(under 400 acres ain't a ranch)
If you can get the mineral rights, do so. A lot of land sold today in Texas is just the surface rights, many sellers maintain the mineral rights due to the amount of oil/gas exploration going on.
I enjoyed that book.I highly recommend reading this book:
Starting A New Life In Rural America: 21 Things You Need to Know Before You Make Your Move: Ragnar Benson: 9781581604931: Amazon.com: Books
It is not Texas specific but it will definitely help you out.
This... Unless you are planning on farming or ranching as a business, you don't want the ag exemption. If you end up with land that is ag exempt and you can't prove agricultural production then you'll end up loosing it and paying rollback taxes from the last 5 years. Open spaces is more lenient.What you'd be looking for would be the 'open spaces' exemption (google it), unless you are looking at full time farming
Raising miniature donkeys doesn't countYeah, I pretty much reject everything about this statement. I challenge anyone to come up and see my operation and tell me that it's not a ranch.
This... Unless you are planning on farming or ranching as a business, you don't want the ag exemption. If you end up with land that is ag exempt and you can't prove agricultural production then you'll end up loosing it and paying rollback taxes from the last 5 years. Open spaces is more lenient.
Raising miniature donkeys doesn't count
AGs not hard to keep if it's already there. Get a couple cows or a goat, hell pecan trees can qualify(but beef tastes better). HEB ain't got shit on a home grown steer, you'll learn to hate store bought meat.
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I got lucky being from out of state and buying. I reserched it before and made sure that it was more then 10 acres, far from a town so it woudn't be in a city limits and limit my use. I wanted a place to shoot too and that I have. I wanted a place away from the large cities with there "emissions sniffers" . I wanted to be able to on occasion burn things which I can. I wanted a place that is not easily visiable and not on the main road, has plenty of trees and great fencing. I guess the only thing that didn't happen was that my tank...is dry most of the time. It was full when we made the offer and empty when we moved in. I was told to large 40 lb catfish were in it and must of disturbed the bottom. I found their bones and maybe this was so but seldom had enough rain to fill it and it drains out. Happy after moving from the 3rd worst city for crime to central Texas.