you everybody for your answers and concerns. It is something I've been pondering on for years. My main concern is that a lot of these big ranches here in N.E. Okla. are being broke down in smaller tracts(100 to 200 acre) and put on the national market. A lot of the buyers are people from California who don't seem very neighborly at all. The first thing they do is post it with no trespassing signs and if you try to make a big welcome to them they act like you are lower than whale dung. So I've thought about trying to market the land to traditional homesteaders. I grew up in a area where at one time everybody knew each other and people didn't care if you played on the creek that ran through there property, or picked black berries, etc. But now we are getting so many outsiders that have no trust in anybody.

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 25, 2001.

Russell, do whatever you need to do to keep those people from moving in! We've got those people from California moving in around here, and not only do they know they're better than you, they know what's bett FOR YOU than you do yourself!

We've got 2 problems here. Once is that the farmers are breaking up their land to sell off, not being able to make it farming, or they're retiring and no one to take over the family farm, so they break it up in tracks and sell to epople wanting to build homes, or homesteads. So, some farmers are mad, because it's driven the price of acreage up and they can't buy the farmland as cheap as they'd like to. They've gathered together with the Californians who want to tell us what we can and can't do on our lands and farms, and told the farmers they don't want anyone out here in the country from the cities and towns and those people will complain about their tractors at nite, animal smells, altho we haven't had that problem....no, our problem is these people from CA who know what's better for us than we do, and don't hesitate to say so!

Our elections last fall put a stop to some of their zoning ideas, and the battle is going on weekly here... Beware of anything brought up as 'economic development,' 'land use,' environmental quality standards, and other such terms.

I live on a river, and if these people had passed their land use standards, we'd get to move off the farm, never get our house put up here, and we'd get to pay the taxes on the place and ask them what kinds of trees we could plant...we just wouldn't be able to live here.

-- Louise Whitley (whitley@terraworld.net), June 27, 2001.


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