All Forum Posts by: Patrick Hannon

@Bob Jones, have you looked at Westminster? That's a really easy commute to Owings Mills and they have a historic downtown with older duplexes. They'll probably still be in the $200-$250k range though, but maybe you could house hack a townhome or SFH in the $150k range. It's Carroll County too, not Baltimore County.

I live in Frederick and have a hard time finding duplexes too. There are plenty of really cheap ones in Hagerstown around $150k, but that's a much longer commute, and there's a reason they're so cheap ...

Regarding insurance, I've heard of a lot of venues requiring the wedding couple to take out their own wedding-day insurance policy, which costs a few hundred dollars. There are general liability policies for specific events like this. If someone gets injured or damages the property, the claim would go against their policy, not yours. You may want to ask your insurance company if it would greatly reduce your cost if you required all wedding couples to do this.

Not just any port-a-potties, there are luxury ones like this:

https://www.viprestrooms.com/porta-potty-rental-for-weddings/

@Denisse Lara It sounds like your zoning process is a lot easier than where I live if you already got a special use permit. That's great! My county requires public hearings so neighbors can voice their concerns and the whole process can take up to 6 months.

Ditto to what @Joe Loschiavo said. You should probably check with the building department too. Zoning cares about the land usage, but the building department cares about the safety of the structures. Remember you're turning a barn that's designed to store hay into the equivalent of a convention center. The building department could require handicap accessibility, sprinkler systems, fire exits, adequate restrooms to support 100+ people, etc. Again, definitely not trying to be negative, and maybe your town is more lax than mine, but just wanted to share the things that I learned when I first started researching for myself.

I started looking into wedding venues when my sister was touring farms that charged $4k for 10 hours to rent a tent on a piece of their land.  $7k+ if you have a barn. Oh, and they're booked every weekend for the next year. I thought to myself this is the greatest real estate investment ever!

To the naysayers: no, this is not running a wedding business. The wedding couple hires people to do everything else, you just rent the land and/or barn. 

I was surprised by the lack of support and information on BP about this. You're right to look into the zoning because from my research that's the biggest hurdle. Every county has their own rules. Someone near me was converting an old barn into a wedding venue and the county wanted them to put in a $200k sprinkler system with water holding tank and backup generator! This shouldn't stop you, but definitely do your homework ahead of time.

This is the best (and pretty much only) book I found on the subject and I thought it gave a good intro to the business:

https://www.amazon.com/Rural-P...

Good luck! Keep me posted on your success because I may be trying the same thing on the east coast.