What to Know About Buying a Mountain Home

So you’ve decided that city life isn’t what you need to be happy. Good for you. After years of people flocking to big cities across the United States, many have realized that the mountains or other rural areas may actually provide a better quality of life as time goes by. After months of being trapped inside due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing regulations, Americans are leaving big metro areas and opting for a mountain home, a prairie home, or just anywhere with some fresh air.

If you’re one of the people who are connecting to their natural side, you may be wondering how to locate great real estate in the rural areas you’re interested in. Let’s say you’re moving out of Asheville and into the Ashe County mountains of North Carolina—how do you go about finding a home? If you’ve lived for years in downtown Asheville, how do you go about finding the amenities you need to live comfortably? Should you find a house with a deck? An attic? How much acreage do you need?

There are so many questions that arise once you’ve decided to head out into rural North Carolina and find your mountain home. It’s a great adventure, one that you’d never be able to have if you’d stayed in the comforts of Asheville. Try not to feel daunted by the enormity of buying yourself new acreage in the mountains of Ashe County. Read on for some tips that will have you moving forward in no time.

Work with real estate professionals you can trust.

If there is one thing that’s true for buyers everywhere, from North Carolina to California or Maine, you need to find a real estate agent or broker you can trust. If you’re looking for cabins for sale in North Carolina, you need someone who won’t mind driving up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway with you and looking for the log cabin of your dreams. You also need someone who will be able to explain how to care for a log home, especially if you’ve been a city mouse your whole life.

There are certain maintenance projects that you probably never encountered in downtown Asheville, like caring for your fireplace or dealing with skunks and bats. A local real estate professional will be able to help you with your stone fireplace just as easily as they can recommend some nice hiking trails in the area and the right trappers to handle your bat or squirrel problems.

Once you’ve found a real estate agent you can work with, talk to them about your dream cabin. Does it have vaulted ceilings? An attic you can furnish as a study or office? A working fireplace to curl up near in the winter? Make your wants and needs to be known to be sure you get the log cabin or cottage you wanted when you first envisioned leaving the city.

Trap wild animals before they become more than a nuisance.

You’re going to encounter lots of animals in the mountains, and that’s just a fact you need to be prepared for. If you don’t feel great about living near wild animals, maybe you should reconsider your relocation. That being said, just because the wild animals will be nearby doesn’t mean that they should make themselves at home in your cottage or cabin. Certainly not.

A skunk is a nuisance that you need to keep away from any domestic animals (actually, keep your pets on a leash), squirrels or raccoons are liable to eat up your vegetable garden, and snakes should be identified and avoided. When it comes to indoor pests, bats and mice are probably the worst problems you’ll have. A bat infestation or mouse infestation should not be taken lightly. These little critters can spread disease and eat the food right out of your cabinets. Bats in the attic or mice in the kitchen leave droppings that are both gross and dangerous. It would be best if you trapped these pests sooner rather than later.

If you’re an Asheville native, you might not have a lot of experience trapping rodents or wild animals. In this case, you should either call Animal Control or a local animal trapper to take care of the wild animals getting into your attic or barn. A local trapper will also take care of any dead animals caught in traps, which is another thing you probably don’t want to deal with as a new mountain homeowner.

Outfit your log cabin with some new plants.

Okay, yes, there are plenty of green plants right outside your door. But these are probably not houseplants, and you may want to have the greenery inside as well. An easy way to do this is with house plants in every room. By turning your mountain cabin into a bloom scape indoors and out, you’ll be enjoying the greenery during the winter months of NC as well as during the lush summer blooms.

There’s an easy way t incorporate house plants into your decor—you can actually have a plants delivery service bring you anything from a snake plant to a succulent to your new cabin. Get the plant delivery to bring an indoor tree to put on your hardwood floor; at the click of a mouse (the safe kind), you can have a dining area full of succulents to get you through the cold NC winters. If you get flowering house plants, you can even have a bouquet on your dining table in the dead of winter.

Get to know your neighbors.

One of the great things about moving to a cottage in the woods is that you get a lot of solitude that you may have craved when you were in the city’s hustle-bustle. But there’s only so much solitude that a person needs. Too much alone time isn’t great for your mental health, so it’s a good idea to head over to the next pasture over and make friends with your neighbors down the road from you.

Local residents who have been living in the Blue Ridge mountains for ages will know everything you need to know and may be able to share some wisdom about living in the area. You can also tell them stories about your time in downtown Asheville. By moving into a mountain home, you’re opening yourself up to the perfect gift of new experiences, and that doesn’t end at your doorframe. Meeting new people, becoming acquainted with the local music and culture, and sharing food and stories in your new dining area are all part of the adventure as well. You never know—you may find yourself meeting the best friends you’ve ever had.

It can be tricky to get up and leave the city if you’ve never lived in the country, especially in the COVID-19 era. You may have to take a virtual tour of your dream cottage, and there may be a steep learning curve when it comes to trapping nuisance wildlife. When it comes down to it, though, none of that matters. What matters is that you’ll be able to exhale deeply, breathe in that mountain air, and finally feel at home. That will be worth all the acclimating you may have to do on the way.