Try renting a SCUT with BH for a long weekend and see if it suits your needs. SCUTs have limited loader capacity and I don't know your expectations regarding what you need to lift with the forks.
25-30HP should be adequate for your sized lot but if you follow the posts here and on other forums guys quickly start looking for ways to boost lift capacity because their expectations don't jive with reality.
Yup. FEL lift capacity can become a big deal if you let it, but for me it just means more trips for e.g. moving dirt. For snow, I put my Bucket Expander (from bxpanded.com) for the winter, which DOUBLES the heaped capacity of the FEL. (No problem with weight, since snow is light.). And then in the summer, I put on the FEL toothbar (also from bxpanded.com), which is priceless for digging (especially for digging into a pile of dirt with rocks in it).
My Kubota BX25 came with a backhoe, and I keep it on all summer and only take it off in winter to replace it with my rear-mount blower. If you do get a BH, pay attention to digging depth (6’ on mine). I did have to hire someone with a full-sized construction BH to dig a 100’ trench in rocky soil for my water line one time (since the soil had big rocks in it), but that was cheap ($250).
And I, too, am happy with my R4 tires, as they are really tough, and traction is good enough for me.
One thing I am going to disagree with is equating lot size with tractor size. I bought my BX25 for our cottage on a 3/4 acre lot, and it has been great for getting around in tight spaces. But then we bought a 25 acre property 500 yards away, and the BX25 still does the job for me. So to me it’s not how big the property is but what you’re going to do with it. My properties are generally pretty level, and I do have to do road work with a box blade on the back, but no heavy bush work or tearing things out. Moving dirt, yes. Digging with the backhoe, yes. Holding trees with the backhoe thumb for chain sawing into lengths for firewood, yes. Carrying big rounds to the splitter with the FEL loader, yes. Pulling stuff out of the lake, yes. And it does all of these fine, and if I have a big pile of dirt to move I do have to make more trips. But other than that the BX25 is fine. And I would not upgrade, because the expense to me is simply not worth it.
On a final note, if you are going to dig out stumps with the BH, that is a tough, time-consuming job, so get a ripper tooth with a QA that you can swap out the BH bucket for. They can be bought from bxpanded.com, which has teeth, or from bro-tech.com, which is smooth and knife-like.
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). Hopefully I will also be able to get a sense of the clearance and hill performance will work for me.
