Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Outbuildings and Existing Amenities
When you're looking over potential properties, you will see a wide variety of outbuildings, sheds,
and barns. You might see a house sitting on an otherwise empty lot with no fencing, no shed, no
storm cellar, no nothing.
We've seen generous-sized properties with huge mansions that were clearly never meant to house a
backyard farm as the house took up almost all the property, and the giant garage took up the rest.
The huge amount of concrete and utter uselessness of the setup makes it clear that the property
was never intended for housing a garden, chickens, or anything productive. These would be the
properties to avoid at all costs because the price of acquiring the bloated properties would be
prohibitive and most of the so-called amenities would be rather useless to a family interested in
self-sufficient living.
On the other hand, you might find a true diamond in the rough for a very reasonable price. We
recently looked at a property that was priced about 20 percent less than others in the area. Why?
The house was cluttered, and the property was completely overgrown with a good two or three
years' worth of overgrowth. It
looked
horrible at first glance. But the fencing was sound for the
most part, the pond was in good shape, there were mature fruit trees already on the property, and
a couple outbuildings in excellent, if cluttered, condition. Most people couldn't see past the surface
clutter and briars that had grown up. If you can snag something like this for a reasonable price,
you'd be much closer to self-sufficient living without a heavy debt hanging over your head.
Take note of any outbuildings in particular. These can raise the asking price of a property a good
portion. They also raise the property taxes, so you'd want to ask what taxes tend to run in the
county. Sometimes you can go just a mile or two down the road and cross the county line, or out
of city limits, and cut your property taxes to a mere fraction of what they would have been.
If the property doesn't have any outbuildings, but has some nice level areas near the house, it
wouldn't be hard to add some buildings as needed. After all, if your backyard farming plan only
includes a garden and small chicken flock, you wouldn't need a property that included a goat
shed, a milking barn, and a couple stalls for sheep or other small livestock. Some of these types of
buildings could be easily converted with a few modifications inside, but other times the buildings
are built so specifically, you'd spend way too much money in the purchasing of the building for
something you will never use.
When being charged in the initial purchase for an outbuilding, shed, or barn of some kind, you
really want to look at the quality. Is the roof sound? Is there proper ventilation and is that ventila-
tion screened? What kind of siding has been used? Untreated wood will quickly weather and
become exposed to the elements. It would need to be treated with water sealant to be able to be
