[AT] In the market for a rural place

[John Slavin]

My son-in-law and I were having a conversation about this topic a couple weeks ago.  He's career navy and will be retiring in a few years and was just thinking outloud about some farmland.  He has some rather specific needs and wants a mix of rolling, treed and tillable farmland.  It is not as easy as a city person might think to find land with all the attributes you want within a certain proximity of the place you want to live, at the price you want to pay.  It's the old, you can have two out three deal.  

Plus, I have been observing that some auction houses in particular, and to a lesser extent realtors, are splitting out the tillable farmland from the rolling ground, so instead of 40/80 acre tracts, or combinations thereof, you end up with gerrymandered metes and bounds tracts of prime farmland or rough land sold separately from each other.  Makes sense, given how expensive land has gotten, but makes it more difficult to buy a farm with a combination of land use types. Just the other day I saw a farm that had been together for generations split up.  The bottom ground and flat upland was sold to out-of-state investors.  The hill and rolling upland (that the investors might perceive as junk) was sold to a completely different kind of buyer.

John

John C. Slavin
jslavin at marktwain.net

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you.  Steve Jobs.
> Message: 11
> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:24:10 -0400
> From: "Dean Vinson" <dean at vinsonfarm.net>
> Subject: Re: [AT] In the market for a rural place
> To: "'Antique tractor email discussion group'"
> 	<at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
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> 
> Thanks very much, gentlemen.  I've had some electronic searches set up via a
> realtor for a couple of years now, just to get familiar with what's out
> there, and got pretty serious about it last spring.  
> 
> In August we let an auction get away from us that I still have some regrets
> over...the house and barn weren't much but if there's a nicer parcel of
> rolling USDA-prime farmland, pasture, and hardwood woods in southwest Ohio,
> I don't know where it would be.
> 
> Gene, I'd be honored to be your close neighbor and would love to get some
> plowing time in with the Super M.  As it turns out I might at least come a
> good ways in your direction--there's a place west of Urbana that we just
> decided to go take a third look at.  First look resulted in "Wow, this could
> be it."  Second look resulted in "But there are some practical issues that
> we're not entirely sure we're up for, so probably best to keep looking."
> But that decision isn't setting too well...so time to go back and make sure.
> 
> Dean Vinson
> Dayton, Ohio
> www.vinsonfarm.net