I am a single person trying to find a house that is not four or five bedrooms (I only need one or two) and doesn't cost 1/2 mil minimum and it's difficult. This used to be called "the starter house" but it doesn't seem to exist anymore with new construction.
I found some Mennonites that build small 14 * 28 foot cabins with two sleeping lofts. It costs about 8k, and that includes delivery to your land. They come with the exterior/roof finished, but the interior is up to you.
Your personal asceticism modulates the cost. My shower is actuated by a ball valve. I set the temperature at the inline gas water heater to perfection, so I don't need hot and cold! I was surprised to learn how cheap the insulation, carpet, sheetrock, mud and paint were.
Rural land here is about 2k per acre. Many plots already have wells dug, but if not It'll cost about 4-6k to get one drilled, and 500-1000$ for a well pump.
Septic tanks are a few grand. A trenching shovel is cheaper, but that option depends on the topology of your land and your heart.
I get my electricity from solar. If you do that, you need some panels, an inverter, charge controller and batteries. My system is pretty modest. 10 deep cycle batteries. I've lost track of how many panels we've got. Most of them we soldered the cells together so it kind of all blurs together. The whole of it probably cost about 1700$. It's enough to run our super efficient 12 volt fridge, the pump and a few laptops.. except when we go a week without sun during the winter.
Next consulting gig I get, I'll probably get a wind generator as well.
When it's oppressively cloudy, I use a small gasoline generator to power all the stuff. It also will kick on a battery charger that'll top the batteries off.
This winter I used a propane heater. I've come to realize liquid propane is somewhat money inefficient compared to a wood stove. I'll have the wood stove installed by next winter. I'll probably keep using the propane oven.
Leading up to me dropping out of society, I came to resent paying rent.. I resented the thought of office power games having survival consequences for my life. I didn't have to off-grid like I have.. There are power lines. It's just such a great feeling to cut out monthly subscription costs from my life. The serenity it brings is maximum. Mother gaia gives me my water and sol my electrons.
I still do consulting work as it comes to me. Blissfully, I no longer feel desperation and anxiety between contracts.
If paying society's currency for all the solar panels and the batteries and the gas and the generator and the refrigerator and the laptops and the deeded property and all the other stuff that society created is dropping out of society, I wonder what it is like to be a member of society.
I consider 'dropping out of society' to partially be a state of mind thing. Currently, when I'm 'in country', I am very disconnected from the world at large. I have to drive for 30 minutes in order to receive text messages or phone calls. In order to get internet, I have to drive an hour to the lake so I can get some LTE. I don't have a TV, and I don't listen to the radio. America could go to war and I could go a month without knowing about it.
I grew up in suburbia right outside of the densest city in the state. Until last year I had never put a screw into wood, nor had I ever wired up a light or planted a potato. MrLeap's life this year is 180 degrees different than it was every year prior. I think the contrast in my perspective makes the 'drop out' comment more appropriate, but it's a personal thing.
I obliterated most of my savings doing this, and I'm on track this year to make SIGNIFICANTLY less than the poverty line. I think that represents a certain uncoupling from the standard structures of society. I intend to increase that as time goes on, but if I fail, I should still keep on living. I've lived an arduous life, and my re-orienting is in reflection of that.
If I really put my soul into it, I could garden hard, raise animals and cut out the last human survival-y thing that takes me into town. I really like cans of mini-ravioli though so I might not take it that far.
I could get satellite internet, or maybe a cell phone booster and a tower to obviate my connectivity problems. Maybe I will someday. Right now, I'm focused on building a workshop and blacksmithing. The workshop is hexagonal, which I think is cool. Anybody want a forged spatula? ;D
For reference, 90% of people in subsaharan Africa, whatever the country, have a cellphone (with some kind of internet). And around 40% have internet connection (predicted to be 50% 3G in 2020).
In the US many homeless people have internet access and even laptops.
"Dropping out of society" in a concrete sense and posting on HN are not contradictory. You can do it from a small mobile home in Alaska, your own log cabin somewhere out in Wyoming, or from some hut in the Amazon, all of which qualify to my book.
The wraparound lofted barn cabin is the one I chose.
You're more "on the grid" than you think. Those solar panels were built in China (probably), how did you get them? Where will you go to get replacement parts? Where do you go to get gasoline for your generator? How is that easier than paying a power bill every month? You can't drink straight out of the well, you'll need a filtration system which needs maintenance, why not just pay a water bill with a hookup from a city?
You haven't dropped out of society at all. You're intensely reliant on society right now. If anything in your janky setup breaks and you can't fix it in a few days, you will find yourself at a motel and fully back "on the grid". I'm not saying you need to be a condo living yuppie, but surely there's a happy middle ground.
(AutoCAD with modules for stress analysis and building design libs would cost you $20k or so, but it can probably be rented as cloud license.)
Rigging can be rented, even work clothes and power tools. Even then the tools are not super expensive anyway.
The expensive parts are rental of lifter, crane and mixer machines as well as good operator. Barring that, more people to set up the building and much more wood and metal rigging.
Building is cheap compared to prime land and marketing or sales markup, as well as paying off credit. (Most buildings are built with financial leverage.)
I'd have to think about this more to decide whether or not it's true, my life is more sustainable than it ever has been before. In pure watt hour accounting, I wager I'm energy-cheaper than most city people who deeply care about things like that.
You're mistaken about wells requiring filtration.
> If anything in your janky setup breaks and you can't fix it in a few days, you will find yourself at a motel and fully back "on the grid".
This, like much of your reply, is rather presumptuous and ungenerous. There are some good discussion points in your reply. Unfortunately you've also stated as incontrovertible fact several things that are simply incorrect. I don't see much room for an actual conversation in your choice of words.
Go out two counties and a 1.5 hour commute, and land is only $5k/acre. Plenty of $200k starter homes in that area. No one wants to move out there though.
Disclaimer - I work in the residential construction business
If the margins are paper thin, the risk is too large, so the only way to mitigate that risk is to make more expensive homes so that even if things go terribly wrong you can still pay your costs and your employees and make some profit.
My experience renting some warehouse space in SF. One building three units. Used to be occupied by three roofing companies. And some meth heads living in the old offices. One of the roofing companies bought it, kicked out one of the other roofing companies and the methheads and rented to us.
Change of ownership and new owner kicked out another roofing company. And rented out to a pot grow. Fast forward 5 years we got kicked out along with the remaining roofers and all three units are now growing pot.
So went from three roofing companies circa 1998 to three pot grows circa 2012. My feeling is stuff like this is happening in every urban area in the US. Which means your roofer is either paying very high rents or commuting in from 2-3 hours away.
Really easy for me to see that driving costs up by 100%. That's born out by what my insurance agent says. Rebuilding costs in SF are $600-1000 sqft. Get out to Vallejo drops to $300-500 sqft.
Other thought as well is that typically you get better margin on luxury goods than basic ones. because it's easier to slip more profit into high cost goods, like granite countertops vs laminate. Prices double, your margin doubles but your expenses only go up 50%. So as long as the luxo market isn't tapped out that will be serviced at the expense of basic goods.
All in all, frictional losses/expenses building in a city are probably very high in aggregate. The few builders I know sure seems to spend a long time waiting. Meanwhile, when I lived in CT, a round trip to the hardware store usually took about 30 minutes max.
I wonder if/when those frictional losses/problems building in dense cities actually balance out with the gains in reduced commutes and greater efficiency of urban life once those buildings are occupied.
So one can't even just "move to the 'burbs" to save money instead of living right in town. It's all the same price.
So you basically need to find a mid-sized city with houses from the mid-late 20th century when sizes were more reasonable.
I've been browsing Zillow and Redfin lately, trying to plan a few years into the future, and the architectural landscape is just horrific. My ideal is a modern, minimalist, fairly flat-roofed 1- or 2-story (think Rummer [1], Gropius, Eichler, the Eames case study house, Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth house, etc.). I wouldn't mind oodles of raw concrete and exposed steel. Nothing ostentatious or expensive, mind you; just good design and modern materials.
I'm not that hopeful that anything close to this style appears in the areas I'm looking or in the price range. Instead, what you get are column-infested McMansions or hideously old-fashioned shingle monstrosities. The average home in the US seems to look like this [2]. The kitchen is always dark and brown. Random hideous reactionary baubles from Colonial Revival architecture abound. Beveled wood paneling is everywhere.
Now and then a rare (very rare) mid-century modern house come up that might be within my price range, but of course it doesn't have modern insulation, electrics, heating, moisture barriers, air flow, etc., so what you've got is a beautiful but cold, damp, technologically outdated and energy-inefficient box.
Ultimately, it seems good, modern design in the US is for rich people, which makes me sad.
[1] https://www.curbed.com/2018/8/27/17773540/midcentury-home-to...
[2] https://www.redfin.com/NY/Orchard-Park/30-Knoche-Way-14127/h...
Thing I realized is these things are basically lowest common denominator residential construction meets Mr Potato Head.
You're unlikely to get something how you want it, unless it's built for you (and even then). You're probably going to need to find something with the outside you want, and budget to put the inside you want too.
But more specifically, an Eichler simply isn't going to have insulation and continue to be an Eichler. They're designed for a climate which doesn't need insulation, and as such, there is no room for insulation (at least for the ceiling). Try to find one with a big tree on the south side, shading the house (but make sure the tree is in good shape).
Overall, I'm struggling to justify paying 2x or 2.5x for a home here over just moving somewhere much cheaper and sticking to remote work / consulting where I can find it.
There is a lot that I like about city living (being able to walk everywhere), but I'm having a harder time justifying the cost of it now. And the job market is pretty solid around Colorado right now.
From a bit of online searching, I imagine it's between 0.75 and 1.25 man hours per square foot of house to build in labor costs (that number may differ depending on size of team/expertise, I imagine).[1][2] Depending on average pay rate for building involved, which varies widely based on area and cost of living, you might be looking at $50k to $100k in labor costs. That's before land cost, materials, permitting, power/sewer hookups, etc.
> but they will sell you a poorly made condo for $400,000 and $600/mo HOA fees.
In some places the lot cost is $200k, or more. It's hard to build a $200k house when your margin is negative before you've started building.
And in places where the lot cost is more like $100k, do you want to build a $300k house with low margin, or do you want to build a $400k-$600k house or condo with much higher margin? The problem perpetuates itself, as high density and high housing costs lead to high land cost, which leads to maximizing profit for area strategies that say to build higher end houses.
One of the solutions to this is to be willing to live in higher density housing, such as a condo. This lets building still target high margin while providing somewhat cheaper housing. Or build up, into more multi-story complexes. But people want homes with yards, which is why this is a discussion about how nobody can find a $200k house (you can, just not in the more populated areas), and not a discussion about "how to achieve housing cheaply".
1: https://www.contractortalk.com/f16/avg-man-hours-build-1800s...
2: https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/77299/how-many-man-h...
If you want a 2 BR, you need to look in old neighborhoods or buy a condo.