Looking for property

We had planned to be moved from our too-large home in Indianapolis by the fall of 2006. Since it became clear we would not be getting the zoning we needed, multi-family, at the site in Owen County before the end of 2007, if at all, we decided to begin looking for another site.

We had hoped to build clustered homes, some of which would share walls, design the least intrusive system we could afford to process our waste, not subdivide the property, and incorporate other perhaps unconventional features in the homes. Part of the problem was dealing with county entities, some of whose members, to be polite, weren't very open to new ideas. So we decided to center our search on Greene County which has no zoning ordinances and, consequently, no need to apply for variances or changes.

Our goal was to get our life in the country underway with as little further delay as possible, and to get out of Indianapolis where our property taxes rose another 90% this year (after a nearly-200% raise just a few years ago), so we decided we would consider appropriate property between 3 and 25 acres. If we could find a nice property that was larger, then an intentional community might still be incorporated. If an appropriate property was smaller, we would consider it for just our own use.

We started looking at properties at the end of June. Of the suggestions from a few real estate agents, and some we found ourselves while driving the area, we visited three properties, all in Greene County. Two showed promise and we visited them again today, the Fourth of July.

One of them, east of Worthington, though it was a beautiful, forested property with lots of hills facing various directions, had serious access problems that would cost a lot of money to overcome. We had a nice talk with the adjacent landowner whose permission would be needed to access the property without a lengthy and hilly new road.

The other is on State Road 54, just under 8 miles east of Bloomfield, the Greene County seat.

After looking it up on the internet, we walked the property to see if it would work. It's over 16 acres, virtually all on a south-facing hill, has a small pond, a large pole barn and, as we found out later, a small spring. It is partially wooded and has a beautiful south view of Greene County hills into the distance.

We have decided to pursue this property and will return tomorrow to see if we can ask some of the neighbors about it.