What triggered my post was that we had a customer who died about a year ago, his wife took over the account, and after some storms last week we saw that her Internet (and VoIP) were down although the SM was up. Finally after much effort managed to contact her, she said oh I moved last weekend and my son packed up all the computer equipment.
As usual, I asked if there was a buyer or tenant for the house, and she said no it wasn't even listed and might not be sold for many months and we should come get the radio. About the only other option at this location is Starlink so I would normally wait and see if a new owner or tenant wanted service without an install fee. But when I asked my field tech who lives in the area, he said ... well, here's what he said: "That's going to be a tough sell. The house was never modernized and it is small. I guess it has the shop but even that really isn't much of a building. Plus it is near literally nothing. Nearest town is a toss up between Amboy and Rochelle and neither of them has all the modern day things that city people would need to survive if they wanted something remote like that. Maybe a local will end up with it. Which would be a rare occurrence." According to Zillow it's a 2400 sq ft house built in 1983 on a 1.3 acre lot. The guy wasn't a farmer so I assume no farmland comes with it. He probably built it in 1983 on a parcel where a farmhouse once stood would be my guess. Now, it's possible she is keeping the house off the market while she fixes it up to sell, but that is not the vibe I was picking up. I'm guessing she moved into town. I do see kids taking over the farming operation from the parents and looking for an affordable house of their own, but not that far from town, especially if they are going to get married, have kids, etc. The part about people not wanting to be landlords is true. I have customers with a few "rental houses", but it's a chore, and they fear bad tenants. They also tend to turn over every 1-2 years. The most likely scenario would be that someone down the road would buy it to rent out, since they could keep an eye on it. I have also had tenants as customer where the house was foreclosed by the bank which then threw the tenant out because they wanted to sell the asset not rent it out. Or the owner decides to sell, and the tenant has people coming through all day every day for showings. I keep reading about investment companies like Blackstone that are buying up all the real estate and turning them into rentals, but I don't think they are buying rural single family homes. More like apartment buildings, townhomes, duplexes, and student housing. -----Original Message----- From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Chris Fabien Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2025 11:27 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] rural areas and fiber In our area, this sometimes happens if the house is in pretty poor condition because it's got 40 years of deferred maintenance when the 80 year old retired farmer dies. So then it's more a matter of the structure not being worth fixing back up to marketable standards, but the 20/40/80 acres it's on is valuable as farm land. I think fiber being available would have very little impact on this. However, there definately are folks in our area that would love to live rural, have animals and hobby farm but still need good Internet to make that an option. The base premise I think you're suggesting is it's not worth running fiber to rural areas because nobody wants to live there anyway. Which at least in central Michigan is wrong. On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 12:15 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: > > In some areas we serve where houses are a mile apart and the nearest town > with a Walmart is 15 miles away, people tell me that when a homeowner dies > (many are in their 70’s and 80’s), they won’t even list the house because > nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere. It will be abandoned, or torn > down to and turned back into farmland. We no longer have small family farms > with the farm family living in a house on the land, because you need to farm > so many acres to make a profit. If a farmhouse is near a town, it may become > a rental house, but not when it’s 10 miles from the nearest town or school. > > > > But I expect some company will be awarded $15K+ each to pass these houses > with fiber. If it takes 4 years to complete, the house might not even be > occupied by then, and in any case, the 80 year old occupant probably doesn’t > care if they have gigabit Internet. > > > > So will fiber make these houses suddenly desirable, and work from home people > will move there from the cities, towns and suburbs? Reviving these rural > areas where the younger generation has moved away? I guess that’s the > vision, I’m not sure I buy it. Well and septic and propane, quarter mile > driveway to plow in winter, but blazing fast Internet, and you can have > horses and chickens. > > > > Will they start building subdivisions out there once fiber is available? I’m > not buying it. Am I wrong? > > -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
