Moving to Dallas area with horses (Plano, Denton: for sale, renting, houses)

[Ac012]

My husbands job is relocating us from Pennsylvania to north east Texas. For his job he mainly works remote but must be within an hour of Dallas. We are not city people so prefer to live in an area that is more rural or has a small town feel. I have horses that I would like to bring once we are settled so prefer to live in an area with western horse culture preferably with barrel racing and/or roping events. Open to keeping horses on my property or at boarding facility that will also help me meet people.
We also have two young kids under the age of 3. One just started riding so it is important to be in an area he could get lessons if he chooses to continue and possibly participate in youth rodeo, 4h etc. also would appreciate the town having a good school system for when they enter school.
any advice on towns that could include some of these things would be great. Thank you in advance!!

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Ac012

My husbands job is relocating us from Pennsylvania to north east Texas. For his job he mainly works remote but must be within an hour of Dallas. We are not city people so prefer to live in an area that is more rural or has a small town feel. I have horses that I would like to bring once we are settled so prefer to live in an area with western horse culture preferably with barrel racing and/or roping events. Open to keeping horses on my property or at boarding facility that will also help me meet people.
We also have two young kids under the age of 3. One just started riding so it is important to be in an area he could get lessons if he chooses to continue and possibly participate in youth rodeo, 4h etc. also would appreciate the town having a good school system for when they enter school.
any advice on towns that could include some of these things would be great. Thank you in advance!!

Much of Denton County, Nearly all of Cooke County, West and South Grayson County and good bits of several other counties are prime horse territory........mostly due to soil conditions.


The rub is what do you mean by an hour from Dallas? Is there a more narrow area you are talking about say Far North Dallas, Downtown, near The VA Hospital, DFW, Love Field etc.

There's a map somewhere that outlines local horse friendly soil I'll try to find it.


ETA - others will know NE Texas better than me if that's where you need to be.

[compSciGuy]

How many horses? What is your budget? Different locations have different rules, like 1 acre minimum for a horse, or 2 acres minimum, or it may be allowed by the city, but not the neighborhood, ... or they have their minimum, and may not count the house, or can't be within X feet of any residence, or Y feet to the closest neighbor, etc.

[Ac012]

He’s technically remote but if he has to go out work could be spread throughout Dallas but I believe the majority of field work would be the northern area. I do understand that there are acreage requirements and all that is similar to how it is in PA. I don’t plan on bringing our 2 horses right away this way I can better get situated and decide if we want them on our property or a boarding facility. I’m more just concerned with finding an area that is horse oriented with western style riding so that we know what areas to check out when we go down to see what towns we might be interested in

[ChristieP]

I am a lifelong rider and horse owner, and I’d be glad to help. But your budget for housing is extremely important so we can begin to suggest an area. If you could at least get the zip code of his office location, that would be a huge help, too. Remember, the DFW area is as large as the state of Connecticut.

Boarding stables for western riding aren’t very common here, especially around Plano. It seems that most of the big boarding stables focus on Hunter/jumper, dressage or eventing. There are also a few Saddleseat barns in the area,too. I will warn you that boarding prices are ridiculous, especially for full care or a barn with an indoor arena.

The biggest western horse event facilities are around Pilot Point/Tioga, and around Argyle. Further out, there are lots of nice places along highway 82 between Sherman and Gainesville. I personally live in Kaufman County, and there are nice homes with land in my area, and some big arenas, but no boarding stables that I’m aware of.

[Ac012]

He doesn’t have an office that he goes into his office will be in our house occasionally he may need to go do an inspection but that could be anywhere in Dallas and just a pop up thing not everyday thing so there is no real zip code to give. His company stated that those mostly will be in the northern part of Dallas if that helps.
As for riding i’m mostly concerned with being able to find a barn that would do lessons for our kids if that’s something they remain interested in it. I’d prefer that be western riding with a youth rodeo set up because that is what we’re involved with here.
Budget wise we’d be looking to stay 300s or renting until we make sure we like the area we end up in. Right now boarding by us is about 400 for full care

[ChristieP]

The market for “horse property” under $400k within commuting distance of Dallas is extremely competitive. If you are able to consider manufactured houses, that will increase your options. There are often several properties that are a fairly new manufactured house on 10-ish acres with nice horse barns. Also, if you or your husband are handy and can do cosmetic updates, that will help you, too. It’s not uncommon in this market for elderly folks to put their rural house up for sale without having done any updates, so you may have to look past dated kitchens and bathrooms.

We were personally in that same market this summer when we relocated to Kaufman County from Grapevine. We looked in Kaufman, Hunt, Van Zandt and Rockwall Counties, and we saw nice places in all four. Be prepared for multiple offers on every decent property, and you’ll need a very good realtor who can show you properties within a day of listing. If you need a fantastic realtor who knows rural property and works in the area east of Dallas, PM me.

Be sure and check the property taxes on every place you look at, and whether that county will let you use horses to have an agricultural tax exemption. Taxes vary greatly between counties!

I will be honest that I’m not very familiar with places that do riding lessons. (I think I probably had 4-5 formal lessons in my entire life!) If you own your own horses and want to do rodeo clinics for roping and timed events, there are a couple of very good rodeo schools in Texas.

[texstout]

To the OP - West of Ft Worth is very 'horse country'. Areas like Stephenville are famous for rodeos and riding and will be more competitively priced for you. (They call it the Cowboy Capital of the World).



Lots of people say 'Dallas', but really mean the whole DFW metro area which can take hours to get across. Really zone in on where they mean by 'Dallas'. But since you said 'North' Dallas - know that typically North Dallas means Collin County which is typical higher priced popular suburbs like Frisco, Plano, McKinney, etc. Your budget won't stretch far there and those areas are not rural. (Dallas tends to stretch North so that towns 30 miles north of downtown are still very much big suburbs and not small towns).



Find out if 'North' of Dallas really means the Collin County area or more like the Denton area which is North of the Metroplex but also farther West than Collin County (about 25 miles west of Frisco). I'm thinking places like Melissa or Aubrey might be interesting..they are small towns North of DFW that Google shows have multiple barns.

[Rakin]

Originally Posted by texstout

To the OP - West of Ft Worth is very 'horse country'. Areas like Stephenville are famous for rodeos and riding and will be more competitively priced for you. (They call it the Cowboy Capital of the World).

"West of FW" is now very popular and very expensive also. You'll have to go out past of PK Lake, 100+ miles.

South of Midlothian / Cleburne / Alvarado maybe depending on the schools. Maybe northwest of Decatur as you head to Justin areas.

[ChristieP]

Originally Posted by texstout

To the OP - West of Ft Worth is very 'horse country'. Areas like Stephenville are famous for rodeos and riding and will be more competitively priced for you. (They call it the Cowboy Capital of the World).

Stephenville is definitely horse country, but there’s no way it’s an hour from anywhere in the DFW Metro. You’d be surprised at property prices there, too. It’s not as expensive as in DFW, but it’s also not cheap.