Now that I have convinced you city folk to pick up, pack up, and move to the country, you will need somewhere to live. We spent thousands of hours looking at property online, driving out into the country to attend open homes, quizzing real estate agents, and trawling through local papers.
We learned a thing or two about buying a rural property, so you don’t have to figure it out the hard way. This one goes out to you, John B. As you pointed out, I forgot the subscribe button last week, so here it is below; it doesn’t cost you a dime to join up, so hop to it. In the meantime, here we go… The rough guide to rural real estate.
“Discretely located”
This means a few things. All of which can be potentially problematic.
It would help if you had a helicopter to access the property. It is so far from civilisation that trying to drive there would require a four-wheel drive with an extra tank of diesel or three days slogging through mud.
It may be that the house itself is invisible from the road, the paddock, and even a satellite because it has been built so deep in a stand of trees that it is now practically one with the forest. You can be sure that it will be cool in summer, and in winter, it will be hell; however, gathering firewood takes no more effort than cutting off the elm branches that are growing through your ranch slider.
“Has its own water race”
A water race is a potentially guaranteed source of water that flows through the valley across multiple properties. There are many of them. Water is essential when you buy rural property; however, you should run like hell when you see these words.
The various local Councils all have arcane rules about what can and cannot be done around water races, and then you throw the regional Council over the top, and you’ll need a lawyer to figure out what your rights are.
Despite it being there as a resource, you can’t just grab the water and give it to your sweet little heifers; no, no, there are rules for that. Nor can you use it to irrigate your organic broccoli; forget it. After paying hundreds of dollars in site visits, the Council likely recommends you fence it off and throw away the key.
Or course, your other neighbours won’t obey the rules, and in a significant rain event, their crap will pile up against your fence, and the water race will become a new pond. You will not be able to move the crap from your fence unless you do so under cover of darkness, in a wind storm so no one can hear you, with a digger.
“Is in a flood zone”
Now, I need to translate this for the newbie looking to buy a lifestyle block as I hear some people just don’t get this. I am sworn to secrecy about a property deal where I heard a buyer put an offer in on such a piece of land, there was a flood, and then they tried to get out of the deal or at the minimum ask for a reduced price because of flood damage.
If it says flood zone, it will flood, I promise you. This is not the end of the world; you just need to know where it will flood and roughly how often.
Sadly, because city people have polluted the planet while we farmers have been practising regenerative farming practices hard out with our entirely zero carbon farms, floods occur at least every year in warning zones. Townies, always punishing our rural folk, now with the weather.
“Undulating pastures surrounding…”
This means that there is not a flat piece of land in the area, and you’ll need to be a mountain goat to farm anything. Chasms, drop-offs, steep hills, and farm roads where you’ll need a tractor with tank tread, are all par for the course.
Sometimes masquerades as “Easy sloping grazing land!” This means that if your heifers fall over, they will roll to the lowest point of the paddock. Handy if that is where your milking shed is, painful if not.
This often goes along with “360 degrees views from the house”, which means that the house is built on the highest hill on the block, a cable car would be the best method of getting to it, and because it has those views, it will get every wind known to the valley at force ten.
“The block is ready to go with power, telecoms, and water at the corner of the property”
Meanwhile, your house is three hundred meters away from that corner, over a chasm, up a steep hill, and it will cost you $250,000 to connect the services and another $250,000 to put a road in.
If there is a water race on the way from the corner to the house site, you are so doomed.
“Low maintenance property”
It’s a concrete block shed with no roof. There are no fences. No trees have been planted. There are no paddocks.
Bonus, there is no water race.
“More smarts than the average home”
This means that some idiot Wellingtonian who commutes on the train as a computer engineer has turned the property into a smart house. As one of these people, I can advise you that you run for the hills at the mention of smart homes.
They promise that you can turn your heat pump up on the way home, program your lights to do the same, gates that open and close, that have an electric car charging port, softly playing music as you arrive, GPS locators on the heifers, all powered by solar and backed up by batteries.
As someone who has been in technology for three decades, I can tell you one thing. Technology is a bastard that never does what it is meant to do, which is great because I have made a good living out of fixing it.
In this case, you’ll be on your way to your discreetly located lifestyle block, late on a poor winter’s night in your electric four-wheel drive that is warning that you are nearly out of charge, necessitating you drive with the lights off to save power.
As you arrive home, the electronic gate will not open on command, but you will notice that all the doors and windows in your house have opened, letting in the rain. Music will be by Slayer, as loud as it can go, and every light in the house will be blinking on and off furiously. The heifer GPS location will be reporting they are in Melbourne, but they will actually be standing in your lounge.
Honestly, listen to me; I do this for a living; an intelligent house is the same as having an Electric Poltergeist.
“15 hectares of 10 year old pine registered in the Emission Trading Scheme”
Congratulations. You just bought 15 hectares of completely useless land. You could have purchased a nice lifestyle block, but now you’re stuck with thousands of god awful pine trees that you can never cut down. Not even a Christmas Tree.
Plus, your neighbours will hate you because even though you didn’t plant the pine on excellent farmland, you bought it, which makes it your fault. Forever.
“Benefits of the Mataikona region are recreational fishing, diving, and exploring”
You’ll be bored within two hours of moving in, given you are so remote that there is nothing else to do. Within three months, you will be an alcoholic. Within six months, you will be a master beer brewer on account of the cost of being an alcoholic. Within a year you will be make strange carvings and have a beard two feet long.
After that, you will consider starting a commune, have an anti-vax tendency, fail to clip your ear hair resulting in the local townsfolk accepting you into their community wholeheartedly. You may talk to horses, invisible ones, but at least you can go fishing.
“Park-like surroundings”
You’ll need a ride on and take an entire day off each week to maintain the park-like surroundings. If the last owners planted trees in the park-like surroundings, you are genuinely screwed and will need two days off a week or hire Sparrow to cut your lawns, noting that he will charge accordingly.
A big flat square of grass around your house is the best policy.
“This home has been designed with entertaining in mind”
Holy hell! What are you thinking! No one will come and visit you once you move to the country! You’ll be entertaining yourself!
Anyway, these never turn out right, do they? “Designed with entertaining in mind” basically means it is entirely impractical and designed by some dimwit called Janice who fancies herself a home designer after reading too many Country Life magazines and likes too many white tiles and stainless steel, all of which is a bastard to keep clean.
Opportunity to ‘Plant and Enhance’
This means that the land is split into three types and governed by one overriding factor.
The first part of the land is blackberry, which you need a B52 loaded with napalm to remove. Even then, you’ll be lucky.
The second part of the land is forest slash, where the trees have been cut down and carted away.
The last part of the land is where the blackberry has overgrown part of the area where the forest slash is.
The overriding factor is that it probably floods, washing away any plantings and enhancings but leaving the blackberry.
This is die-hard conservationist country.
Thanks
Short and sweet today, I hope you enjoyed it; more pictures next time, I promise. I’ve been working on the Wild, wild east Part 2, which is taking its damn sweet time to get out of my head.
In the meantime, please subscribe if you haven’t, it’s free for now and free for you forever. Until I decide it isn’t. That is how I measure forever. No, seriously, the first few hundred subscribers will always get the writing free.
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Oh my you made me laugh so hard!!! Thanks Ian, it's very, very refreshing.
Entertaining and enlightening as always! I both envy your lifestyle and am terrified by it 😆