Blog > Buying Agricultural Land in Indian River County
If you are planning to purchase agricultural land in Indian River County, you need to watch this video! We’ve come up with some tips and tricks that you need to know before buying land.
For more information call us today at 772-732-3774!
Today we are talking about something that I am super excited about, super passionate about, it’s close to my heart and that’s AG land! Ummm.. The reason I’m so excited is that we are in the process of starting our very own commercial Bamboo farm in Fellsmere, Florida. We bought our property about two years ago. Yeah, it takes a while to get things going but we want to share some tips and tricks with you when you are considering the purchase of agricultural land. We will tell you everything we’ve learned. There are some important things to know before you even get started.
When you’re looking at land you’re going to take a look at the difference between agricultural and residential. If you’re just looking for land to put a house on and not grow any crops or have any livestock, residential might be more appropriate for you, but if you’re looking to grow some crops or even have some livestock on the property, you’re going to want to be looking at an agricultural or residential agricultural land.
Things to know when Buying Agricultural Land
1. Benefits of Buying Agricultural Land
Tax Benefits
Tax benefits that you get when you grow something on your property, and you’ve got a bona fide agricultural business, something you can prove, you hit huge tax breaks. I mean we’re talking you know a couple of hundred dollars, versus thousands of dollars. The government wants to reward those who are entrepreneurial and who are also growing something that can be beneficial to our society, whether it’s food or plants.
Permit
When you have an agricultural property you don’t have to get a permit for every little thing like you would on a residential property. If you’re going to make some electrical changes on an outbuilding or you’re going to build an outbuilding, you don’t need to have a permit for those. It’s important to do it correctly because it could cause problems down the road, but you can sort of bypass that permitting procedure on an agricultural property. Sure, you want to build a sound structure, obviously, but you know if you buy your agricultural land and there’s not a residence on the property, you don’t have to have a permit for your barn and you could build a nice barn even with a bathroom now. Bathrooms will require a septic permit, that’s important, but for the building itself and the concrete, no permits are needed.
2. Wetlands
Wetlands must be honored, you cannot just dig them out and call it your pond or your swimming pool. So how do you find out if it’s a wetland? You could check the flood map and you can find that online. It’s important that you know about wetlands and do your research before you buy agricultural land or residential agricultural land because if you’ve got a wetland right in the middle of it and that’s where you want to put your house, it’s really tough to have it reclassified. In some cases you can have wetlands reclassified, but it’s not an easy feat, nor quick and it’s important too because we need to preserve these wetlands. We’ve got a lot of building going on all over the country here in Florida, we have to preserve nature as much as we can so we’re all for the preservation of the wetlands and just make sure that you do your due diligence and research the property if it’s got wetlands. It may not be to your liking or then again it may be in an acceptable location to your property and your design, and it might work and nobody will ever be able to build on it. Another thing is you could buy a piece of property that’s next to wetlands nobody is ever going to be able to build there. Maybe you can also use that in your negotiations and get a better price because it has wetlands but you need to talk to somebody about that like us.
3. Digging a Pond
Now if you’re driving around you’ve been looking at agricultural land you’ve probably noticed that there’s a pond somewhere on that property near the house. If it’s got a house or even an outbuilding then there’s a reason why, because the dirt that’s used from that pond is used to build up the pad that the outbuilding or the house is built on now. There are some really important things to know before you go out and you just start shoveling out a pond.
Number one is you’re going to want to get it engineered. The engineer is going to tell you the slope, the grade, and the pitch of the pond like the cut fill rate. Your digger is gonna know and needs to know how much dirt comes out of the pond because all that dirt has to remain on the property. You cannot take that dirt off the property somewhere else, that’s a no-no, so keep the dirt on your property, but you’re not going to want to go out and buy dirt if you don’t have to. Use that dirt to build up your roads and the pad for your house. It’s really nice to be able to do that plus, dirt’s expensive.
We’ve got a pond we dug. We’ve already got fish in there. Birds come and swim in it. We’ve got some nice grasses that are growing around the edge and now it’s pretty. We have a little gator in it too, he’s little right now.
4. Drainage
Drainage, you need it unless you don’t have it, and then it’s a mucky mess so you have to have drainage where the water is going to go. Probably some will go back into your pond or you’re going to have it run into nearby ditches and canals. It’s something you’re going to need to think about is drainage culvert pipes in the direction of the water.
5. Dig a Well
You gotta dig a well. You can’t just call the county and give them your deposit and have them flip the water on. Now where you’re gonna get your water from, is gonna come from the ground. Luckily, here in Florida, we’ve got these beautiful aquifers underneath the ground and we can draw our water from there but there are some important things to know about that and there are some different depths that are going to affect the quality of that water. If you’re shallow you’re usually going to get some kind of rusty water and if you go too deep you might get saltwater. You want to make sure you test your water if you’re growing crops or you’re using it for your livestock. Test your water before you start using it. We recently did that. We found that our well was just a little bit too deep. We’ve got more sodium in our water than we’d really like. It’s not going to be good for the plants so we’ve got to remedy that by pulling it up. Our personal well is 500 feet deep, they’re going to drop rocks and concrete and stop it and then bring it up about 450 feet, and fingers crossed, we’ll have good water.
6. Septic
Septic is super important because the poo’s got to have a place to go. We want to keep the environment clean and healthy and this is something that you do need a permit for. Your septic person will be able to help you with all the permits. For some reason, you haven’t built your barn and it’s gonna have a bathroom in it. If you haven’t built that up high enough or your residence isn’t up high enough, you’re going to have to have a lift station. It will cost you a little bit more money. What a lift station does is it uses electricity to run off of, which is the next thing we’re going to talk about. What it’ll do is it’ll take your poo and puts it in a tank and then the electricity is used to power a pump that pumps it into a higher elevated septic tank because water obviously doesn’t run uphill so that’s why you have that pump that’s called a lift station. It’s not like out of the ground and you can’t see it or anything like that. It’s not ugly, it’s just a hump of dirt.
7. Electricity
Electricity is also not just flipping a switch. It took us about a year to get it. We have FPL here and it takes some time and it costs a little bit of money. When you’re looking at a piece of property, look around and see if you’ve got a power pole anywhere near that property. The power pole is a big long post with a light on it and has power. So if you don’t have one near you, you’re going to have power brought in down the street or something, and guess who’s going to pay for that? Not FPL. You’re going to pay for it. So here’s the thing, if you have to bring power into your property and other properties are around you that are vacant that are eventually going to be sold, you might be able to share in the cost. You could be the first guy to get the poll and then when your surrounding neighbors are ready, you can divide up the cost with them. It is kind of a handshake deal or you could be rude and not share at all, but you know that’s not a nice way to start. If your neighbors want power, they’re going to need to feed off your pole, and then you can say you know either pay me some money or get your own power.
There is a big opportunity to save some money here if you want to do some of the work yourself. FPL quoted us ten grand to come and set the power pole. Then we had 10 acres in front of us, so they were going to run the power line underground. It’s like 600 feet to us and then we had a few hundred more feet till we got to our transformer. We opted to go pick up all that piping that runs underground ourselves and have the trenching done and that saved us about five grand.
8. Variables
You got to know your variables. There are going to be variables when you’re purchasing a property. I mean this is a lot different than just thinking about extra builders stuff. You are gonna have to think about builders if you’re buying a residential property, which is only on a quarter acre or an eighth of an acre, but we’re talking about land here which is a whole different lifestyle. So here are some of the variables. Number one is land clearing. You’re clearing a lot of land here, and that’s going to be expensive so take that into consideration. Number two, you’re going to want a tractor or a golf cart to get around. A tractor is obviously going to be used to move dirt and to be digging trenches. If you need some insight on a kind of tractor, I’ve done a ton of research on them and we’ve got one that we really like, so I’d be happy to share that information with you. The next one is you’re going to need more equipment and bigger equipment tools. Your little weed whacker isn’t going to work anymore, your little lawnmower is not going to work anymore. You’re going to bust your back so you’re going to need bigger, more efficient tools. Fencing, yes fencing, is a big one especially if you’re going to have any livestock. You’ve got the cost to maintain the livestock and take care of them or even with row crops you’re going to have the cost of irrigation. Irrigation is huge, you have to be able to water your plants. Last, but not least, have some fun! Gotta have some fun. That’s what we’re doing out here, we’re here not only to provide for our family and to be more self-sufficient, but I want to be completely off the grid. We’re not quite there yet, but we want to have fun, so we went out and we bought ourselves a side by side. You might want to do the same thing. You might want some dirt bikes. Who knows you might want some guns and some clay pigeons. These are things you can do when you have your own land that you can’t do in the neighborhood or in the city. Do your due diligence, make your list, whatever, write down your list and add at least 10 grand more. One of our friends said “everything costs at least ten grand” and we’re finding that to be true.
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