Can You Build a House on Agricultural Land?
What is Agricultural Land?
Agricultural land typically allows for raising livestock and growing and harvesting crops. In many cases, agricultural land allows for typical residential uses, like building a single-family home. Usually, agricultural land is relatively flexible, and most parcels of vacant, rural land fall into this category. Agricultural lands typically have a variety of properties, including:
Farms
For zoning purposes, farms get defines as land used to rearing animals and growing crops for a profit. There are endless types of farms, like crop, fish, dairy, poultry, and meat farms. No matter the type of farm, the farmers make, raise, or grow these products to sell for economic gain. These landowners rely on their farms to survive.
Ranches
Ranches are places where livestock gets grazed and raised to produce meat and other animal products. Ranchers typically raise animals in range conditions, like a cattle ranch. They also herd livestock to help them graze more efficiently. Like farmers, ranchers raise these animals as a primary way to get income, and they rely on their ranches for their livelihood.
Homesteads
Homesteads typically combine many of the same uses as ranches and farms; however, the term homestead refers to the owner’s house and its surrounding land and is usually owned by a family. If you’re thinking about purchasing agricultural property to live off the land, homesteading is likely your best bet. Unlike farmers, homesteaders usually want to create a self-sustaining lifestyle by living off what they can produce on the land.
Hobby farms
Agricultural land also gets used for hobby farms. Unlike regular farms, these ones are for recreation or pleasure. They don’t make a living from their farm (most of the time) as farmers do, but they still use the land for an agricultural purpose
What to Understand About Agricultural Land
Here are some crucial issues to understand before you buy agriculturally zoned land to build a house on:
Zoning and Tax Laws, Water Rights, and Covenants
Buying agricultural land to build a home on is different than doing so in other residential areas. You (and your real estate agent) should be familiar with farmland and things like soil makeup and water rights. Water access and rights can be a deal breaker if you are planning on farming the land. Agricultural zoning is intended to protect farming activities and farmland from non-farm uses, and it conserves and protects open land uses to foster growth in rural areas and prevent conflicts from urban Buying agricultural land.
However, this doesn’t mean that all agricultural land is limited to farm use. Properties like churches, utilities, schools, hospitals, offices, feed stores, kennels, etc., are often allowed to inhabit agricultural land. But, if you’re buying agriculturally zoned land to build a house on, you have to be comfortable living next to farms that might raise livestock.
Disclaimer: This article was originally published on https://millmanland.com/company-news/build-a-house-on-agricultural-land/