# Think we can make this work



## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

We might just been dreaming too much, but had found a peice of property we are really interested in. We have been wanting to move down to Va for the last 3 years, we just haven't been able to make it happen yet. We had looked at a couple properties that were much cheaper and with more acreage, but also in a more rural part of Va and needed a lot of work. After our trip south last month we decided we should look a little closer to a larger town. The real estate is more expensive, however we need to stick to a wealthier area for our landscaping/excavating business. We had wanted to be close enough to trail riding, and found this barn right across from national forest with access to trials. It is 8.78 acres and has a well, electric, barn and small pond. Its not as rural as we would like, but the barn is set waaay back from the road, and we could tuck a little cabin back into the woods for privacy. 
























Do you think we can make that acreage work with all our animals? I imagine we would have 25-30 goats and the mule and horse. I'd divide the pastures up to rotate goats/horses. Right now we figured we have 5 acres fenced in and 25 goats. I have already had to brushhog all the pastures because the animals aren't keep the grass down. 
I don't even know if we can get this loan, so might just be jumping ahead of myself too much!


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

If anyone has ever gotten a farm loan too, I'd sure appreciate some advice! This would be our first "home" purchase. I'm also trying to look into loans as well for improvements on the property ie for a larger equipment/hay barn.


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## Di (Jan 29, 2008)

LOVE the barn Maggie, I hope you can make it work! Good luck. 

fyi, 5-6 years ago we fenced in part of our 6.5 acres. I think about 3.5 are fenced, the rest is wooded, and we are working on that now, will eventually be electric fence out there. It cost about $7000. to do our perimeter fence and several cross fences. So, be sure to figure enough for that. We paid $180,000. for our acreage and a 100+ year old house. But, we are very close to town, we are rural but just barely. We didn't get a farm loan, per se, but we were able to get a very good "home improvement" loan (actually a "line of credit") to renovate. This was before the "meltdown", so I don't know what the mortgage industry is doing now. Except that we had to "help" my DIL buy their place because her hubby is self employed. So, moving a business may be a problem...

Anyway, we have 3 mini horses and 3 alpacas and about 16 goats (not counting kids). We still have to mow our pastures. So, I think that is plenty of land for you animals. :thumbup:


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

Thanks Di. It stinks that we just put in all this fencing here that we can't take with us and have made a ton of improvements on this farm. When I moved in here with my husband here there was about 1/2 acre fenced. Our front field was a complete mess. There was huge holes from ripping out concrete posts, an entire building and other crap just piled in the middle with weeds and small trees growing up around it, etc. Our neighbor came in with his big bulldozer to level it out. Basically my husband's grandmother bought the farm about 50 years ago with her late husband and never fixed a thing so you an imagine what shape the farm is in. I don't even know how much garbage we have removed over the years. I am now at the point that the farm doesn't completely disgust me (except when I go into the lower barns that basically have piles of junk everywhere.. think the show "hoarders").


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

I'm no help, but wanted to wish you the best! It looks wonderful!!! Love the setting, there is so much you could do with it! I think the biggest thing would be if you don't have access to city water, find out how good that well is, and what it would cost if you need to dig up another one, plus sewer or septic tank, that would probably be my first line of business. You could always buy a decent mobile home to put on it until you could have a house built 

We bought our place, we only have 2 acres though, I WISH we had at least 10! But we bought it privately from the seller, saved us a lot of $$ because our bank wanted us to pay a LOT for the loan.
I'd check for the best rates...
Acreage around here is ridiculous $25,000-50,000 an acre in this area, so needless to say we're not going to find anything in this area in our price range when we do decide to start looking. We'd love to have a little farm where we can have a large garden, and raise our own meat animals as well as the goats.


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

Acreage is ridiculous around here too. The place up the road that was a complete dump, probably 1000 square foot home with crappy garage on 1/2 acre sold for $189,000. So needless to say we will never afford a farm around here! 
Thanks for pointing that out about how good the well might be. As far as the septic, we could do the labor ourselves for that, so would cut cost. I haven't found out if the property has been perked or not, so that would affect cost as well if it needed a sand mound vs conventional system. 
We were actually thinking about getting a modular cabin. http://www.alansfactoryoutlet.com/settler-log-cabins/ I am not big on cleaning the house, so smaller is better lol. And we are used to living in a tiny apt anyways. Or we even thought about getting a 5th wheel trailer until we built. 
We most likely would not be moving right away as we could not afford all this at once. And we have been having family issues about moving. As I mentioned we take care of the farm here. I started to mention in my first post but deleted it, we were going to get a loan from family but once we found a place that fell through. I'd rather not get into it, but basically revolves people not wanting us to move away.


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## Sundancer (Jan 21, 2012)

There is a small (5 acres) farm near us that was up for sale for around 140k. It didn't sell so has been empty for the last 3+ years. It does have a livable house on it but it could use a bit of upgrading.

I would hope that by now the owner would be willing to make some sort of deal since they still have to pay for it.

This is in the northern neck of Virginia in Lancaster county. All around 1-1.5 hours from Richmond, Fredericksburg and Newport News/Norfolk. Pretty rural yet closest towns have pretty much everything you need and are 15-20 miles away.

We bought a 100 year old farm house sitting on 7.5 acres. The house was unlivable at the time so we lived in a 25' travel trailer for a month before we set up the back of the house. 

The only criteria we had for the house was a viable well and septic, fairly straight and level roof lines and 200 amp electrical service.

We paid 40k for that. We have since put another 80-100 into it, over the last six years. 

There are places, probably most everywhere, similar to ours available. Question is, how much work are you willing to do to realize your dream?


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

We are looking at the western part of Va in the mountains between roanoke and wytheville. We want to be able to get to riding and hiking right off our property. Right now where we live, we are a bit land locked, the area is getting to be quite developed so not a lot of open country. We've found cheaper properties, but they are in the middle of no where.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

Wish I could help as well but... I can't either...wish you all the luck in the world...hope it all works out... it is a very nice place... :hug: ray:


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## keren (Oct 26, 2008)

I think the place is beautiful! i really hope it works out for you. 

We are looking at buying a place, and one of the mortgage options is a "renovation mortgage" where you estimate the cost of the repairs you want to do (ours is pretty small to start with, we will be doing room by room slowly but initially we really need to re-do the bathroom to make it habitable), and the renovation budget is included in the mortgage but it works as a kind of line of credit that you can take cash from when needed. 

Also, a really simple thing which I didnt know, instead of putting your savings into a normal savings account, instead you can pay it off your mortgage. Then, any extra payments you made on top of your required payment becomes like another line of credit, you can dip in to it whenever you need.


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## meluvgoats (Apr 19, 2012)

Im no help either but i love the barn and the tractor lines up to it!


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## freedomstarfarm (Mar 25, 2011)

Very pretty! Hope it can work out for you!


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

There was another property I was looking at with a house and no barn, just the shed. Has well, septic, electric etc. No fencing. Almost 18 acres, but mostly wooded. I really like the house, especially the inside. The acreage obviously would be more work thinning it out a bit. It is very very private, which I like better than the acreage with the barn. Its a bit further out in the country.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

Oh wow...nice.... :thumb:


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

Very nice  If you are wanting to thin out the woods...fence it in, put some goats in there....and they will do a lot of it for you. Our woods were overgrown badly here when we bought this place, the goats cleaned it up. We plan on thinning it out a little more, but not much more, they prefer browse over grass.


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