• hi JPD,
  i myself have just purchased a similar type property.
  except mine is in the middle of a small but growing country town just north of the victorian border in NSW.
  im paying $60,000 yes 60 thousand not 600 thousand for a 20 stable barn on a 1 acre block in the middle of town.
  the towns claim to fame is their race track and as such the stables are currently leased out to a local trainer for $110  a week, the repayments on my loan are about $60 a week, so at the end of the day afer all expenses i prob make about $10 income from the property, thats great im sure your all thinking except i needed a place for my own horses as i also purchased a house on a half acre not enough for 4 horses. this 4 bed house only cost $75,000 so very cheap as well. but anyway i have had to put my horses on agistment 30mins away at a cost of $20 a week, and obviously thats not convenient for me.
  the trainer leasing the stables said no to allowing me to use one of the 2 small paddocks on the block for my horses, which is odd considering he needs the stables to run his business, so basically the lease runs out in 10months at which point i am looking at taking over the stables and running a riding school. i will prob offer agistment, at a weekly cost per stable, and i will offer it back to the trainer on a per stable basis, so it will cost him lots more then before and all he had to do was let me share the place, but people are strange.
  i am in a lucky posistion in that because the mortgage is so low, it is not that bad a situation for me if i had no one there leasing or paying for lessons. however i am on a single parent pension and obviously on  tight budget so have to very careful
  so i think JPD the thing you have to be very careful of here with your situation are:
• how would you cope if you lost ALL income from the property, could you make the payments for a prolonger period?
• horse owners are fickle, and often hard to get along with and often very easilly offended (20 years horse industry experience) and at a moments notice you could have a mutiny on your hands where 1 agister gets the shits with you, and all her friends decide to leave with her.
• the cost of feed can sky rocket for what seems like no reason, causing people to have to leave as they can't afford it.
• other things like EI could hurt the business.

and just a bit of a note back to the people that said 20 horses on 14 acres is rediculous, i owned 10acres and had between 20 – 30 horses on it at any one time, and we were in drought and yet we got by with minimal hand feeding of just a bit of hay once a day, it all comes down to the type of horses, and how much horse sense you have, if people stopped breeding bad doing horses and rather bred horses that did better on less, then we could drought proof horses, like they have done with sheep, if your gonna put 20 thoroughbreds on 14 acres then you have a problem, but put 20 hardy farm bred ponies on the same land and they'll do just fine.

lol just realised the last post here was in 05, so i guess you have either bought or not bought by now