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Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts

May 16, 2014

Purley Gates Ranch

My friends, family and regular readers of this blog know I love to look at real estate ads and I've posted a couple of times about properties I'd love to own.   I first noticed this one on the Hortenstine website a couple of years ago.  One of the realtors was nice enough to answer some questions that had "bothered" me about the listing.

The price of the property was recently reduced to $6,500,000. (from over 7 million) To be honest, I was surprised it didn't sell at the higher price and I expect it won't last much longer at that price.  Of course, there's no way I could afford it...unless I won a BIG lottery.  Even if I did win a hundred million bucks, I don't think I'd buy it now;  I'm getting too old to try to keep up such a huge property.  If I had had the money ten years ago, sure, but now?  I'd have to move my entire family and THEIR families in with me to maintain the place.  Who knows?  They might be all for that.   With three large homes and several manufactured homes for employees, there'd be plenty of room for all of us.  I'd even build a home for my big sister.

Being several miles from the nearest town of any size, I'm not sure it would have good broadband internet, though.  That might be a deal breaker!

With it being on the market for a substantial time, I'm wondering why it hasn't sold.  From looking at maps and Google Earth, it appears that one leg of the Keystone pipeline went very close to the property, but that shouldn't be a deal breaker.  I don't think there's much oil/gas production close by and part of the royalties convey.  There are coal deposits not too far away, but I doubt they'll be developed and I think the sub-surface water (springs) are in no immediate danger of drying up.  I dunno;  I'm such a pessimist and there's GOT to be some reason it hasn't been snatched up already. 

I've got my Megamillions ticket for tomorrow night; the cash option jackpot is right at 47 million after taxes, so I would have close to 40 million left after buying this place.  Maybe if my family wouldn't want to quit their jobs and move there w/ me, I could talk some of my Internet pals into it!


April 8, 2014

ACME Planimeter

ACME Planimeter has got to be one of the best online web tools I've ever used.  I love to look at real estate ads, then find them on Google Earth or Bing Maps, but the Google Earth measuring tool has limitations - at least in the free version I use - in that I can use it to outline the dimensions of the property, but then have to use my calculator or an online acreage calculator to figure out the total area.  That takes time and often isn't all that accurate, the cause of which is not completely my incompetence.

Well, I want to believe that, anyway.

Here's the outline of a property I'd love to own near Quitman, Texas. (home town of Sissy Spacek) The listing says it's 50 acres and using the ACME Planimeter gives the exact same figure.


It's really easy to use. From the website:

Drag the map with your mouse, or double-click to center.
Click on the map to place points.
The enclosed area is shown below.

The page remembers your most recent position/zoom/map-type for the next time you visit. If you haven't visited before, it tries to figure out your location based on your internet address. The area computation is done using spherical geometry, so it's correct for large regions.