76 replies to this topic

[Liz P]

Just curious, but what part of OR? I looked at a 30 acre farm with 2 houses for $150,000 in a fertile, ag friendly area not too far from Eugene.

If you want moist, fertile soil, how about central NY state? There are some nice 50+ acre farms for under $100k in the more isolated towns. Just be prepared to deal with upwards of 20ft of snow per winter.

[OurBoys]

Boone might work. The fact it's a college town is a plus.

According to Google, Lenoir's elevation is only around 1100 ft but I could try looking around Lenoir instead of in Lenoir, like towards Boone.

DH Google Earth'd the Jefferson/West Jefferson area. He was impressed with the 'wilderness' around there. I found some land that appeared to be reasonable and what we would like but they were already sold. (Note to self-good deals in this area might not last.)

I was excited about moving to Oregon but now I'm glad we're staying in NC. We can always take a vacation to Oregon when the time is right.

[OurBoys]

Hi Liz, We were looking around the Cottage Grove area. DH didn't want to live in the Junction City/Harrisburg area. We could afford a $150,000 if we were going to go ahead and move out there but DH hasn't retired yet. We would have to rent it out. I don't know if we would want to go that route. Central NY sounds nice but that's a little bit too much snow.

[Mark Billadeau]

Before we purchased our current place I would check these two sites for what is listed; this is how I found our current place.
http://www.landandfarm.com/
and
http://www.zillow.com/

[gcv-border]

I second landandfarm.com. We found our place on there too. With the economy, there are hundreds/thousands of listings - some good and some not so good. Realtors are also using it as a marketing avenue so you are picking up some of their listings too.

I felt the Jeff/WJeff area is a nice little outpost. Many second homes, but also still quite rural. A nice little Saturday Farmers' Market in season (they're trying), a wonderful outdoor/hiking store for that demographic, an up-and-coming mixed retail main street - and if you want the stores and amenities of a bigger city, Boone is close. If you visit Blowing Rock while you are checking out the area, you can see the Disney-perfect, high-end retail downtown area - which almost caused me to go screaming out of town. I hope Jeff/WJeff never gets there, but BR is useful for those times when you want to impress visitors or have a really good meal. (I did have a great lunch there.)

Jovi

[OurBoys]

Landandfarm hasn't helped much in the 2 locations I looked at but Zillow is coming in handy. Even though it's a little more than we can afford, this place was sounding good.....until I read the last line in the description.

Lost Hollow Rd

The week after Thanksgiving DH gets a couple of days off. It's been a while since we've taken a day trip. I think I'll print off some possibilities in case the weather is nice enough to drive to the mountains.

[OurBoys]

Does anyone know how it would work if part of the property is located in a different county? Just 2 different tax bills? Could one county allow livestock but the other county not?

[rufftie]

i love cemetaries as neighbors. they are very quiet, don't collect old cars and washing machines and rarely turn into developments or strip malls. i think the price is very reasonable for that property.

[OurBoys]

You've got a point there, rufftie. I haven't thought about it that way. If the cemetery isn't on the property, it might be a ways off too. But I would need to know if the "right of way" is private or public. I'm loving everything else about the place, especially the fact it has a barn & a couple of creeks. I agree it sounds reasonable but we need to stay within our budget. I did tell DH about it. He seemed interested. I'm not going to get my hopes up but I'm going to forward him the link. (He's at work right now.)

[Beach BCs]

My brother's property backs up to a cemetery. It's actually quite nice. People ride their bikes on the paths, and take walks. My brother told his children it's a park.

[OurBoys]

Well, the realtor got back with me earlier this evening. Turns out the cemetery in on the property, not next to it. And it was public right of way. She said it was an old cemetery and probably wouldn't have much traffic but even though it wouldn't bother her, she wouldn't recommend us buying it. She said it would be a great vacation spot but not good for a retirement home. It was too far away from any medical facility and shopping for the elderly. She did send me a few other listings though. I think I'm going to like working with this lady. Thank you, Mark, for hooking me up with Zillow!

[Mark Billadeau]

You're welcome Benda.
Good luck with your search.

[bcnewe2]

Brenda, When I was looking out of town for a place I found Realtor.com really helpful. That and a realestate lady that I could call or email if I found a place that looked good. You can do an advanced search and put in a property size min. and price max. plus areas that you want to search. Without doing the advanced search there was way to much to look at.

They also have a thing where you can have new listings emailed to you that fit your criteria.

Good luck, it's a pain but so worth it. Just take your time and try not to get frustrated.

[ejano]

... how about central NY state?

Aside from the snow (which isn't all that bad, really ), we're under siege up here from the Marcellus Shale natural gas development boom, and the industry is heading north into central NY state just as soon as some environmentalist bumps in the road can be run -- err --smoothed over.

In Susquehanna, Bradford and Tioga counties of PA, property sales are stalled as we are the epicenter of the industry at present and it's not pleasant what with gas well construction, pipeline construction and a housing shortage due to an influx of worked for the industry, not to mention a very high volume of very large trucks and wide load equipment constantly on the move on roads and bridges never built for that kind of equipment and the noise of the drilling when a well lands nearby (not that is always a bad thing, but the price we are paying sometimes goes beyond cash redemption....

If you do buy property on either side of the NY-Penn border, it may well have a mineral lease attached that the owner is not going to be willing to part with and depending on what rights the seller assigned, your surface rights may have been affected as well.

If you are thinking about West Virginia, I understand the Marcellus shale reaches down through that state as well so my advice would be to do some careful research about the industry in the considered area. There's some big payoffs for some, but overall the community quality of life really suffers.


North Carolina and Virginia seem like better choices...maybe go for more land and less house? Two acres isn't very much for what you would like to do...

Liz

[Mark Billadeau]

We're so thrilled about the NG development in PA. Dominion is trying to put in a compressor station 1/2 from our house so they can pump more NG to a facility they are getting permission to use for export sales of CNG. It will increase our noise level to that of a busy highway 24/7 (2x-4x increase in sound volume). We don't even have residential NG in our area.

[ejano]

We're so thrilled about the NG development in PA. Dominion is trying to put in a compressor station 1/2 from our house so they can pump more NG to a facility they are getting permission to use for export sales of CNG. It will increase our noise level to that of a busy highway 24/7 (2x-4x increase in sound volume). We don't even have residential NG in our area.

And they say it will help to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (she says wryly). I'm all for that, but let's help the community impact as well. There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help. I can't find the resource at the moment, but Penn State has some good suggestions -- one presentation showed a compressor station disguised as a barn and heavily insulated to reduce the noise, plus it looks better on the landscape. (Slide 17 on this presentation...www.blm.gov/bmp/.../WO1_VRM_BMP_Part_4_Slideshow.pp. )

Liz

[rufftie]

to go way off topic - west virginia, a beautiful state, is , and has been for some time, being pillaged for it's abundence of natural resources. as a small, poor state, jobs and money are often welcome even though the we know what the consequences may be. it's not always black and white. we all want jobs to support our families, we all want tons of energy, cheap, and we would love to be independent of foreign oil. most of us want a better envioronment. how to acheive all of these things is complicated and expensive. and even though WV is a hot bed of coal, shale, windmills, power plants and power lines, i'd say over 85% of all that energy is sent elsewhere- PA, MD, VA, DC, NY etc.
jumping off soapbox now, slightly blushing.

[juliepoudrier]

Rufftie,
I love WV, but the mining, etc., that goes on there is one reason I've never seriously considered moving there. I agree that it's a tough choice people must make, and unfortunately it seems we as a nation have a history of making poor choices in such situations.

J.

[Mark Billadeau]

There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help.

Fed regs require an average day/night sound level not exceed 55dBa; that means 1/2 of the time it will be louder and 1/2 of the time it will be quieter. This average is louder than Friday 6pm traffic sound at our house (max of 50dBA - measured); typical noon time noise at our house is 35dBa (+10dBa = 2x increase in volume).

FERC rulings & regs trump local and state regs when it comes to power infrastructure (according to the FERC reps at our local meeting).

This wouldn't be as bad IF we were getting jobs (none added), significant tax revenue (only $250,000 annually), or even NG brought to our houses (nope).



My recommendation is to check out where the nearest pipeline and power transmission lines are and if there are any proposed changes to these in the area you are considering to purchase.

[Alchemist]

And they say it will help to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (she says wryly). I'm all for that, but let's help the community impact as well. There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help. I can't find the resource at the moment, but Penn State has some good suggestions -- one presentation showed a compressor station disguised as a barn and heavily insulated to reduce the noise, plus it looks better on the landscape. (Slide 17 on this presentation...www.blm.gov/bmp/.../WO1_VRM_BMP_Part_4_Slideshow.pp. )

Liz

Liz, you should tell anyone who claims that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil that this is largely a fallacy. The vast majority of petroleum is used for transportation fuel: gasoline for automobiles. Whereas the vast majority of the Marcellus shale gas (along with other shale gas) will be used to generate electricity. It will, therefore, displace coal, NOT petroleum. This much is sort of good from an environmental perspective (if you overlook the environmental costs associated with shale gas exploitation), as coal is such a dirty fuel and mountaintop mining, in particular, has such a high environmental cost. You do get more BTUs out of combusting a given number of molecules of natural gas than you do out of burning an equivalent number of molecules of coal, so even though they're both fossil fuels, you'll get less in the way of greenhouse gas emissions per unit electricity generated when you start with natural gas than if you start with coal.

Only if we were to start to drive more all-electric cars (not hybrids, but cars like the Nissan "Leaf" or the Tesla roadster) could natural gas start to reduce our dependency on oil. We're a long ways away from that at present.

Personally I wish we'd reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Period.

Off my own soapbox...