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The Road To Buying Your First Rural Home

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The COVID-19 pandemic has convinced many people that they don’t want to continue living in urban areas with high population densities. Millennials were already starting to move away from cities, but the pandemic has piqued their interest and encouraged many to consider buying their first rural home.

If you plan to be buying your first rural home soon, you will need to do some research that makes the process easier. In many cases, buying a rural home, especially if it sits on a few acres of land, is different than buying a home in a city or suburb. The following recommendations should help you learn more about your options and choose a country home you’ll love.

Know How You Can Use the Land Once You Own It

Typically, rural land has fewer restrictions than urban and suburban properties. Don’t assume that you can do anything you want after buying your first rural home, though. Even if local laws let you set up a residential hobby farm, they may prevent you from owning certain animals or using specific farming practices.

Use this list of important questions to help you choose a piece of land that fits your expectations.

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Know What Features You Want From Your Rural Land

You should also look for features that will meet your specific needs and wants to get the most out of your property. For example, it makes sense to buy a rural home on wooded property if you want to hunt, hike, or use it for many other recreational purposes.

There are many potential features to consider before buying your first rural property. A pond or lake provides great entertainment for swimmers and fishers. Hilly land doesn’t suit many crops, but cows can enjoy it. A large plot of well-drained soil could make an excellent spot for a family garden or even growing produce for a farmer’s market.

Also, ask questions about whether the area has good broadband internet access. A poor internet connection can make it difficult to work remotely, enjoy your favorite media, and stay in touch with friends. Unfortunately, many rural areas have broadband deficiencies. Don’t assume you will get a fast internet connection just because the property has a town nearby.

Know What Types of Insurance You Will Need

In the city, most people choose standard homeowners’ insurance policies that cover hazards like fire, damage from storms, and personal liability. You may need more coverage for things like crop protection (if you plan to grow crops), additional liability insurance (if you plan to let people hunt on your land), and property insurance that covers other structures like barns and tractors.

Think about how you plan to use the property so you can get an insurance policy that keeps you protected.

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Determine How Much Effort You Are Willing To Put Into the Home

Maintaining a rural home, and the land it is on, can take a lot of time and effort. Suddenly, you have much more to do than mow a small backyard and plant a few flowers. In addition to the usual maintenance that comes with owning a home, proper maintenance for your rural home could include:

  • Clearing acres of growth around your house or mowing a sizable lawn.
  • Establishing a fence line that helps you and neighbors avoid conflicts.
  • Repairing damage to barns, sheds, fences, and other structures on the property.
  • Tending to the plants and animals on your hobby farm daily, if you have one.
  • Managing common pests living on the surrounding land.
  • Clearing large driveways of snow if living in cooler climates.

You might also need to think about ways to keep predators away from your house, especially if you have children or small animals. A herding dog could help, but that means adding a furry member to your family, which comes with its own effort and expense.

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Think About How Long You Plan to Keep the House and Land

Is this a property that you want to live on for a few years or several decades? The answer matters quite a bit. If you only want to live there for a few years, you probably don’t need to develop the property much. Instead, you could turn a profit from selling the raw land.

If you plan to spend many years in the home, you need to think more carefully about your wants and needs. Adding gardens, cottages, and other features could increase your enjoyment significantly. You could even set aside a section of the property for paying guests. Visiting the countryside can help city-dwellers de-stress, so you could use your land as a new income source by advertising your cottages as a vacation spot.

Hire an Accredited Land Consultant Before Buying Your First Rural Home

You don’t want to use a standard real estate agent when buying a rural property. Instead, you should get help from an Accredited Land Consultant (ALC). ALCs must take at least 104 hours of courses, get approved by a committee of active ALCs, adhere to a strict code of ethics, and show a history of successful sales before they can obtain accreditation from the REALTORS® Land Institute. No matter what type of rural land you want, an ALC can narrow your search to options that best fit your needs.

ALCs have a lot of connections, so they can introduce you to a large pool of sellers. If you decide to sell your land later, you can reach out to your ALC to benefit from his or her connections to potential buyers.

As more people think about buying rural homes, prices will likely increase. If you think you want to make the move, start exploring your options by finding and talking to an ALC near you.

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Will Americans Trade-In Their Urban Lifestyles For Rural Ones In The Wake Of COVID-19?

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The COVID-19 pandemic will encourage a lot of people to rethink their urban lifestyles. In a time when social distancing and self-isolating play crucial roles in health, consumers living in urban centers find it nearly impossible to follow the rules for safety and are realizing they are at a much greater risk of being impacted by such an outbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic will, however, only add to subgroup of the population moving away from large, crowded cities to homes with more open lands in rural areas.

In fact, in a recent Virtual Round Table discussion about COVID-19’s Impacts on The Land Market, Accredited Land Consultant Lisa Johnson with Horsepower Real Estate out of Junction City, OR, predicts that there will be a lot of demand and says that right now there isn’t a lot of inventory to meet it. “We’re still seeing a lot of people calling from the larger metro areas… that, whether its 5 acres or 100 acres, they just want somewhere to go.” Read more insights from Lisa in the COVID-19 Impacts on Rural Residential Hobby Farms RLI blog post.

New York City at the Epicenter of a Pandemic

It didn’t take long for New York City to become the COVID-19 pandemic’s epicenter. Millions of people commuting on a public transit system and passing each other on crowded streets helped the virus spread quickly.

Millennials Were Already Moving to Suburbs

Fear of future pandemics will likely encourage more people to leave cities and settle in suburban and rural areas. Those moving away from cities, however, are not starting something new. They’re continuing a trend.

Drew Ary, ALC, with Ary Land Co in Coweta, OK, said in the COVID-19’s Impacts on The Land Market Virtual Round Table that he is seeing a similar trend in land sales with “an increase in anything outside of 45 minutes of a major metropolitan area.” He also noted that the inventory and interest rates are low and thinks “we’ll continue to see an incredible increase in demand for these types of properties. Read more insights from Drew in the COVID-19 Impacts on Rural Residential Hobby Farms RLI blog post.

As Millennials get older and start families, many of them realize that they cannot continue to afford living in large cities. The median home cost in New York City exceeds $680,000. In LA, the median home cost is nearly $690,000. Few families can afford to spend that much money on housing. A growing number of Millennials and other young people see suburbs, mid-sized cities, and rural areas as cost-saving alternatives with other perks of their own.

Knowing that they will have to spend half a million dollars more on housing to live in big cities, a lot of people don’t mind moving. Moving to smaller cities, suburbs, and rural communities often means that they can purchase larger homes, access better public education, and avoid higher rates of crime – not to mention improve their mental health. Add the fear of another pandemic, and it becomes easy for people to reconsider living in places like New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

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Technology and Remote Work Opportunities May Influence Decisions

Improved technology and a growing number of remote work opportunities may also influence people when they decide where to live. Living in New York makes sense when it’s the only place where you can find a job. When work becomes decentralized and remote, though, employees can effectively make more money by living in cheaper areas.

Data from the Pew Research Center show that internet access has grown considerably in rural and suburban areas over the last two decades. In 2000, only 42% of people in rural places used the internet. During the same year, 56% of suburbanites accessed the internet. In 2019, 85% of people in rural communities and 94% of people in suburbs said that they use the internet.

Despite improvements in technology, many business leaders have shown reluctance to remote working. The pandemic has forced them to reconsider this outdated idea, which could lead to a significant paradigm shift that embraces the value of working remotely.

Companies have already undertaken the hardest parts of setting up remote teams. Stay-at-home orders meant that businesses had to review and adopt software applications designed for remote workers. With these technologies now in place, some companies may decide that it makes sense to keep their employees remote to decrease overhead instead of bringing workers back to their offices. By keeping workers at home, companies may have to spend slightly more money on technology. However, in return, they can save a lot of money on overhead costs associated with real estate, energy, and insurance.

The combination of better internet technology throughout the country and an increase in remote work opportunities will make it even easier for ambitious people to move away from crowded cities.

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Are Employers and Employees Rethinking the Future?

No one knows how people will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Once researchers develop a vaccination, employers and employees might go back to life as usual. Alternatively, they could be reconsidering their urban lifestyles as a way to prepare and protect themselves from future potential outbreaks as the world economy continues to globalize. If they feel less certain about the future, there is a good chance that many will leave crowded urban areas for places that offer more room to spread out.

If this pandemic has you thinking about moving to a more rural area to put some land between you and your neighbors, as well as allow you to source your own food, make sure to Find A Land Consultant and use the Land Connections property listing site to help find the perfect property to meet your needs.