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‘You’re Gonna Miss This’: The Real Estate Reality Affecting The Horse World

‘You’re Gonna Miss This’: The Real Estate Reality Affecting The Horse World

I imagine my commute to the barn isn’t unlike many working adults who enjoy owning horses as a hobby. I hop in the truck, rumble out of the city and spend about 45 minutes to an hour on the highways to get to ‘horse country,’ aka the more rural area outside the city center where I’m able to board my horse.

With a career that requires close proximity to the city (downtown offices, close to government buildings, etc.), I’ve been a ‘full boarder’ for all my adult life. I’m lucky and grateful for the relatively short drive it takes to get to a much more picturesque part of Florida where I live – where the high rises and beach condos fade into wetlands, farm fields full of vegetables, and cow pastures.

On a recent hike out to see a friend’s new horse in an area on the outskirts of town where I used to board, I was sad to see how developed the land had become in just the few short years since I left. Grocery stores and hundreds – if not thousands – of planned homes in new suburb communities. I passed by many dump and cement trucks on the way, but also a curious sign in front of one of the last untouched pieces of pasture. Scribbled in spray paint on a flimsy old board read the message: “You’re gonna miss this.”

Boy, are they right.

It’s an age-old problem in Florida and nearly everywhere else – the threat of development as suburbs expand into rural communities is squashing farmland, horse barns included, and raising the cost of living for everyone. The current white-hot real estate market, coupled with inflation, sure hasn’t helped anything.

For years, our local foxhunting club has struggled to find property to host them, as horse-friendly property owners have sold their acreage over the years. Even the more ‘urban’ boarding facilities closer to town are being sold for housing development, forcing owners to scramble to find their next place to board. Horse properties and competition venues across the country are for sale, and some long-known show circuits are throwing in the towel for good. We’re losing the land our horse community needs in order to thrive at a shockingly fast rate.

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There are lots of reasons behind this – the shaky economy certainly isn’t helping – but all of it doesn’t bode well for horse enthusiasts.

Even just up the road, in the horse mecca of Ocala, they’re not immune. The World Equestrian Center may be a new draw, but advocates for keeping Ocala full of pastures and free of toll-road highway expansions and new cookie-cutter housing communities, are having to fight harder than ever to preserve what they have. In my own backyard, some farming regions are trying to rebrand themselves an ‘agriculture tourism’ destination in order to survive.

Lately we’ve had a lot of discussions around expanding our sport, and how to make it more accessible to more people. Rising costs and shrinking farmlands certainly isn’t helping. But what’s the answer? Perhaps it’s a hard lesson learned, after the next recession, which feels like it’s looming just out of view. Maybe it means our community must shrink – as horse sales and hay prices skyrocket, forcing more people out – before we can figure this out for the long term. Hopefully there will still be pastureland available then. Hopefully it won’t be too late.

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