Our next (bigger) tree-change? (Long)

I apologise in advance. This will probably be a bit over the place. Hope you can make sense of it! :redface:

As you may or may not know, we have closed down our business (due to injury for the Man) in the town we lived in until about two months ago. Pop. about 100,000 and growing, so we wanted out of the town.

We moved here (renting again), 40 minutes away, pop 1200 or so. I choose this town for the primary school (and there are about 170 students) where DD will go next year, and I have always loved this little town. I always thought there was not much here, but it is just so lovely, and I always wanted to move here (but being a city girl, the Man suggested we move the the town we just left instead of here, about eight years ago, to see how I went living out of the big smoke).

The only family we have is the Man's Dad and Step-Mum who live about an hour and half to two hours away from here. We don't see them very often, even when we lived at the last place. And my Mum and Brother, who live an hour from here (was forty mins away from the old place, and Mum says she will not drive further than the old place to see us).

The Man has seen a (combined) business and house for sale in a TINY country town, which he would love to get. The business (a cafe and B&B) has closed down, but he had a rather in depth conversation with the owner of another (non-competing) business in the town, and she thinks a re-start would be viable. It's three hours drive from here (3 hours 20 min to my Mum, and 3 hours 45 mins to the Man's Dad). Population is 160, and there are only 11 children in the school (which is walking distance to the house).

Proposed Little Town (PLT) seems rather like a ghost town. The servo is closed, as is the general store. The post office/milkbar has some general store stuff I think. There are a fair amount of trucks that rumble through (we went there again today to inspect the inside of the house/shop), and apparently on weekends there is a need for feeding some drive-through tourists. And the primary school kids. There is no other take away food in the town (except maybe in the milk bar), and the second hand store sells cold drinks. The whole area is farming.

The house is an old three bedroom, plus the big room out the back, with ensuite which was the B&B. You have to go outside to get into that room (let's call it a bungalow shall we?), so we would look at making that the Master bedroom when the two little kids are a bit bigger. In the meantime, they would still have to share a bedroom, all of which are quite small. The first room behind the shop would make a convenient playroom/study while the shop is open and the kids are at home. The lounge room is small, and wouldn't do for much playing (there is only one living/lounge room, plus the 'playroom/study' [which is actually the entry for the house by a side door behind the shop, and thoroughfare between shop and dining room]). The bungalow would make an excellent playroom before it becomes our bedroom. A temporary wall needs to be taken down from between the kitchen and dining area to make the dining space a bit bigger, but that will be easy. The shower is in a cupboard (yes, I also thought :o) in the laundry space, along with the toilet. These three spaces need to be reworked, including moving doorways and walls, to create a real bathroom (and adding a bath, and bigger hot water service which is also in this space), which would still leave a good sized laundry. The rest of the house would need repainting, and maybe some re-plastering (but its quite livable). It has heating and cooling. There is a four car carport and single car garage at the front, and from the back of the block, another garage/workshop is accessible. I think the land is about an acre. The house is on bottled gas.

The house needs work, yes, that I know. I am not afraid of hard work. I suppose we could use the shop as a dining room, and make the lounge in the house a bit bigger by taking down a partial wall and blending it with the dining area.

The cafe would be a very basic thing. It needs furniture and fittings (though really not much when it comes down to it). Its not a high stress job, nor is it physically challenging. And a repaint and a new sign.

I checked out the school today, I think its okay. (But I still love the one here) They do swimming in the summer (thank goodness with all the dams around), and maybe I could do some cooking classes with them too (I already have my WWC).

I really really really wanted to bring my kids up in a little country town, and I thought that where we are now was the one. So my brain has switched off on the topic of moving anywhere else. But . . . . ?

I currently drive 45 to 50 minutes each way to work at the moment. There are three major towns that take just under that time to get there from PLT. Jobs are few and seemingly far between. I think I found three that I could apply for just now.

I don't have many (IRL) friends, and the few that I do have, I have not seen since moving here. There's always facebook I guess.

This would be a good move, if we can finance it. The affordability to buy would probably be the only realistic chance of us owning our own place. Repayments are less than what we pay here in rent!

Oh, how do I decide on what is the right thing to do? I think the Man has already decided that he would go (with $ ok'd), he's just waiting for me to decide.

How did you decide?

Is there something else I need to be considering? Or am I being too over-analytical?

To me, it doesnt sound as though the town is big enough to Make money..... I mean how does a servo and general store not survive? but a cafe would?

Wow, what a decision!! I can see how conflicted you are.

I guess having a finance background, I always go there first and see what complications there might be - being such a rural area, and a business, you'll most likely need quite a large deposit. Rural properties are generally lent 70%, but if you need a business loan you can probably borrow more at a higher rate.

What was the reasoning behind the place closing? And why does the local lady reckon it'll work if it's re-opened? Do they really get that many people through there (driving etc) or would it just be locals? I do wonder how many customers you'd have.

My in-laws used to run a general store in a tiny country town - same kind of set up, store/cafe attached to their house. It was next to the school, and in all honesty their biggest income was selling newspapers & milk to the farmers, and doing school lunches. FIL did a lot of mechanic/building maintenance work to supplement their income. This town though, was only 20 minutes from another larger town, and so anyone driving through didn't bother to stop. That's the main thing I'd be worried about - are any tourists coming through just on their way somewhere else, would they actually stop?

So yeah, just from what I saw with the in-laws store, I'd be a bit sceptical about how profitable it would be, but yours may be a very different situation to that!

Good luck with your decision making

I wouldnt make a decision like that without doing a business plan, including market research, budget etc.

Who will run it? Do you have experience? What happens if one of you get sick or injured?

So many businesses fail because people dont create a realistic plan going in, which includes planning for contingencies. And often opening a small business is just buying a job. I'm not knocking the idea per se. But I've seen clients get into real trouble when they jump on an idea without planning first. Sometimes a basic SWOT would have shown them how unrealistic it is.

There's a reason there are so many ghost towns - there isnt the required economy to keep them afloat. It would be different if it was a known tourist area. Maybe spend a few weekends watching passibg traffic in and out if the town. Survey the residents. Find out what they want. Talk to the local council - most have business liaisons. And the local traders association. Do lots of research before you jump in with 2 feet and that's just on the business opportunity. The persobal pros and cons are another thing to work out only if tge business plan stacks up.

I have no idea about why the servo or store is closed. I think the town seems ghosty because of the past drought. The servo is really old, and more old machinery than much else. The cafe and B&B closed because "the owners went all weird", and they moved elsewhere. "They started doing weird stuff with the cafe", the most odd being not having set prices for food and drinks. You order, then put your money in a box on the counter to whatever the value you thought fair. If that not odd enough, the owner would then take out the money (even if there were other customers there) and count it. Apparently she would comment on how much was paid to the other customers. And she became the town gossip-monger, which soon lost them any friends or regular customers they had.

I doubt very much that we would reopen the B&B part. For that, I really don't see a market in the area. So that's not even in the picture of considerations and pros and cons.

The local lady reckons it will reopen well because she said she thinks the town needs a cafe. I don't even really know where its on the way to, but certainly yesterday there weren't many cars driving through town.

The Man and I would run it. We have similar experience, and if we got sick or injured, well I would hope we would have insurance to cover it! Or at least a bit of money there to fall back on. Like me still working somewhere else.

Thanks for the reminder of the business SWOT analysis, Tashy. I haven't done one of those for ages! Will do though :thumbsup:

Off to do more thinking and analysing. Thanks everyone.

Personally I don't think like it sounds like it has enough going for it to be viable, its a very small country town which in itself has its limitations and often hard to break into small town mentality. (Grew up in small country town)

As Tasybabe suggested do a business plan and some market research to see how viable it would be.

Good luck with what ever you decide.

Grew up in a farming area so here are some thoughts from that time.

How far from the main highway are you?
Would you serve breakfast & lunch or lunch & tea?
How far do you need to go for petrol, will you be allowed to have petrol bowsers for yourself?
How will you refill the gas, do it yourself or delivery?
Supplies for the shop, how far to go, any deliveries?
How far are Dr's, dentists, chemists, police etc?
What is the secondary school like and how would you get there?

Depending on the seasons you will be busier at certain times, eg. quiet at harvest time.
Is it dairy, beef or crops as this will make a difference of times you open.

Not trying to put a dampener on your idea by any means. Maybe go visit an area that is like the one you are thinking of and see/ask what is viable.

My DH and I looked at a place that sounds very similar (so similar that I wonder if it is the same place, is it in VIC?) a few months or so ago now. We would have loved to do it but as others have said above it just didn't seem financially viable to make alot of money, the place was cheap so no doubt you could survive but profit would be minimal.

Curious to know what you decided?

OMG that sounds so like the little town that I live about 10kms away from. Does it start with M, I know the town I"m thinking of had a Cafe and BB the recently closed down, owners certainly did go weird and were half the reason why the business wasn't a success. It started off OK but turned bad after that.

Sorry won't offer you any advice because I can see positives and negatives to living in a small town. I'm married to a farmer so in a slightly different situation but must say so prefer country living to the city.