where to start a homestead?

jinghong

Folks
Something my wife and I have been longing to do for a long time, and we're finally thinking of taking the leap. We have one daughter and another on the way, and we want to bring them up on a small farm, as well as make that change in lifestyles ourselves. We are looking at about 5 acres to grow most of our own food and keep a cow, some hens and maybe a couple of pigs. I can work from home, but this is something I want to do part time. Both of us are from farms and something is just calling us back. However we don't want to do it for an income, just as a way of being largely self sufficient for food and for a good lifestyle.

We have about 100k in cash to spend and we're not planning on getting a mortgage (well we can't, but thats another story).

I guess my main question is this:
Where is best in the country given our financial constraints (it needs to include a basic house) and the fact that we would like to live close to other people who are in a similar situation. You know, the type of place where I could trade a barrel of homebrew for a leg of a pig, or something like that. We are looking at places like wexford and kilkenny, but alos leitrim, as the people seems friendly there and its easier to get the start, since land it less expensive. Anyway we've decided to move next month and rent a house for a year in the chosen location and take it slowly..ani ideas?

Birdnuts

Roscommon near one of the lakes in the West(Lough Glynn, O'Flynn) - beautifull setting, not too pricey and decent land. There are alot of homesteads in the area like the one you want so you should make friends in the area pretty quickly:)

djmc

you wont get much for 100k but keep a look on daft.ie
might find an old house that needs to be fixed up with a few acres
Keep in mind if u want to be close to family
I really like where I live in kerry rural but not in the middle of nowhere nice nabours and a very low crime rate with a view of half of kerry

jinghong

Birdnuts wrote: »

Roscommon near one of the lakes in the West(Lough Glynn, O'Flynn) - beautifull setting, not too pricey and decent land. There are alot of homesteads in the area like the one you want so you should make friends in the area pretty quickly:)

Cheers. I've been around Roscommon quite a lot recently, not that far west though. I heard a lot of people a emigrating from the area. Are there people like me moving to replace them i wonder?

psicic

jinghong wrote: »

Are there people like me moving to replace them i wonder?

Me for one! Well, almost. I bought a 18 acre farm just over a year and a bit ago just down the road from Ballaghaderreen - but I haven't been able to make the full time transition due to a change in circumstances. No family in the area, originally started looking around Cavan/Longford and gradually drifted further and further West, into Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon. My budget was slightly more than yours, but not much. My plan was also similar.

Lovely part of the country, different pace of life to Dublin. I've seen some excellent properties and lands become available at decent prices in the past year (it's probably a bit tawdry to say it, but places are a lot better value than I paid - but if I had held out, I wouldn't have got a mortgage). As said by others, Daft.ie is where to start, and this will lead you to Auctioneers and Estate Agents in the area.

There are a lot of small holdings in the area surrounding Ballaghaderreem and it is surprisingly cosmopolitian - people from all around Ireland, England, Europe and beyond. In fact I'd go as far as to say that the whole area seems more integrated than where I live in Dublin. People don't seem to care where you are from.

Ballaghaderreen itself is a nice town to be near (I'm about 4 or 5 miles away). It's only an hour from Silgo and Longford, about an hour and a half to Galway and two hours to Dublin. Close enough to Knock airport as well. Bit of unique history in the place, e.g. Ballaghaderreen Cathedral. There's a bit of sport in the area, and I'm really hoping to get a chance to try out the fishing sooner or later.

Town itself seems to be in a difficult patch (the bestest hotel in the world for steak, the Abbeyfield, closed there earlier this year) but there is a tremendous sense of get-up-and-go around the place. Lot of amenities, like big schools, a big shopping centre, big Connacht Gold Coop, lots of pubs and takeaways, you can get decent broadband speeds and most of the backroad I've been down in the area are in good nick.

Aw.... while I realise I sound like the Ballaghaderreen marketing board, now I can't stop thinking of my place in Roscommon while facing into a week of boring office work here in Dublin....

jinghong

thats good news, hope the transition goes well for you, and hope you're starting to get you're fruit trees in soon among other things. From what I can make out it takes time to get set up properly.

Well guys, you're selling me on the roscommon thing..I seriously hadn't thought of that location before. It probably has to be one of the more overlooked parts of the country I'd say.

reilig

We're a couple of miles from Carrick on Shannon in Leitrim. There are a lot of smallholders around us too and it would be quite possible for to buy a house on 5 acres within your budget. Property, especially land, in Roscommon tends to be a couple of thousand Euro per acre than in leitrim because it is better quality.

We have neighbours who bought a liveable 3 bedroom cottage on 3 acres a few years back for €66k. Both are employed in Dublin but can work from home 75% of the time. From the M50 roundabout, they can travel to their Leitrim home in 1 hour 45 minutes. Yet, their house is in the most secluded and quiet part of the country imaginable. If you have small kids, its important to think about their future too with regard to schools, school buses, and the existence of young children in the locality.

Having lived in Dublin for a number of years, I know that I am very lucky to have been able to move home to the family farm and build a house on my own land. We're priviledged to be able to bring up our kids away from the hustle and bustle of the city!!

jinghong

thats true reilig, thats why we would like to be ideally within walking distance of a primary school and within cycling distance of a secondary school if possible. The wife doesn't drive, so we're a bit limited that way

jinghong

btw folks, one thing thats been bugging me. You would think asking prices would be down a lot since many people cannot a mortgage anymore. In the US you can pick up a house on its own plot in certain areas for 20k or less. Things are at least as bad here, but in the places of ireland with least demand we're still seeing asking prices of much higher than that.

Someone did a study recently and concluded that the actual selling prices at the recent allsop auctions were on average about 30% lower than asking prices on daft.

Do you think I should use this as a guide? Obviously most sellers don't expect to attract the exact asking price they have listed these days in most cases..

That example of a 3 bed cottage on 3 acres withing a couple of miles of carrick for 66k, I can't find anything like that value on daft right now. I can only imagine those people paid a lot less than the listed price tag, especially since it was a couple of years ago..what do you rekon?

Atilathehun

You could have this one for €20k:cool: http://www.independent.ie/national-news/live-next-door-to-criminal-wayne-dundon-for-just-euro20000-2825866.html

reilig

I don't really know too much about today's prices. But as someone said on here last week, the price is determined by how much you or someone else are willing to pay for it.

Have a stone cottage with stone outhouses on my own land, but its my pension plan. Wouldn't be prepared to part with it and 5 acres for less than €100k ion the current climate, but it isn't for sale currently. Have my eye on a farm that joins my own which may go up for sale in teh coming years and would only really sell the cottage if I needed the money to buy this.

jinghong wrote: »

btw folks, one thing thats been bugging me. You would think asking prices would be down a lot since many people cannot a mortgage anymore. In the US you can pick up a house on its own plot in certain areas for 20k or less. Things are at least as bad here, but in the places of ireland with least demand we're still seeing asking prices of much higher than that.

Someone did a study recently and concluded that the actual selling prices at the recent allsop auctions were on average about 30% lower than asking prices on daft.

Do you think I should use this as a guide? Obviously most sellers don't expect to attract the exact asking price they have listed these days in most cases..

That example of a 3 bed cottage on 3 acres withing a couple of miles of carrick for 66k, I can't find anything like that value on daft right now. I can only imagine those people paid a lot less than the listed price tag, especially since it was a couple of years ago..what do you rekon?

jay gatsby

jinghong wrote: »

btw folks, one thing thats been bugging me.

Do you think I should use this as a guide? Obviously most sellers don't expect to attract the exact asking price they have listed these days in most cases..


Was talking to a fella in the industry the other day and he said he wouldn't dream of offering anything over 70% of the asking price and would go as low as 50% in some cases. Says sellers are so desperate for a sale they often just jump at any offer

Muckit

jinghong wrote: »

You would think asking prices would be down a lot since many people cannot a mortgage anymore.

An asking price is just that. They can ask away, what they'I have to take if they want to sell is another thing. Some lads are still reminising the 'Good times'

jinghong

Muckit wrote: »

An asking price is just that. They can ask away, what they'I have to take if they want to sell is another thing. Some lads are still reminising the 'Good times'

Thats why I think the roscommon area is a good bet. In other parts of the country it's still hard to buy land as theres very little on the market, you're looking 10k+ and acre for good land.

In ballaghaderreen theres 14 small to medium holdings up for sale right now. Asking prices look to be in the 5-10k per acre region

psicic

I think the Auctioneer/Estate Agent has a lot to do with the prices you see.

It was easily two years ago when I viewed this property, and it was a ruin then (in my opinion, of course). A very, very charming area and building, but a ruin none-the-less. I see they've tossed in some extra land with the deal and are clearer about it 'needing refurbishment' but without a halfway livable house, it still wouldn't represent great value for someone like me.

I've also had the experience of an Estate Agent in Silgo/North Leitrim create a phantom bidder against me that drove the price of a property up-and-up-and-up.... pure greed and he lost a sale because I walked away. (I knew it was a phantom bidder the way they suddenly appeared once he knew I was serious about the deal, yet the property was still up for sale more than a year after I looked at it!) All this when the market was already stagnating!

When I finally met the guy I bought my place through - I was so impressed with how open he was about the flaws in properties, in describing what was and wasn't available in the area and when he didn't know something, he just told me instead of spinning a load of waffle (e.g. when I asked about things like fishing, he just said he didn't know enough about it, but that there are places I could find out if I was interested). He was looking to make a deal and find a place that suited my needs, but wasn't going to pretend he had something on his books that he didn't have.

Even still, asking price was certainly just a starting point for negotiating.... haggling over the price was something I was dreading doing at the time, but I certainly feel better over having done it.

jinghong

thanks for that. Seems like its going to a learning experience. Sounds like the land drainage is better in Roscommon and not so good in Leitrim. Would I be right in saying that?

jinghong

BTW I've heard a lot of folk here on boards.ie disparaging places in Roscommon liek castlerea and ballinaderreen and boyle, saying they're some of the worst towns in Ireland to live in. Now I know my small farm will not be in any town, but i will want to live within a few kilometers of one, as we need to be able to survive without a car. What do the roscommon people say about this?

johngalway

jinghong wrote: »

What do the roscommon people say about this?

I'm not sure how many Rossies we have here, but there is a Roscommon >forum< on Boards, just FYI

Tipp Man

jinghong wrote: »

BTW I've heard a lot of folk here on boards.ie disparaging places in Roscommon liek castlerea and ballinaderreen and boyle, saying they're some of the worst towns in Ireland to live in. Now I know my small farm will not be in any town, but i will want to live within a few kilometers of one, as we need to be able to survive without a car. What do the roscommon people say about this?

You will be bringing considerable hardship on yourself and your family if you are planning on living in rural ireland without a car

jinghong

Tipp Man wrote: »

You will be bringing considerable hardship on yourself and your family if you are planning on living in rural ireland without a car

Absolutely, I know, although you have benefits of avoided costs too, in the region of €500 a month. But to minimose the downsides we want to live beside a town and walking distance to the school. We have good bikes, and both of us are into cycling.

We have a trailer for taking the kids around on the bikes, and another for small amounts of cargo

Having said that we lived in rural meath for 6 months, 4km from the nearest town. That didn't work, it was too far

johngalway

Where does the €500 a month figure come from? I doubt, all in, repairs, fuel, initial purchase cost, that my car costs me that.

Cost me €6,500, have it since Dec 03
Insurance something like €450/475
Tax €3-400 (I forget)
Fuel €1,872
Repairs €700 (This year, NCT + others & estimate)

Works out something like €350 a month for a 5 door 1.5 litre saloon. More economical cars are available now and it doesn't sound like you'd be doing a lot of milage.

Just saying as I really agree with Tipp Man on the hardship aspect, especially in Winter.

JohnBoy

gotta agree.

cars are as expensive as you want them to be.

buy a 01 1.4 focus and do 10k miles a year in it, keep it for two years.

Purchase 2000
sell 500

depreciation 750 a year
insurance 400
tax 333
fuel (10,000 miles @35mpg = 1299 L @ €1.45 €1,884
Servicing 500

My maths brings me in a €322 a month.

drive that focus like a granny for only 5k miles a year and you're down to 253.

make that a 99 focus to start with and your depreciation drops by 500 a year and you're down to 211 a month.


Cars can be cheap, or expensive, it's totally up to you.


I bought a 100,000 mile 96 mondeo last year to get me over a hump for a few weeks when I'd crashed my jeep. I bought and sold it for €450. I know the lad who bought it and nearly 18 months later it's still going strong, it's cost him a hundred or two in parts outside of regular servicing and takes every bit of abuse he throws at it.

jinghong

I actually drive a 99 mazda 1.3, so I already know about banger economics. But my eyes are not on where the ball is currently at, rather where it is heading. And working in the energy game, I believe the ball of **** that is private transport is heading to the moon. €500 per month for personal transport doesnt seem like a large number in that context. We're planning our lives around shanks mare and cows milk

I believe there comes a time when the benefits of having a car are outwieghed by the drawbacks, and one of the biggest drawbacks is planning your life so you're dependent on a car and when the costs get prohibitive life is a whole lot tougher than if you burned your bridges and went without now. That forces you to make choices that mean you dont feel pain when the time comes.

right now I'll keep it, but its only for driving around the country to visit customers from time to time

Birdnuts

jinghong wrote: »

BTW I've heard a lot of folk here on boards.ie disparaging places in Roscommon liek castlerea and ballinaderreen and boyle, saying they're some of the worst towns in Ireland to live in.?

Like many rural towns in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger - mad planning destroyed much of their character and charm:(, not to mention all those ghost estates:rolleyes:

bbam

jinghong wrote: »

I believe there comes a time when the benefits of having a car are outwieghed by the drawbacks, and one of the biggest drawbacks is planning your life so you're dependent on a car and when the costs get prohibitive life is a whole lot tougher than if you burned your bridges and went without now. That forces you to make choices that mean you dont feel pain when the time comes.

right now I'll keep it, but its only for driving around the country to visit customers from time to time

OK so I'll probably get a ban for this...
Talk of living outside a town in rural Ireland and running a mini farm is fine.. Doing this and not having a car is going to be impossible..
Rural Ireland is fully dependent on having private transport.. Car or tractor but you're not going to manage with a few bikes..it just can't be done.

You'll be paying to have everything delivered/collected to/from your plot

Forcing pain on your family now because there might be pain in the future is absurd..

And if 4k outside a town is already too much it will considerably reduce your options of getting an affordable property... Affordable properties with any land in rural Ireland are usually only affordable because they're miles and miles from the nearest civilization.

Sorry to be so negative but it's the reality..

jinghong

Well you would be dead right if there was a distance to cover. But I have seen properties in my range within 1-2km of population centres of 500+ ppl. Going more than distance is out of the question, even if it means not being able to get the land. I wouldnt mind having a few acres further out with some cattle and a woodlot, separate from our house, garden and wintering sheds. That would be somewhat workable. But living away from things like a school and community centre, football pitch etc, thats not on for us. Another big no no is living on a road that is unsafe to walk into town on, so it would either need to be a minor road with light traffic, or have a footpath. When I grew up we moved from a small village to the country side when I was 10. Despite the fact that both my parents had cars, this was a noticable step back for me in quality of life terms. I had to be driven everywhere. The car didnt make up for it at all. Living in the village, I was rarely in a car.

BTW our main motivation is not to be close to places where we comsume things, it's to be close to people who we can sell things. We're looking at doing some small enterprise which we won't decide on till we find out what theres a local demand for, as we can see a trend for consumption and trade becoming more localized.

BTW I'm surprised at the sense of slavery to the motor car on here. 50 years ago we wouldnt have been having this conversation. Unfortunately our current economic trajectory looks like it might throw us back further than that

20silkcut

It was one of the great mistakes of western society in the 20th century the total eradication of the horse and indeed to a lesser extent the bicycle as a viable mode of transport.
They should have left lanes for bicycles and horses criss crossing the country side seperate to the paved road network and away from that damned Garda traffic Corp.
I see travellers bombing around the place on sulkys and small traps probably not much slower than a car on short journeys.
No tax , no insurance , no nct, no alcohol limit, no fuel, bar a bale of hay every now and then, a lot to be said for it.
But the roads are too lethal for it.

jinghong

1 million people gave up driving in the uk in the last year. What we need is another 1970's style oil shock to wake people up. And it cant be ruled out with the stuff going on in the middle east.

But you're right. The roads are to dangerous with cars for using horses and the like...for now

Tora Bora

20silkcut wrote: »

It was one of the great mistakes of western society in the 20th century the total eradication of the horse and indeed to a lesser extent the bicycle as a viable mode of transport.
They should have left lanes for bicycles and horses criss crossing the country side seperate to the paved road network and away from that damned Garda traffic Corp.
I see travellers bombing around the place on sulkys and small traps probably not much slower than a car on short journeys.
No tax , no insurance , no nct, no alcohol limit, no fuel, bar a bale of hay every now and then, a lot to be said for it.
But the roads are too lethal for it.

But your horse has to have a nappy these days:D

Birdnuts

20silkcut wrote: »

It was one of the great mistakes of western society in the 20th century the total eradication of the horse and indeed to a lesser extent the bicycle as a viable mode of transport.
They should have left lanes for bicycles and horses criss crossing the country side seperate to the paved road network and away from that damned Garda traffic Corp.
I see travellers bombing around the place on sulkys and small traps probably not much slower than a car on short journeys.
.

Those horses certainly move faster then cars within 10-15 miles of Dublin CC

Tonyandthewhale

Get a cargo bike op. Or a faired recumbent, or both, or build some combination of the two if you're feeling handy.
Cars rule because they've become the status quo not because they're by any means better than bikes or better yet a bike combined with an adequate public transport system (don't expect that in Roscommon).

A car will cost you a few hundred euro a month at the very least and as you know that price is going to skyrocket in the next few years. It's better to be ahead of the game, ease yourself into a car free lifestyle now rather than keep a car as the price goes up and up and hang on until you can't afford it anymore and you realised you've wasted untold thousands.

Critics of the car free life-style tend to be the people who know more about cars than bikes. There's things you need to know about using the right bike for the job, wearing the right clothes for the conditions, riding it properly (position and sizing for maximised comfort and speed) and safety considerations but it's no more complicated than using a car, just a different skill set. Growing up my parents had a car but I relied on my bike for most journeys from a very early age and was one of the most independent kids in the village and now as an adult buying a car would constitute a huge drop in my living standards due to spiralling costs, stress of traffic, drastically reduced life-expectancy, a reliance on others to fix it if anything goes wrong and a huge waste of time as travel becomes dead time rather doubling as exercise and me time.

If someone comes up with a super cheap reliable electric car that costs nothing to run or to park and never brakes down to the degree that you can't fix with an allen key and which prevents depression and cardiovascular disease then you can switch back to cars then and you won't have missed anything.

The fact that you're running a farm probably makes things a bit more challenging (I'm not a regular here, I just stumbled upon the thread from the homepage) but I don't think it's insurmountable. A tractor would be more useful than a car and arranging deliveries every now and then when you need something big is always going to be more economoical than keeping a car full time that you only use every few months. There are problems with relying on a bike as your primary source of transport but the solution is very rarely a privately owned motor car.

jinghong

There are problems with relying on a bike as your primary source of transport but the solution is very rarely a privately owned motor car.

+1

crackcrack30

The life/lifestyle you are looking for is to be found in east clare, go and explore for a week............scarriff, whitegate, mountshannon, drumindoora, feakle ............start here - greenvalleyproperties.ie

scub

You'd need to ensure that the nearest town had a co-op or decent hardware store in it if you are going to bike it. There are a lot of nice villages near me but you'd have a fair hike to buy something other than milk or the paper.

A few rolls of sheep wire and posts carried home on the bike would keep you fit, i'd hate to get home and realise i'd forgotten the nails

jinghong

crackcrack30 wrote: »

The life/lifestyle you are looking for is to be found in east clare, go and explore for a week............scarriff, whitegate, mountshannon, drumindoora, feakle ............start here - greenvalleyproperties.ie

I'm open to that too, having plenty of friends closeby in Gort already. Why say you east clare is a good spot? Land prices look reasonable alright, thats for sure

jinghong

scub wrote: »

You'd need to ensure that the nearest town had a co-op or decent hardware store in it if you are going to bike it. There are a lot of nice villages near me but you'd have a fair hike to buy something other than milk or the paper.

A few rolls of sheep wire and posts carried home on the bike would keep you fit, i'd hate to get home and realise i'd forgotten the nails

Good point, thats going down on the checklist

crackcrack30

Worked there for a while, beautiful landscape, lakes, hills, privacy but most of all a way slower pace of life + u are usually in east clare because u want/need to be there , not many people passing thru as its off the beaten track - blocked by hills to the north i.e south galway & lough derg & shannon to the east ,burren to the west so get ur bikes down there you will be impressed..............