Somehow, after about 8 years of looking, my husband and I found a house we could both be happy with. Let me tell you, it isn't easy to find a house when I'm insistent on buying a place where I can keep the horses and my husband wants it in a specific small town. I can't tell you how many crappy, old farm houses we've seen in the past few years. Enough so that we could make up rules about looking at them, like: If you can close your eyes and walk across the floor without falling it's pretty good, if the river in the basement has a current that's pretty bad.
Want to know how we found it? Sure you do. Craigslist. No kidding, I put up an ad that we were looking for a house with land and this guy responded to it. Comes out the house was around the corner from the one we were renting, 2 miles from where the horses are now. Another interesting detail: The house was built for a distant cousin of my husband by another group of his cousins. Small world.
But guess what? If you're buying a house with acreage the banks can't deal. Maybe in Wyoming they can, but here in central New York if you've got more than 2 acres they freak out and screw you on the mortgage. Apparently they're afraid that if we default they won't be able to sell the place. Jerks.
Also, be very, very wary of gas leases. Banks don't want to mortgage properties with gas leases, period. Our place had a gas lease and the seller had to get out of it before we could get a mortgage. Apparently this wasn't a problem a couple of years ago but now it is, so if you are a landowner and you think you might want to sell someday- don't get a gas lease (not to mention there's a whole slew of environmental reasons why you shouldn't do it either).
So we own a house - with almost 30 acres, most of which needs to cleared before we can use it - so we've been kind of busy lately. Fortunately my first, sacrifice, pasture is nearly ready.
There are some dips and holes in the field that need to be filled in, the run-in needs a few boards, the t-posts need caps, and I need to get some hay but I'm sure I can get those done and bring the horses home early next month. I just have to figure out how I'm going to get them here!