Thoughts on new venture

[4hfarms]

We bought land without homes. We rent out the land for people that want a small farm but cant afford the land so I put up a pole. They provide the shelter they want to live in. When people have to own what they live in they have a little more pride where they live. More than a short term rental anyway.

I interview and choose like minded individuals that enjoy country life. Most people with animals and gardens are hard working.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

We bought land without homes. We rent out the land for people that want a small farm but cant afford the land so I put up a pole. They provide the shelter they want to live in. When people have to own what they live in they have a little more pride where they live. More than a short term rental anyway.

I interview and choose like minded individuals that enjoy country life. Most people with animals and gardens are hard working.

Around here if you did that you would get a family of 8 living in an 18' camper and they would collect every piece of junk and animals they can aquire for cheap/free and turn the place into a junkyard. Build all kinds of "buildings" out of used pallets and some rusty nails they salvaged.

There are dozens of those types places around already on 5-10 acre chunks that the owners buy for 5k bucks and "homestead" it. Within a few years CPS is their daily checking the kids, the sheriff is there chasing the animals into the "fence", and the county gets stuck with the tax bill at some point and it cost them 50k to have all the junk cleaned up.

 

[Ky hills]

Around here if you did that you would get a family of 8 living in an 18' camper and they would collect every piece of junk and animals they can aquire for cheap/free and turn the place into a junkyard. Build all kinds of "buildings" out of used pallets and some rusty nails they salvaged.

There are dozens of those types places around already on 5-10 acre chunks that the owners buy for 5k bucks and "homestead" it. Within a few years CPS is their daily checking the kids, the sheriff is there chasing the animals into the "fence", and the county gets stuck with the tax bill at some point and it cost them 50k to have all the junk cleaned up.

That sounds like how it is here.

 

[Brute 23]

We bought land without homes. We rent out the land for people that want a small farm but cant afford the land so I put up a pole. They provide the shelter they want to live in. When people have to own what they live in they have a little more pride where they live. More than a short term rental anyway.

I interview and choose like minded individuals that enjoy country life. Most people with animals and gardens are hard working.

I like that kind of "out the box" thinking. We would end up with a camp for illgels or a meth lab.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

That sounds like how it is here.

We get all sorts of folks here from down south that see 10 acres listed for 6k bucks and think they hit the jackpot.

Most last 3-5 years before reality sets in that you can't subsistence live on 10 acres with 6 kids, 13 goats, 6 sheep, and 4 horses without power/water/septic in a 5th wheel camper when it's -30 and 6 feet of snow on the ground.

 

[Little Joe]

Around here if you did that you would get a family of 8 living in an 18' camper and they would collect every piece of junk and animals they can aquire for cheap/free and turn the place into a junkyard. Build all kinds of "buildings" out of used pallets and some rusty nails they salvaged.

There are dozens of those types places around already on 5-10 acre chunks that the owners buy for 5k bucks and "homestead" it. Within a few years CPS is their daily checking the kids, the sheriff is there chasing the animals into the "fence", and the county gets stuck with the tax bill at some point and it cost them 50k to have all the junk cleaned up.

Same here in Arkansas

 

[Little Joe]

@Ky hills , Arkansas' laws are favorable to the landlord. I have 3 long term rentals, they have been good to me as I have been blessed with pretty good tenants. 1 has been with me 13 years, 1 stayed 10 years and recently bought his own home. I was not very happy with him though when I got to going through fixing things so I could rent again, several drain leaks and shut off valves leaking that ruined some stuff that had to be repaired as well. I'm going to do a better job with random inspections to prevent things like this. I have another tenant that has been with me I believe 7 or 8 years. The one the guy just moved out of after 10 years, a former tenant from 8 years ago from one of my other rentals moved into, they have been trying to rent from me again since a year after they moved out of my other rental. All 3 rentals are within about a mile of each other and about 3 miles from my house, makes it convenient to do repairs and check in. They are also in a good area with good people which keeps undesirables from wanting to live in the area. If a tenant is a pretty good I try to keep the rent reasonable so that they will stay long term, turn over costs money. To make money in rentals, you need to be pretty handy and also know a few people that can do things when you can't. I'm not sure how landlords who hire everything done ever make money. I do my own HVAC, electrical and plumbing work and generally hire out carpenter/handyman type stuff because the hourly rate for that type of work is cheaper than the previous trades I mentioned and I like doing the other better than the carpenter type stuff.

 

[Ky hills]

We get all sorts of folks here from down south that see 10 acres listed for 6k bucks and think they hit the jackpot.

Most last 3-5 years before reality sets in that you can't subsistence live on 10 acres with 6 kids, 13 goats, 6 sheep, and 4 horses without power/water/septic in a 5th wheel camper when it's -30 and 6 feet of snow on the ground.

Is that 10 acres of cleared land for $6k or does it need to be mowed with a bulldozer?

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Is that 10 acres of cleared land for $6k or does it need to be mowed with a bulldozer?

Can be either. The "homesteaders" usually buy wooded thinking they will be able to use the trees for lumber, fences, firewood, etc. Then find out its hard to do anything with stumps everywhere.

 

[Ky hills]

@Ky hills , Arkansas' laws are favorable to the landlord. I have 3 long term rentals, they have been good to me as I have been blessed with pretty good tenants. 1 has been with me 13 years, 1 stayed 10 years and recently bought his own home. I was not very happy with him though when I got to going through fixing things so I could rent again, several drain leaks and shut off valves leaking that ruined some stuff that had to be repaired as well. I'm going to do a better job with random inspections to prevent things like this. I have another tenant that has been with me I believe 7 or 8 years. The one the guy just moved out of after 10 years, a former tenant from 8 years ago from one of my other rentals moved into, they have been trying to rent from me again since a year after they moved out of my other rental. All 3 rentals are within about a mile of each other and about 3 miles from my house, makes it convenient to do repairs and check in. They are also in a good area with good people which keeps undesirables from wanting to live in the area. If a tenant is a pretty good I try to keep the rent reasonable so that they will stay long term, turn over costs money. To make money in rentals, you need to be pretty handy and also know a few people that can do things when you can't. I'm not sure how landlords who hire everything done ever make money. I do my own HVAC, electrical and plumbing work and generally hire out carpenter/handyman type stuff because the hourly rate for that type of work is cheaper than the previous trades I mentioned and I like doing the other better than the carpenter type stuff.

Wife has an uncle that in recent years has moved from Oklahoma to Arkansas.
He has some rental property not sure if any is in AR or not but could be.
We have had a very mixed bag as far as renters go. Had some good folks stay with us for 7 years. Got to be friends with them, they moved out a few years ago. The lady had a son that had bought a house so her and her husband moved out to go live with him and help make the payments. Tried to talk them out of it to avail, like we predicted that didn't last long and they wanted to come back but we'd already rented it again.
At that time we were too low on our rent price and I'd say we had several hundred people inquiring about it.
We thought we'd narrowed it down pretty good, but the people we rented it to the last time hid some stuff from us that would have maybe had us pass them by.
Man smoked and we preferred nonsmoking but anyways he was throwing his cigarettes around and in a potted plant not putting them out and it caught fire and burned the house down.
We've had a some crazies in that house in past. One family that was there had a child/teen that was evidently messed up into some bad things as well as drugs.
They'd been talking with my mother about him and sone of what he was doing. I was getting nervous when going over to feed cattle, I was actually afraid he might try to shoot me. I'd been noticing a couple cats around with broken tails injuries, and always wondered if he'd had something to do with that. It just seemed odd to me.
We evicted them for not paying rent. They had eventually paid but it was a situation where you had to keep after them and might be a month later. The grandmother and her husband at the time that was the one that actually rented then moved her daughter and grandson in with her was a mess of her own. The man eventually left her we'd always had trouble getting rent from them.
After the grandmother died, the daughter was on drugs and no way she would pay rent so we gave her a chance but saw it wasn't going to work. They left without incident but we had a mess to clean up as they left a lot of junk.
When we were cleaning out the house. Some of the folks helping came to me a said you got to see what's up in on of them rooms. There was some sort of drug thing they called a bong and the disturbing thing was a bunch of stuffed animals hung with nooses from the ceiling with real knives in their backs.
Later I found some disturbing writings on some of the outbuildings, turns out my concerns of that young man were probably closer to right than I thought.

 

[cowman82]

PM me details about your farm , i may be interested.

 

[4hfarms]

Don't get me wrong we have had our share of doozies

I do most of my own repairs. It makes it profitable, sometimes.

I rented out 15ac with water and electric. The last people were leaving the state so the still had the tiny home they were living in just sitting waiting to me picked up and moved. The next people moved with a camper from out of state. Hooked up, paid rent for the length of a 6 month lease while they found a home to purchase. Sent me the last month's rent and a thank you letter. Went down to clean up. It was clean a a whistle, grass cut, trees trimmed, tiny house gone...
They had moved the tiny home into the yard of the new home they purchased.

We had a mobile home on one of the properties. Rented out to a nice family of 4. Dad was a truck driver, mom had open heart surgery. They came over one day after church to see the place. Very proper. Signed a lease, dad made a run, house was full on 24 7 party. Holes in the walls, floors, carpets rripped, cabinets doors ripped off. Piles of stuff everywhere. ...on my first inspection, 3 months in. Rotting meat in the freezer without electricity. They put it out on the porch instead of cleaning it.

And some good ones.
Stayed with us on one of the farms for years. Had cows. Retried guy. Nice life. Became friends...Moved on to a bigger farm somewhere, tried to take my wife with him that last Chrismas we saw him.
The lady that had 27 cats was nice too. $17k in repairs!
The mom and son that had a 15 ac. That burned the camper to stay warm last winter. .......

We had our share..

Now it's just land we rent. Some pretty good people, so far. We thought about selling a couple of them. Time will tell.

My son lives in the home now with his family to save money for the last couple years. Benefits him and us!

 

[greybeard]

I like that kind of "out the box" thinking. We would end up with a camp for illgels or a meth lab.

We would give a name to that kind of place.
Plum Grove or Oak Forest Subdivision

 

[Travlr]

I can tell you from personal experience having a higher end rental house with a high price doesn't mean you always get better renters.

I've had terrible "high end renters" and amazing "low end renters".

Roll the dice and do your due diligence on potential renters but at the end of the day it's a crap shoot.

I haven't done a lot of renting as a landlord, but I learned something that seemed to be very handy early on... and that was whenever I had someone come to look at a property I'd do the usual mining for information and the whole yada, yada, yada... and then I would walk them out to their car and ask them about it. It's amazing what you can learn from looking at something that someone uses often, and how they talk about it. Whether it's a piece of c**p because it breaks down all the time, just like that last five cars they've owned, or whether it gets over maintained because it's "cheap insurance" and they are afraid of it leaving them on the side of the road. Whether the dealership takes great care of them or they can never seem to get anything right. And of course... whether the back seat is a land fill or the seats have cigarette burns in them.

 

[Travlr]

Tough time for rentals. Housing prices, taxes, maintenance all up and rent is not able to keep especially if there is a down turn in the economy.

A lot of rentals are getting sold right now due to owners not being able to pass on cashing out, like you with your current property.

Have you seen a lot of commercials wanting to pay cash for houses, with no closing costs and no repairs required? I've heard that there are several corporations buying up houses, as though they expect owning will be an investment at least as good as businesses.

 

[Brute 23]

Have you seen a lot of commercials wanting to pay cash for houses, with no closing costs and no repairs required? I've heard that there are several corporations buying up houses, as though they expect owning will be an investment at least as good as businesses.

Money Pimp: one who convinces others to invest in an idea and makes money off the management despite the deal actually working
aka: the the prostitution of money

 

[Ky hills]

Have you seen a lot of commercials wanting to pay cash for houses, with no closing costs and no repairs required? I've heard that there are several corporations buying up houses, as though they expect owning will be an investment at least as good as businesses.

It's an investment deal, basically they buy them wholesale to resell. They are geared toward people that inherit a house and just want to sell it, or if somebody is in financial trouble and need to sell fast they try to appeal to those situations. I see commercials and we get flyers through the mail pretty often. Wife has even gotten calls from foreign sounding people wanting to buy, though those few incidents may have been an outright scam call.
Most of the realtors seem to be involved with these wholesale or investment buyers. About 3 years ago when we first were thinking of selling, wife's brother was married to a realtor in OK. She called around a lot of area realtors here, she said we did not want somebody that already had a buyer, so she vetted and weeded out a bunch of realtors that were working with those kinds of buyers.
The one that she picked said he didn't.
He came out and we took him through the houses and around the farms. Afterwards he said that in order to serve us better he had another person that worked out of the office that was more experienced with farms and that he would bring her back in a few days to talk further. He was very complimentary about the property and said that he thought we would be pleasantly surprised with what they had to say.
As soon as they came back the woman he brought was visibly uninterested in looking around and looking it over she was in business mode. She was telling us that the improvements didn't matter, that fences and barns were irrelevant, and that the second house on the property would not factor in to pricing.
She was basically running down our property to lower our expectations. She threw out a number that was $150,000 less than it was appraised for 30 years prior. She let it slip that she was working on flipping another farm at that time.
It was a very odd encounter which we ended the conversation as we figured out that she was likely wanting to buy it to speculate on.
I figured out soon after that she was part of a "group" affiliated with their real estate company that was selling other properties.
Last fall, we met with a representatives from a couple different realty offices.
It was a total different experience with both.
Both houses and land are selling crazy fast here. Our neighbors put their house on the market and before the end of the second day it was sale pending and they had sold it.

 

[Travlr]

It's an investment deal, basically they buy them wholesale to resell. They are geared toward people that inherit a house and just want to sell it, or if somebody is in financial trouble and need to sell fast they try to appeal to those situations. I see commercials and we get flyers through the mail pretty often. Wife has even gotten calls from foreign sounding people wanting to buy, though those few incidents may have been an outright scam call.
Most of the realtors seem to be involved with these wholesale or investment buyers. About 3 years ago when we first were thinking of selling, wife's brother was married to a realtor in OK. She called around a lot of area realtors here, she said we did not want somebody that already had a buyer, so she vetted and weeded out a bunch of realtors that were working with those kinds of buyers.
The one that she picked said he didn't.
He came out and we took him through the houses and around the farms. Afterwards he said that in order to serve us better he had another person that worked out of the office that was more experienced with farms and that he would bring her back in a few days to talk further. He was very complimentary about the property and said that he thought we would be pleasantly surprised with what they had to say.
As soon as they came back the woman he brought was visibly uninterested in looking around and looking it over she was in business mode. She was telling us that the improvements didn't matter, that fences and barns were irrelevant, and that the second house on the property would not factor in to pricing.
She was basically running down our property to lower our expectations. She threw out a number that was $150,000 less than it was appraised for 30 years prior. She let it slip that she was working on flipping another farm at that time.
It was a very odd encounter which we ended the conversation as we figured out that she was likely wanting to buy it to speculate on.
I figured out soon after that she was part of a "group" affiliated with their real estate company that was selling other properties.
Last fall, we met with a representatives from a couple different realty offices.
It was a total different experience with both.
Both houses and land are selling crazy fast here. Our neighbors put their house on the market and before the end of the second day it was sale pending and they had sold it.

Yeah, I'm sure that happens too. What I've been hearing about is conglomerates going in and buying houses that have just been listed and paying full price or even more... and outcompeting people that are pre-qualified and willing to pay more than asking price. They are concentrating on hot markets, but they are still buying elsewhere as well. Both types of buyers, the one you exampled as well as the kind I'm talking about are skewing the market. And who knows, they may both be funded by the same money source. I just don't know where all the money is coming from. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was foreign.

 

[GoWyo]

Yeah, I'm sure that happens too. What I've been hearing about is conglomerates going in and buying houses that have just been listed and paying full price or even more... and outcompeting people that are pre-qualified and willing to pay more than asking price. They are concentrating on hot markets, but they are still buying elsewhere as well. Both types of buyers, the one you exampled as well as the kind I'm talking about are skewing the market. And who knows, they may both be funded by the same money source. I just don't know where all the money is coming from. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was foreign.

Wasn't Blackrock doing this a year or two ago? Probably still doing it some. All the covid cash flooding the market so investors were looking for something to invest in. Drove the housing market nuts in places. Especially messed up first time home buyers on starter homes.

 

[Travlr]

Wasn't Blackrock doing this a year or two ago? Probably still doing it some. All the covid cash flooding the market so investors were looking for something to invest in. Drove the housing market nuts in places. Especially messed up first time home buyers on starter homes.

I really don't know any names. I always thought it was kind of suspicious that it made some noise and then suddenly got dropped from any coverage. At this point I don't know if it is still going on or if the scrutiny made someone take notice and it got stopped.