Are you dreaming of moving to a rural location in northwest Arkansas? If you’re coming from a more urban life, there are things worth considering. One of those things is hiring a buyer’s agent with Arkansas rural life experience.
People want to move to the country for a lot of reasons. There’s more to making the leap from urban to rural than you might expect, and a good agent who is familiar with the transition can help minimize surprises. You’ll have less to fear of the unknown. I’ve been living the rural life for twenty years and have never regretted the move!
The WHY Matters
Why you want to get out of the city and back to the land makes a difference in what kinds of properties you might want to see. The first step of a consultation with me is to tell me about your dreams, what you want to experience. And how much you want to spend to realize those dreams.
Then we’ll talk about what’s available in your price range, and how rural you want to go. This will have an impact on the assessment of the kinds of skills you’ll need in your wheelhouse. The more you know how to do for yourself, the more successful you will be farther away from a population center. By skills I mean carpentry, plumbing, electrical, first aid, etc.
The sky is the limit if the budget also has no limit. Here’s a marketing flyer for 408 acres with Kings riverfront, a home, and several outbuildings. This is located out of town but near Berryville and with that many acres, your privacy and quiet is guaranteed. On the other end of extremes, you can pick up 5 acres that needs work for $35K. In between, there are a lot of price ranges and features to choose from.
Rural Life is Different from Urban Life
If you choose a property in a rural town, there will be adjustments, but not as many as would be if going really remote. Most of the professional jobs are in the larger cities which are farther away, so it will mean longer commutes if working away from home.
The major cities with larger hospitals (or any hospital at all) are in the metro corridor of northwest Arkansas (Fayetteville, Springdale, Lowell, Rogers, and Bentonville). These cities are still probably small by comparison if you’re moving from a location like Dallas or Chicago, though.
We have many even smaller cities and tiny towns in our rural areas of Madison, Carroll, and Newton counties. Between those, there are large swaths of farmland and wilderness.
The Degree of Rural Makes a Difference
The farther away from towns you go, the more you’ll need to know how to do on your own. It can be very difficult to hire help to do things if you’re several miles away from the nearest pavement.
My husband and I are six miles away from the nearest paved road, and twelve miles from the nearest small town (pop. ~ 500). Ambulances cannot get to our house, so we either have to drive to the ER or meet the ambulance or helicopter in a nearby location. Since it’s difficult to impossible to hire anyone to come to our location to do work, any work that needs to be done, we do ourselves.
Electricity and water are also points to consider. Many of the very rural properties have neither. Our household has a gravity-feed spring water system and solar, although we do have commercial power here. A well can get expensive if water can even be accessed. This area does receive enough rainfall to make a rainwater catchment, and there are usually tank filling stations in our small rural towns for those that want to haul water.
Your Agent Can Be a Resource
A buyer’s agent is important for opening doors, negotiating on your behalf, handling contracts and the process of making a real estate purchase. They can get you the information on local schools, shopping, and hospitals. But when it comes to a urban-to-rural move, there’s more that only an agent with that specialty experience can do.
A buyer’s agent with Arkansas rural life experience has a knowledge base that can’t be gained otherwise. I’m always happy to share everything I’ve learned about living far from the pavement with my buyers. If they have questions, I’m here to help get answers. That’s true even long after the signatures have dried.
If you want an agent with insider information on living a rural life, one who is going to go the extra mile to make sure you’re going to adjust and settle in with confidence, give me a call, text, or email.
madison@wildozark.com
(479) 409-3429
Or, just fill out the form below and I’ll reach out to you!
P.S. I’m also available to help with listing your rural property, whether off-pavement or in our rural northwest Arkansas towns. You can still use the form above to give me your contact information for that.
How much will it cost for me to be your agent?
It’s 3% of the purchase price, due at closing.
Some sellers will pay this, sometimes they’ll only pay a portion of it, and others pay none at all. You can request to see only properties where sellers are paying. In this case, before booking appointments, I’d contact the listing agent to ask.
We’ll always ask for it in any offers, regardless. But in the end, if the seller isn’t paying all or a portion of it, the full amount or remainder would be due from you at closing.
Some agents charge a fee to offset the cost of fuel and time, but I don’t do that. I only get paid if you close on a property.