Posted in Homestead or Bust
Last week, I introduced using a wish list notebook. Hand-in-hand with your wish list is listing your goals for making the move to life in the country. It is imperative that you set realistic and honest goals for searching for property – whether it has an existing home or you plan to build – as well as mapping out a timeline to put your goals in motion. This is your action plan.
Question: In order to live in the country and pursue a homesteading lifestyle, must I live on a minimum number of acreage (i.e. 10, 20, 30+ acres or more)?
Answer: Absolutely not! Just as no two families are alike, neither are our pursuits for living independently in a more rural setting. Homesteading is a state of mind – a lifestyle and is not defined my inches and acres.
This is, however, where your wish list and goals lists identify and guide your search. Ten or more acres can easily be overwhelming – not everyone wants to manage and oversee that much land. Likewise, there are those potential homesteaders who dream of endless acreage to steward.
Don’t immediately rule out the subdivision concept for homesteading and rural living. An ever increasing trend that we ran across during our search is the “estate style” subdivision. These are developments that have large tracts of land (5 acres or more) with a common living element. However, you will need to investigate covenants that may restrict certain animals and livestock. Equestrian subdivisions are among the most common, but we found that the covenants in many of these type developments restricted poultry, goats and other livestock. It’s all in what meets your goals. Never be afraid to ask questions!
REALITY CHECK: You must be honest with yourself, your bank account and your credit situation. How much can you spend? What are you willing to spend? Do you need to take a couple of years to save extra money every month to reduce possible mortgages and other loans? Do you need to pay off existing loans in order to better your lending potential? If you currently own your existing home, what do you need to do to ready your existing property to sell? These are all key questions that you and only you can answer; these issues must be addressed. You don’t want to find the farm of your dreams only to be heart broken that your existing home is not ready for the real estate market. While often you can offer a contract contingent upon the sale of your existing home, more times than not, another buyer can legally come along and offer a non-contingent contract and bump you out of the way. Don’t put the cart before the horse and have no horse!
Overwhelmed?
Don’t be.
By setting up a time table that correlates to your goals, all of these key components can easily be dealt with in a realistic amount of time. And truthfully, time flies faster than you think when you are strategically working through your plan. You must get your ducks in a row in order to truly pursue your dreams of life in the country.
When we became serious about our wanting to move, I was the outspoken person in our household about wanting to pay “X” amount of cash dollars for our potential property purchase. In order to do so, I knew that we needed to save in addition to our regular savings that we were not to touch. To do so meant cutting back on frivolous spending and making necessary sacrifices. Likewise, when we were really in the trenches of comparing properties and prices per acre, we learned just how much land we were able to buy with an established cash budget. My husband is thirteen years older than me (he was 55 at the time of our move) and I didn’t want a thirty year mortgage hanging over our heads all over again. Therefore, our goal was to borrow as little money as possible. At the same time, it became obvious in our search very quickly, that we would have to relocate to a low populated and even more rural area of our State in order to purchase the amount of acreage we desired in order to afford the price per acre we had established as our budget goal. Remember also, that while you have a budget and specific goals, keep your options open for the future. We knew we wanted to purchase ten acres; this was all we could afford outside of the building of our home. Little did we know that we would eventually be able to purchase an additional 26 acre tract adjacent to our farm a year after we moved. Because we kept some flexibility in our savings and planning, we were able to negotiate buying our ten acres up front with this option (and each “option” case is different). We never dreamed in our wildest imaginations that we would ever own 36 acres. And while we are surrounded by farms that are hundreds and hundreds of acres – to us, our farm is hundreds and hundreds!
During our search for property, there were other things going on at home: cleaning out closets and getting rid of “junk”; we had several garage sales over the course of these three years; we had updating and minor repairs that we needed to take care of in order to ready our house for the real estate market; we also had everyday life that could not be put on hold: homeschooling, family, sports activities, LAUNDRY (do you have any idea how easy it is to get behind on laundry when one is daydreaming about moving….? I became queen of behind…..). Oh yeah, one’s employment! My husband couldn’t just take a week here and there to ride the dirt roads of
Just because my personal timeline to move was “Yesterday” or ASAP, doesn’t mean that’s how it would happen; it didn’t! You need to factor in set backs; you will have set backs; it’s just the nature of Life. The more preparation and planning you invest in, the easier and more enjoyable the move will be. A move such as this is one to be cherished.
I would also like to share with you a tool that I used that was very beneficial to me:
The Portable File Box
This particular one is made by Rubbermaid and can be purchased at most any office supply or general retail store (Office Max, WalMart, etc.)
This became my lifesaver during our search and ultimately the building of our home. I kept our wish list and goals notebook, to-do lists, information on potential real estate agents to sell our home, newspaper listings, magazine clippings for decorating, anything to do with our search for property and ultimately the purchase and building process all neatly filed and in a portable tub that could be grabbed and carried with us when we needed to hit the road. Likewise, I knew at all times where things were related to our potential move and new home.
Initially, I had very few hanging files; but over time as different aspects of our move increased and/or changed, so did my filing needs:
- Wish List and Goals
- Questions [Begin a list of questions to ask property owners/real estate agents about the property you’re interested in before you go! Save yourself some time and ask as many questions on the phone before you commit to looking at a particular property. By the end of our search, I had three pages of questions!]
- To-do List for
- Individual “wish” files for kitchen ideas, family room décor, bedrooms, bathrooms, utility areas, etc. These were files that as I perused magazines and liked paint colors, trim styles, shelving ideas – whatever it was I liked about a particular room featured in a magazine, I would tear out that page and file it in the appropriate section. This eliminated saving entire magazines and gave me something active to do during our very long search. I promise I carried around paint sample cards for about five years – I knew what I wanted and I held onto to those colors that are now the very colors in our home we built.
- Real Estate Agents to Interview
- Moving Services
- Builders to Interview
- Contractors (especially if you buy an old farmhouse that needs repair and restoration – you will need to interview a number of contractors, etc.)
- Land Plat(s)
- Survey(s)
- Contract(s)
- Community Information
- County and Local Maps
- Real Estate listings
- Banking information (i.e. construction loans, Mtg applications, etc.)
- Research (….this all depends on your interests and pursuits…)
- Local Utility Companies
- I even had a file for area churches and recreational/sports activities.
Okay, you’ve been working on your wish list, setting goals, and establishing a timeline for searching and making the move – decide how much realistic time each week, each month, at night and so forth that you will have to dedicate to the actual search. Do you want to search for property on your own or do you want to enlist the help of a real estate agent? Will you be staying close to where you currently live? What are your geographic limitations? Will you consider relocating to an entirely different state?
Take a deep breath and begin to put these answers on paper as well. Begin reading the Land Sales section of the “Want Ads” in your local paper; you can read a number of larger newspapers at the local library or check out land and farm sales on-line.
ATTENTION All HomesteadBloggers!! What are some of the organizational tools you used and pitfalls that you overcame when you made your move? Leave a comment here; better yet, blog about your moving experience(s) and share it with us by leaving your blog’s post link here in the comments section.
Next Week: A Needle in the Haystack ~ The Search Begins!
Have an incredible week, Y’all!
Harriette Jacobs is wife to Alan and homeschooling “Mom” to their two sons, ages 14 and 12. As former
Visit Harriette at:
South of the Gnat Line
http://www.homesteadblogger.com/southofthegnatline
Or at:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jacobsacademy
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