Buying land and Building a house

looks like a lot of work, i know from flipping a few pieces of land.

the one im settled now is by far the best maintained and ready to develop but still some challenges with it being 7 acres. expensive to pave and get utilities for myself and i can only imagine even more for op

 

It already had utilities on site. They'd have needed to be run to the building location, but that's not as bad. We ended up passing since we couldn't figure it all in and still feel financially sound. Ended up financing a house in the suburbs for now at 172k.

Link in sig for that. V

 

I think you made the right choice, paving my cleared land with the bridge over our stream is going to take 10 loads of gravel or more. Couldnt have imagined if I decided on concrete and having to clear tress for a path. For something forested for future knowledge, at least in our area, you can find people to clear it for free if you let them have the lumber....but that would needed to be cleared depending on what the county requires for cutting

 

Yeah I just want woods around me. Don't want to see any neighbors, in my area that's scarce. (Greater Kansas City area) So that was a rare opportunity so we got in a little over our heads and had to step back. So we figure in a 5-10 year timeline we will just build equity here and take it easy, save money, and then sell and give it another go, but probably just build a true home out. My cousin owns an excavation company and my step brother's dad owns a logging company so we could easily get a plot cleared and dug. Just need the capital for that much, the rest can get financed (after down payment). Will see how it goes. I may strike it out as a new contender in the Yota Parts market before then so the sky's the limit.

These next 5-10 years will determine a lot of things for our future. Next year I'm most likely going to start school for business management just to get my head on right for running a business before I take that risk on. May lead me to better position where I work instead. Will see.

 

My wife and I kicked around a similar idea a couple of years ago. We ended up just buying some land and keeping our current house due to the school system for our kid. We did end up buying a little over 20 acres that I use as an adult playground in southern Ohio a couple of hours south of where we live in Columbus.

I know you shifted gears, but maybe keep an eye out for land with an eye towards the future. The land I bought has electric, but other than building a small cabin, I don't know if we would ever live there. Your situation will vary of course.

I used this website and a couple of others to find what I was looking for. https://www.landwatch.com/

 

Unfortunately most of the land available in the area is upwards of 200k and is clear cut or it only has like .5 an acre of trees and is smack in the middle of a suburban area...

The plot we looked at a while back was 7 acres for 85k way out of town. half treed, half clear. It wasn't perfect by any means but it was the closest we found to do able and not in a flood plain.

 

I understand completely, that's why I ended up buying land 100 miles from my house lol.

 

Flood plain arent always a bad thing, my property is right on a delta of a popular fishing river with developments starting to come up in the surrounding area. I had got lucky to get it before a major developer got in across the river. You have to dig for information to see if they have proper dikes/pumps setup for drainage. Its a risk i took but what ultimately was deciding was seclusion and the ability to walk out to the water every morning and cast my fishing line without much trouble.

 

I just want to keep my commute under to 45 minutes or less.
Luckily my work is on the southern most part of town, but it's also the largest employer in the area so new suburbs keep popping up further and further out.

 

Yeah, I bought land with an eye towards retirement or just to play. Buying land to live and work would have been much, much more expensive. Also the terrain is pretty flat in Central Ohio, whereas where I got land is hilly which I prefer.

 

Yeah if I get to the point where i'm running my own business and it's enough to sustain me, beyond what I make now, then I'll just move somewhere out of the way and not have to be tied down to the city. But that's a long ways from happening.

 

I got really lucky. Helped my parents build their retirement home on 1.5 acres in the Oregon mountains 25yrs ago. Its riverfront property. When done got a job only 7min away and been there for 23yrs. I bought house next door on 1.5 acres. Most homes are about 200ft apart and population is under 100 for the local town. Nearest big town is 56 miles away. Moved here from a county population of 3 million.

 

Just came across this thread, I think the OP shares a dream with a lot of us. We had a similar situation, really want to build but just don't have the means currently so we recently purchased our first home to get out of renting.

General game plan is to find/buy some land (ideally outright) 3-5 years from now and build a cabin. Then sell our house, and use the proceeds to start building the actual house. When we are done, move in and cabin becomes guest house easy peasy right?


We'll almost definitely need some bank financing, I'm currently in the fortunate situation of working for a company that builds homes. Hopefully I can hire the company I work for and still do most of the work myself using the banks money.

Excavation and electric would be contracted out for sure, plumbing probably too. Everything else.... Sounds like a lot of work hahahaha.

However, 6 months into homeownership I'm already tired of fixing other people's laziness/incompetence on top of well aged and outdated systems. I've already got layouts in my head of what I'd like, time to start putting them to paper and hopefully one day making them into reality.

 

I'm thinking in the next 5-15 years, we build equity in our current home, then save for some land money. By the 15 year mark be able to buy land outright and then throw a large steel building on the site. Build out a temporary shouse to live in and sell off our house in the burbs. Then pull in a construction loan + money from house to build our dream. Then I've got my shop for Taco things and we've got a house. Then the shouse portion becomes my man cave.