Considerations when buying a Rural Property near Albuquerque

(Transcript Snippet):

“Tracy:

Let’s talk about rural properties. Yes.

Tego:

I’ve got some, I’ve got some great notes on that because with the way the market has been Tracy, you know, people are starting to look out a little further, maybe because of COVID people are going, you know, I need a little more elbow room. I want to move out. I want to get out of the city. And, you know, around Albuquerque, we have a lot of good options.

Tracy:

And some people know that they don’t have to go back to work in a building. They can work from anywhere. So we’re seeing people take advantage, move out a little bit further because they don’t have to do the daily commute.

Tego:

The commute is not as important anymore. So first off, Tracy, what are, what are, if somebody’s thinking about first off, let’s talk about the areas of the Metro Albuquerque that we kind of call rural areas. What would you say?

Tracy:

Well, Edgewood, Moriarty, Berlin, really all the East mountains, all of the East mountains, they’re rural, you know, there’s also Santa Fe area in Los Alamos area. And so, you know, to Espanola Ribeira up to Las Vegas, you know, just whatever rural properties there might be. Yeah.

Tego:

It’s just kind of, you just start getting out outside the Metro itself. Yeah. Some of the rural properties

Tracy:

We’re talking about might be in a town versus out in the country.

Tego:

Well, you think about the South Valley or Valley farms as we call it, there’s some great rural properties down there. There’s Corolla. So there’s the North Valley, which even though they’re kind of in the city, you still get that rural feel. Right. And you’re dealing with some of the things we’re about to talk about, which are you know, w what are you looking for, right. That would be the first consideration. Right. What would it be? It’d be, you know, do you need space for the animals?

Tracy:

Are you looking for barn storage, you have a hobby or collection, and you need that. Right. is it for animals? Is it for privacy? Is it just, you need a big view wide open spaces. Yep. Yeah. Sometimes we like what we grew up.

Tego:

I just need to make a side note. We have a home listed for sale in a Stanley right now, which is North of mariachi Moriarty, and it’s wide open spaces, but it was a 78 acres, a Homeland, 70 acres, all fenced. And yeah. So, I mean, there’s, you know, and really, that’s not that far you know, from Albuquerque. Right.

Tracy:

And you know, some of those properties are for farming, you know, especially the Estancia Valley. Right. They’ve got the Pinto beans, they’ve got sweet corn. There’s the whole pumpkin patch out there. So, so the other things that you want to think about on rural properties is what’s the water source. Is it private? Well, are you still in some sort of community water or is it, you know, city or village type water so they can vary.

Tego:

We do live in the desert and, you know, you have to figure out the water situation. And I I’ll hear people say, Oh, East mountains, you don’t want to go out there because you know, those Wells, those Wells have problems. Well, ease mountains is a huge area. So it just depends on where it is. And, and having somebody that’s familiar with the East mountain areas like Melissa Romero on our team, she grew up out there. She’s an expert in that, that part of the world. So Wells and or private water systems, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy:

What else? Power, you know, what, what is the power situation? Do you have reliable power and backup sometimes do you know, having backup generators are pretty important when you’re in a rural area, right. If a wind storm comes through and you lose power, it could be a couple of days when there’s only one person to fix the line for versus 10,000 people who are without power. You might not be top person on the totem pole.

Tego:

Yeah. And a lot of the close in areas, you know, South Valley, Los Lunas, you know, Valencia County East mountain, most of that is P and M still, except there is a central New Mexico electrical co-op,

Tracy:

There’s some rural collapsing, which,

Tego:

Which is more Torrance County and down in that area. So, yeah.

Tracy:

So the other thing you see in rural areas, Tego septic systems,

Tego:

Septic septic. So septic jet, I mean, obviously these areas we’re talking about that are kind of outside of the city have, you know, you see septics a lot. I can only think of some areas in the East mountains, like Pako has their own water treatment system, right. For the most part in the East mountains, you’re going to be having a septic.

Tracy:

Right. Right. And septics are, you know, they’ve been around a long time. They are pretty simple technology and they work, you just have to maintain them. And they work really well. The other things, you know, is there a natural gas, are you on some other form of propane propane, so propane tanks that you can lease or you can own, and having reliable companies, you know, you can get on a maintenance schedule for propane and that nice truck just comes down your road every once in a while and make sure that they top off your propane tank. So it’s, it doesn’t ever have to get too low.

Tego:

So a couple more things here, Tracy is the actual w when we sell a house, that’s in a subdivision subdivided neighborhood, you know, let’s call it track neighborhood development point. There we go. Thank you. You know, the survey, it’s pretty clear where the property lines are. You still need a property location report when you, when you sell the property. But when you’re out in the rural, you may want a state survey, right?

Tracy:

Yeah. Well,

Tego:

Put you on the spot here,

Tracy:

Do a stake survey for 70 acres. It’s going to cost a pretty penny. Right. some of, some of the land in the rural areas is by meets and bounds. And some of it’s, you know, just identified by markers and things, but it kind of depends, you know, why do people need a steak survey? A lot of it is because if there’s fences the fence lines, aren’t always on the property line.

Tego:

We’ve seen that in. It’s just one of those things when you’re, when you’re looking at a property that maybe is out there the survey’s going to be something that’s going to be a bigger consideration. And again, that’s in a, a subdivided neighborhood with, you know, block walls between each house.

Tracy:

We should get a surveyor to be on because we have this question come up a lot. Yeah.

Tego:

Yeah, the road. So a lot of times you’ll have private roads and, you know, who’s responsible for that. Who’s going to maintain it. You know, sometimes it’s public, sometimes it’s public. And if you’re in the mountains, maybe they don’t plow it. It’s like on the third tier of, of what gets plowed when it snows. That’s another thing you know, something we didn’t talk about when we were talking about water, Tracey was shared Wells. Let’s just hit on that real quick. Cause I think that’s that we do see quite a bit

Tracy:

So shared well is where, you know, to split the cost of putting in a, a very deep, well it might be that more than one house uses that one. Well, I’ve seen up to five, I think, in the East mountains on one. Well, so maybe one builder has five and they do one well, and they have it for all the properties. So typically what happens is the homeowners, each pay a portion of the electricity to pump the water up. But obviously the water’s free. Well, right. Well, equipment, right?

Tego:

So everybody shares in the cost.

Tracy:

The pump goes out, everybody shares in the cost of it.

Tego:

What’s the name of the neighborhood up here off the lose the road going up to Lulu’s in San Diego. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The one that has the community water system. So it’s a small, small, it’s not a big neighborhood. Vista something. I can’t think of it anyway. It, it has, you know, there’s maybe

Tracy:

50 homes

Tego:

In, you know, 50, some homes are built. Some are a lot, but it’s, you know, if you take the road up to Lulu’s toward, at the top going up toward Lou’s and you take the turn off, what’s the name of that neighborhood? It’s driving me crazy. Sorry, everybody. Okay. Tierra, Monte, thank you. So there’s that has its own private water system. It’s not really a shared well, but it is only, I don’t know how, what 50 properties in there, maybe something like that. Okay. All right. So loans, when you’re doing a loan in rural areas, there’s opportunities, but there’s also challenges. So the opportunity is USDA loans, right?

Tracy:

A hundred percent loan for rural areas to make sure that they have funding to buy those rural properties. One of the things that comes up is like speaking of water, some of the properties that we deal with have no water source. They just have holding tanks for water. And so they have what’s called hauled water, right? We’re a, literally a water truck comes in and fills up their tank every once in awhile. And a lot of the lenders, traditional lenders don’t lend on houses that have hauled water. So we have to get, you know, really talk to lenders to make sure that they cover those areas. But then also that it’s common for the area. So if all of a sudden you’re in the North Valley of Albuquerque and they don’t have a well, and they’re not on city water. And they say, no, we have hauled water, a tank. Nobody would lend on that because it’s not normal for the area. But if you go down to [inaudible] or Tory own, or you know, places that are a little bit rural, especially on South, is it 337 and South 14,

Tego:

I still call it South 14,

Tracy:

South 14, but there’s also three 37. They kind of come together down there. And your, your sorry. Yeah. But you know, hauled water is not uncommon in that area. So a lender would go, okay. Yes, but not every lender would do it. So a little due diligence there,

Tego:

Th the other thing on lending challenges, if you’re buying a a house with a large parcel, or maybe an additional parcel next to it, you may have some challenges. They may loan on the one parcel with the house on it, but they may not loan on an additional know parcel. Let’s say because it’s

Tracy:

Vacant land perhaps, and they don’t vent. They don’t have programs. Buying vacant land is hard to find loans. There’s only a couple and some of the credit unions that will,

Tego:

It is, it is definitely a challenge.