How My Buyers Landed a Turn-Key Equestrian Estate in Eatonville

A turn-key equestrian property is one of the hardest things to buy in Pierce County. Most acreage listings make you pick one: good land or good facilities. You take the bare twenty acres and spend three years and a small fortune building it out, or you take the nice barn on five acres and run out of pasture by year two. This property didn't ask my buyers to choose.

The barn is the heart of it, and it's a working barn, not a decorative one. Seven stalls, three loafing sheds, a feed room, a grooming stall, a heated tack and office room, and a hot water wash rack. A hot water rack and a heated tack room are the details that separate a real facility from a pretty one, and anyone who has hosed down a horse in a Washington February knows exactly why. Outside, a 100x200 arena, quality cross-fencing, established pastures and hay fields, and a gated entrance off the road.

The living space sits above and alongside all of it: a large, well-appointed 2 bedroom apartment with a full bath, a half bath and laundry, and an outdoor shower for coming in off the fields. Twenty-three hundred square feet, which is more room than "apartment over a barn" usually suggests.

Then the part that made me tell my buyers to look hard at this one. A building site was already developed on the property. Someone else had already paid for the unglamorous, expensive work of getting a home site ready, which means the future main house is a decision my buyers get to make on their own timeline instead of a prerequisite. And the whole place looks straight at Mount Rainier.

Turn-key means someone else already spent the money and the years. That's the entire value, and it's worth recognizing when you see it.

* Disclaimer - I was the buyer’s agent and represented only the buyer in this transaction.