possum
Active Member
Ive really enjoyed reading the property tours forum. I figured I would join the club and start a thread about my place. Ill try to post pictures and give updates in the future.
To start off, how this all got started...
Ive always dreamed of owning land. Ever since I was a kid, I day dreamed about it. I remember drawing out maps in my spare time of what my perfect property looked like. The fantasy maps would show the small food plots, dove fields, orchards, ponds, creeks and roads. I begged my dad to sell our house in the suburbs and buy a farm out in the country. He tried to explain that he had a job in the city and we couldnt move, but he told me that maybe one day, we could save enough to buy a small hunting tract. I was probably 13 at the time.
Dad passed away from cancer when I was 18. That was 15 years ago. And then life happened. A couple years later I had a child, a house payment and a job in the suburbs. I guess you can say the dream of owning land died. In 2008 I made a big career change. I moved to the country and started my own business cleaning chimneys. We were dirt poor and another child came along in 2009. We were renting an old 1940s farm house for $50 a month, it was a wreck!. But I worked hard and my business grew! in 2012 we bought the little farm we were renting for $15,000. It was just an acre but it was in the mountains and it backed up to thousands of acres of national forest that is open to hunting all season.
As the business grew we were able to completely restore the little 1940s farm house into a beautiful home, paid for, free and clear! I hunted to woods behind my home and loved it! But something was missing. It was the deer camp experience I grew up with. Loading the truck for a weekend with friends and the deer camp. I missed that experience and wanted my kids (now 3 of them) to know what it was like too. Dont get me wrong, being able to walk out your back door and hunt thousands of acres is great and I still do it, but deer camp is something special!
So in 2015 my family and I joined a little hunting club in Wilkes county GA. 569 acres of pine timber land. Its less than two hours from our home here in the north Georgia mountains. We parked an old camper there and had a great time in the 2015 hunting season. My daughter got her first deer there!
I liked the area the club was in. It reminded me of the area me and my dad hunted back in the 90s. I also out of curiosity checked out land prices for Wilkes county online. Most of the land around there was pretty cheap. $1500-$2000 was an average. I was sitting at the camp fire one night when the idea (dream) I had as a kid came back to me. I wanted to buy some land! So I took out a home equity line of credit on our home and had $76,000 to go towards a land purchase.
Initially, I was thinking small. I figured with only $76,000 I would have to settle for 30 acres or so. something just big enough for a camp, a couple stands, maybe a small food plot. I checked out the land websites for months, nothing caught my eye enough to see in person. Until one night something did catch my eye... Wilkes county Ga- 78 acres- $750 an acre.
$750 an acre? something didnt sound right, thats too good to be true, I almost overlooked it because it was half price of other similar properties. IM GLAD I DIDNT! I texted the selling agent at 9pm, he replied back immediately and two days later I was meeting him at the property to check it out.
Of coarse like Ive always heard if something sounds to good to be true it probably is. There was of coarse a catch. The land was landlocked. No deeded access although there was a good road to get to it. The land was perfect though. It had a good mixture of mature hardwoods, pines and 8 year old select timber cut. Two big creeks, a duck pond and a couple food plots. Like all the hunting land real estate descriptions say "abundant wildlife" this place really had it all.
The land was deep in the woods, 1 mile through a family farm that had been broke up over the years so no one lived around it, no one hunted it and the other big neighbor was a 500 acre quality managed deer club.
I asked the agent the details about access and he told me the seller could not track down his family who owned the land the access road passed through. They lived in Atlanta and had not shown any desire in helping him sell his property. Three signatures was all that was needed to get the access road deeded and legal right of way. I met the seller that day, A very nice old black farmer. I asked him what the chances were of me tracking down his relatives and getting them to sign the papers? He mentioned I would have a better chance than him so I took that to mean there was a little family feuding going on.
I knew that just like the contract on a house, in Georgia, there is a 30 day due diligence period where I could back out of the contract. So after getting wife's approval, I signed the contract for his full asking price of $58,750. Its a good thing too because I later learned that after being on the market three days, the agent had gathered the seller three signed contracts all at or near full price. I feel like my meeting with the seller that day and talking about my dream of owning land and my family, It persuaded him to accept my offer over the others.
So I had thirty days to get three signatures or else I would have backed out of the contract.We started by tracking down two of the family members on facebook and messaging them. They did not respond. Next we talked to several other family members and found one who knew the three individuals and was actually meeting with one of them the next week. Long story short, after many many phone calls, emails, pleads and prayers, one day before the due diligence ran out, we had in our lawyers hand the notarized signatures granting us legal right of way to the property!
We closed on May 5th 2016. And its been an adventure ever since. Not a day goes by I dont thank God for this blessing He has given us.
Ill have to stop there for today. I will post more about the work Ive done over last 4 months, and hopefully will be posting stories of successful hunts coming in the near future!
Shawn
To start off, how this all got started...
Ive always dreamed of owning land. Ever since I was a kid, I day dreamed about it. I remember drawing out maps in my spare time of what my perfect property looked like. The fantasy maps would show the small food plots, dove fields, orchards, ponds, creeks and roads. I begged my dad to sell our house in the suburbs and buy a farm out in the country. He tried to explain that he had a job in the city and we couldnt move, but he told me that maybe one day, we could save enough to buy a small hunting tract. I was probably 13 at the time.
Dad passed away from cancer when I was 18. That was 15 years ago. And then life happened. A couple years later I had a child, a house payment and a job in the suburbs. I guess you can say the dream of owning land died. In 2008 I made a big career change. I moved to the country and started my own business cleaning chimneys. We were dirt poor and another child came along in 2009. We were renting an old 1940s farm house for $50 a month, it was a wreck!. But I worked hard and my business grew! in 2012 we bought the little farm we were renting for $15,000. It was just an acre but it was in the mountains and it backed up to thousands of acres of national forest that is open to hunting all season.
As the business grew we were able to completely restore the little 1940s farm house into a beautiful home, paid for, free and clear! I hunted to woods behind my home and loved it! But something was missing. It was the deer camp experience I grew up with. Loading the truck for a weekend with friends and the deer camp. I missed that experience and wanted my kids (now 3 of them) to know what it was like too. Dont get me wrong, being able to walk out your back door and hunt thousands of acres is great and I still do it, but deer camp is something special!
So in 2015 my family and I joined a little hunting club in Wilkes county GA. 569 acres of pine timber land. Its less than two hours from our home here in the north Georgia mountains. We parked an old camper there and had a great time in the 2015 hunting season. My daughter got her first deer there!
I liked the area the club was in. It reminded me of the area me and my dad hunted back in the 90s. I also out of curiosity checked out land prices for Wilkes county online. Most of the land around there was pretty cheap. $1500-$2000 was an average. I was sitting at the camp fire one night when the idea (dream) I had as a kid came back to me. I wanted to buy some land! So I took out a home equity line of credit on our home and had $76,000 to go towards a land purchase.
Initially, I was thinking small. I figured with only $76,000 I would have to settle for 30 acres or so. something just big enough for a camp, a couple stands, maybe a small food plot. I checked out the land websites for months, nothing caught my eye enough to see in person. Until one night something did catch my eye... Wilkes county Ga- 78 acres- $750 an acre.
$750 an acre? something didnt sound right, thats too good to be true, I almost overlooked it because it was half price of other similar properties. IM GLAD I DIDNT! I texted the selling agent at 9pm, he replied back immediately and two days later I was meeting him at the property to check it out.
Of coarse like Ive always heard if something sounds to good to be true it probably is. There was of coarse a catch. The land was landlocked. No deeded access although there was a good road to get to it. The land was perfect though. It had a good mixture of mature hardwoods, pines and 8 year old select timber cut. Two big creeks, a duck pond and a couple food plots. Like all the hunting land real estate descriptions say "abundant wildlife" this place really had it all.
The land was deep in the woods, 1 mile through a family farm that had been broke up over the years so no one lived around it, no one hunted it and the other big neighbor was a 500 acre quality managed deer club.
I asked the agent the details about access and he told me the seller could not track down his family who owned the land the access road passed through. They lived in Atlanta and had not shown any desire in helping him sell his property. Three signatures was all that was needed to get the access road deeded and legal right of way. I met the seller that day, A very nice old black farmer. I asked him what the chances were of me tracking down his relatives and getting them to sign the papers? He mentioned I would have a better chance than him so I took that to mean there was a little family feuding going on.
I knew that just like the contract on a house, in Georgia, there is a 30 day due diligence period where I could back out of the contract. So after getting wife's approval, I signed the contract for his full asking price of $58,750. Its a good thing too because I later learned that after being on the market three days, the agent had gathered the seller three signed contracts all at or near full price. I feel like my meeting with the seller that day and talking about my dream of owning land and my family, It persuaded him to accept my offer over the others.
So I had thirty days to get three signatures or else I would have backed out of the contract.We started by tracking down two of the family members on facebook and messaging them. They did not respond. Next we talked to several other family members and found one who knew the three individuals and was actually meeting with one of them the next week. Long story short, after many many phone calls, emails, pleads and prayers, one day before the due diligence ran out, we had in our lawyers hand the notarized signatures granting us legal right of way to the property!
We closed on May 5th 2016. And its been an adventure ever since. Not a day goes by I dont thank God for this blessing He has given us.
Ill have to stop there for today. I will post more about the work Ive done over last 4 months, and hopefully will be posting stories of successful hunts coming in the near future!
Shawn
