I am about halfway to retirement eligibility in the military and my wife and I are looking at rural property back home in the hill country for our after-service years. The biggest hang-up I have about buying before retirement is the issue of maintaining a 15-20 acre property for 10+ years until we can start the process of building a house/moving in.

Given my career field, there is pretty much zero chance we'd ever get stationed near what will be home and the next phase of my career will likely have me living far from Texas across the country and overseas in two/three year stints.

What avenues exist for owning the property and having it maintained/managed while we're far away?

I understand this may be a really rookie/novice question, so any insight and tolerance is appreciated!

For the sake of not appearing to have looked into this myself already, I've explored rural property maintenance companies in the area and I'm aware it could be leased for livestock grazing, etc. More curious about what the forum thinks the best options would be to consider.

First thing I would worry about getting/keeping an Ag Exemption status. That has to be managed by someone. Lots of ways to do that besides cows or goats though. A friend put up a bunch bird houses and maintains habitat for them and he is good.

You need to dig around the options then overlay on any property you find

where in the hill country? If it's flat, you could have someone bale hay

Alright, you are going to have two real options here:

1.) Wait until you are ready to LIVE on the property to buy it.

2.) Buy now and make sure you have a solid contract with a neighbor to bale hay or run the right amount of cattle, bees, etc to maintain your ag exemption.


I currently live on my property, and where I am, it is not just a place to live. It is a way of life. a few weeks or a month of inattention creates a lot of work for me, especially if it has rained.

Now, the Ag Exemption alluded to earlier is a 1-d-1 exemption More info can be found here:
https://tpwd.texas.gov/landwater/land/private/agricultural_land/

Some will depend on your county. I have this exemption even though I qualify for regular garden variety ag exemption. It is far more involved than just throwing up some bird feeders. This is one of the most abused tax exemptions as you can imagine. Our management plan had to be designed and cleared by my local wildlife biologist, and every year we collect tens of pages and hundreds of photographs to submit to the county. This is a tax exemption, but it also promotes wildlife and they do use this data. If you abuse the system and do not do it properly, or they decide on picking you for a random inspection, you can and will lose the exemption if it is deemed grossly inferior. If you lose your tax exemption, it could require 5 years of paying full taxes while it is used in a manner that supports ag use in order to reapply and reinstate it. It is expensive.

My plan involves wildlife census, predator control, brush piles, deferred mowing, habitat creation for migratory birds, and probably others I am missing. It does require annual maintenace, but depending on your career, perhaps you could visit the place a couple of times a year to make sure all is in order.

My suggestion would be to attempt to locate a property, then ask around to find out if there is interest in anyone utilizing it for Ag operations in order to maintain a standard ag exemption until you can move out. This shouldn't be too tricky. Property of this size, especially if unimproved, do not sell quickly unless they are really cheap. I have spent up to 2 years searching for a property of this size for my clients in the past depending on what a client wants. It took me 1 year to find my own property to live on. There are many properties that are on the market and will sit on the market for some time. It is not like finding a home in a subdivision.

Good luck on your dream! I've spent the last 13 years running and working on my property after work and on weekends when my buddies are drinking beer at the bar and watching football. I wouldn't change a thing or give that up.

Thanks for the replies and great insight...a few posts and I've already got a lot to research/chew on.

Hot_rod: Ideally, it'd be somewhere between/near Lampasas down to Burnet, since that's where family is and has been for a couple of generations now.