That close to Boston, they have an 8-figure net worth.
That must be why they can't hire help and want to hold onto the land to bequeath to their daughter.
That must be why they can't hire help and want to hold onto the land to bequeath to their daughter.
Article says they used to farm two fields they owned and three they leased and have backing away from some of the leased land. From a quick search (unverified/fact-checked), it looks like it's a <20 acres of owned farmland, which would fetch close to $3M in all likelihood. Add $1M for buildings and equipment and, assuming no debt, it's a modest 7-figure estate, seemingly split two ways. Many regular employees on this board have more in investments than each of the owners of this farm and didn't have to farm for 60 years to get there.
It's mostly a very Bay area thing to imagine that being a 60-90 minute drive from the city means you're talking multi-million dollar real estate. That mostly isn't true of even relatively expensive cities.
But yeah my neighbor has scaled down you-pick apples over the years as it's really not worth the effort.
A lot of people who live that relatively far out just don't go into Boston much.
Even just a few miles outside NYC, you can get a decent house in NJ for 500K but the property taxes alone will be around 5-10K.
I don’t know about MA, but in NY for 7 acres or more you just need to average $10,000 in sales for 2 years. Interestingly if you have les than 7 acres the threshold goes up, but you can lease land to bring yourself over the 7 acres. Additionally, since property tax rates are set at the local municipality level an ag assessment uses state law to cap what the municipality can claim.
This is not tax advice, and I don’t know the law in MA, but probably not to far from NY’s.
No state income tax is a lie, it's paid through small home property taxes. Larger land owners invariably go for rural/ag exemptions and reductions.