[abbey_tor_acres]

I mostly post on the homemaking sites. so you probably don't know us as well as they do.

We just don't know what to do!!! we bought our 23 (all wooded)acres 4 years ago. and have been steadily making progress toward moving there. We've fenced a good bit of it; have built a pole barn, a couple of sheds, and had a road graded; and recently moved a used double wide waiting to be fixed up there. And we have our goats there. We still haven't been able to afford a well and septic but that was going to be next.

Our place is 700' wide (hwy frontage) at the front but narrows to 250' at the back and is long (1/2 mi) and skinny. a developer bought 140 acres that wraps like an 'L' around the back of our place and down one side. It has always been wild, hunting, etc with steep ravines and rivers at the bottom. the guy and the county want to put a county road down the length of our side so the 131 houses can have access.

This has been keeping me up nights!! just think--We'll be having 300+- cars zooming up and down the full length of our place all hours of the day and night. Not to mention the trash they'll be throwing out their windows and the music they'll be playing. We probably won't ever see another deer. :Bawling: :Bawling: :Bawling:

They have a hearing scheduled for mid-august. And we plan to talk to the neighbors about it but since it doesn't really affect them I don't know how to get them motivated to show up and object.

Please, any suggestions??

Thanks!

Vicki

 

[Cabin Fever]

Aren't you glad that you didn't cut your trees for a "view?" As I said in a previous thread, if at all possible "own your view" because development does happen next door.

 

[abbey_tor_acres]

thanks for the smile!! You are right! Thankfully we haven't done any cutting around the edges of the property.

Seriously, we do have a path that we like to walk that goes from the hwy all the way to the back so we can get our 1 mi daily walk. The last 100 feet or so is along the top of a steep hill/mountain. The access road is actually on the side of the mountain. I'm afraid the county will claim right of way and take our flat mountain area for their road.

Vicki

 

[hillsidedigger]

Unless you can buy them out, there is likely little that can be done to stop the development.

There is a pandemic of such residential development all over here in western North Carolina. The county I live in with only 280 thousand total acres has been assaulted with 15 thousand acres of new small lot subdivisions in the last couple of years. Almost everyone, particularly the county commisioners, builders and realtors, are stongly in favor of the trend.

You know, the federal and state governments have bought-up some land to remain wild during the last century but here in the Southern Appalachians, they did not get enough for the area to retain a considerable wild character.

Now, there is additional legislation in North Carolina for the state to buy more wild areas but the land now cost 100 times or more what it cost 30 to 40 years ago. To bad, they didn't buy more then.

Welcome to the crowded future.

The trend graphically illustrated:

http://www.ctnc.org/downloads/nc housing density maps.pdf

 

[abbey_tor_acres]

No, we don't have the money. the cost has tripled per acre since we bought our place five years ago.

It probably wouldn't bother me so much if we were wider and more squarish but we didn't want to live close to the hwy so we cleared for the house about halfway down the property. There is about 100 feet give or take 25 feet between the house and the to-be location of the county road.

 

[HeavenHelpMe]

Hope that the currently precarious housing market crumbles completely? :shrug: I don't know how SC is on it's housing market right now, though.

The more productive thing to do if this really bothers you, is to get a current appraisal on your place and sell out before you can't. Maybe the developer is interested. You could ask him at the meeting.

Personally, if it was me who had to live next to all that construction and then suburban waste, I'd lose my mind. We're probably next, just because I said that! LOL

 

[bill not in oh]

Including the visitors that these new residents will undoubtedly have that's probably somewhere in the neighborhood (pun intended) of 5-600 potential customers for your dogs, goats/goat products, chickens/eggs, produce, firewood and anything else you decide to produce and sell.

 

[caberjim]

This was my first thought as well - all those customers I could sell fresh, local food to.

 

[hillsidedigger]

"Hope that the currently precarious housing market crumbles completely?"

That might happen many places but when close to 20 million Floridians look for the nearest high ground, NW South Carolina, NE Georgia and Western North Carolina is what they see

and the local Chamber of Commerce folks gleefully predict that several counties around here which currently number only in the tens of thousands of residents may within 5 to 10 years have hundreds of thousands of residents and in a case or 2 possibly reaching nearly a million.

 

[gilberte]

Yup, your paradise ain't gonna be what you envisioned when you bought it, and chances are, there ain't much you're gonna be able to do about it except hope you can find another site and pray that the developers ain't got their sights set on it in the near future.

Now go encourage those posters who want em' a dozen+ chil'ren

 

[Rocky Fields]

Hey.

Find a rare or endangered species on the land. That would block construction. Wetlands might block construction also.

Odds are against you stopping them. Wait until the project is finished. If you don't like how things turned out, sell your land to a developer and make a large profit. Then go find yourself another dream parcel, but much larger than 23 acres for more bufferzone.

RF

 

[crashy]

Demand that the developer puts up a fence thats what we had to do but we only had to deal with 30 homes. It really you know whats but you can make the best of it or sell.

 

[fin29]

Are you zoned rural/agricultural? If so, very carefully construct 10-12 pig pens along your road frontage and load them up with hogs as soon as the realtor sign goes up to sell the lots. Might want to free range about 250 tom turkeys just behind them for good measure.

It's true about the customer base, though. I picture hooking up a horse and cart and hauling eggs, veggies, pastries, fresh cut flowers, coolers of meat, etc. around that subdivision every Wednesday and Saturday morning. A little bell on the side like the milk man...

There are upsides to neighbors.

 

[LittleRedHen]

we bought our property before a subdivision was put in. I knew that one was going up but I didn't think about it at the time. But then they put in their road and it went right along our property edge. Then cars started driving down the road and i watched them look right into our sliding glass window at night whe nthe lights were on. I realized my privacy was gone. We built 350 feet off the main road and expected privacy. But with the subdivision road, it was as if we only built 100 feet off the road. Our property is 230 feet wide and our house is in the middle and its tilted to where it shows off our kitchen to the private road.. which is open to the living room so you can pretty much see everything if i dont have our blinds shut. You can even see inside during the day if its late afternoon and the sun is coming in just right.

Thankfully though in the last 7 years we have only had one person buy property. Its a 10 lot subdivision. But they do have a lot of visitors. Plus they drive back and forth a lot too. Retired people tend to drive around a lot apparently. The wife is friendly but the guy just speeds up and down the road and doesn't seem to pay attention to anything on the road. But thankfuly my kids and animals have never gone over into the road and we haven't had problems.

So maybe you will get lucky like me.... and no one really wants to move in. The market isn't encouraging for people to buy up property. Plus once some people see chickens running around the yard plus see a pen with pigs in them, they decide they want to find another piece of property

 

[Ken Scharabok]

If you do have to purchase elsewhere look for something which has something like national forests on at least three sides.

That road will also make your property more valuable as it gives ready access it it for homesites.

Likely your property taxes may go up so see if your state has somethings like a Woodland Program which offers lower taxes in exchange for your agreeing to essentially not clear-cut.

And, as noted above, think of ways to potentially generate income from the new property owners.

 

[gilberte]

If you're grubbin' for money and looking for an expanded customer base, maybe. If you're looking for serenity and peace, it don't take long for a few neighbors to become too many.

 

[bill not in oh]

we bought our property before a subdivision was put in. I knew that one was going up but I didn't think about it at the time. But then they put in their road and it went right along our property edge. Then cars started driving down the road and i watched them look right into our sliding glass window at night whe nthe lights were on. I realized my privacy was gone.

Bamboo...

 

[beowoulf90]

I don't know if this has been suggested yet, but you might want to hold on to the property.

I wouldn't do any more improvements until you know for certain that the development is going in. If it is, then you have 2 options from my point of view.
1. Deal with it and continue to make it your homestead.
2. Sell it and find another piece of property. You should be able to get a better price for it then you paid and have invested into it up to this point.

I don't think trying to cause the developer to change his mind or trying to keep potential buyers from buying the housing lots/homes will work. I've seen idiots build beside pigs farms and the sue the farmer for the stench. Of course the liberal courts agree with the idiots who built their house next to a pig farm, even though the farm had been there for well over 100 years. The farmers are now gone and their acreage is now developed...It just goes to show that those with the money win, not the honest working folk.. I know it sounds cynical, but it has been what I've seen in this area that was once known for it's farming communities (Lancaster County, PA). Yes there are still farms here, but some are large scale production farm run by large corporations, but there are fewer family farms now then there was 20 years ago.

 

[Silvercreek Farmer]

If you don't already have animals out there, I would throw some out in a hurry, even borrow some if need be, to make it harder for people to complain down the road....

 

[Highground]

Hold off on the well and septic.
You'll probably be hooking up to water and sewer after all the new houses are built.
Don't you love progress?