Leaving out the actual financial information makes this post a little useless. Before I can imagine it, I want to know if I can do this or if I need to be a trust fund baby.
That said, it doesn't have to be that way. I'm building a house up in the mountains at the moment. Found ~3 acres for 12k and I'm doing the land clearing and build mostly by myself on the weekends to keep costs down.
My current guess is final costs w/ out-of-pocket financing (goal is to do it debt-free so I own house and land outright when I finish) will be somewhere between $250k-$350k, including the land price (maybe a bit higher as material prices fluctuate).
If you're patient and willing to make adjustments elsewhere in your life, you can do it. If you're just building a simple house, too, and not a Dwell photoshoot, you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish.
My guess is this build was between $900k-$1.2m CA. Hard to guess without knowing the sqft or acreage. This isn't necessarily outrageous given the market up there, and was probably a great investment and has substantial equity, but you need a strong personal balance sheet to handle that and the cost overruns.
Your right, though, that if you live in a low cost of living area, and you keep your expectations and footprint manageable, you can get a lot for very little. Like these cob homes, gorgeous - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlzpfkjjqOw
$60,000 in 2015
Details: 1 hour from walmart, 35 minutes from the grocery, 5 miles from pavement, zero stoplights in my county, no zoning at all (build anything you want). But a nicely-kept dirt road, plenty of people living in the area, etc.
I don't think you could buy a temporary ice fishing hut for 12k in Canada.
What’s that worth to you?
Source: am finishing up a home at a similar finish-level at a similar size, although not quite as fancy as this I don't think.
source: We're currently working with an architect on a similar project.
Also, I'm approximately their same demographic and could afford to build a house like this if the other estimates in this thread are approximate, and have literally not taken a penny from my parents, or used their resources(which are scant - I was paid more my first job out of college than both my parents combined), since I was 16.
Is there anyone in America or Canada who cares about the environment, who is not a kid by your standard? I know a bunch of people who claim to care about the environment, but they still eat meat, drive ICE cars, have children, use ridiculous amounts of power compared to the global average, and do many of the normal things North Americans do. I still believe they care about the environment though.
> These are two areas where the BC building code, BC Hydro, and the construction industry lag behind more environmentally progressive regions. It’s our hope that as the technology and standards improve we’ll be able to eliminate propane from the mix and use a fully electric power base, much of it captured on site from our 11.6 kW array.
> enough equity to buy raw land and build a fairly baller house on it
Sounds about right for Vancouver property market.
Many, many people dream of living in the woods. The costs are usually unknown or prohibitive!
I mean it's still somewhat interesting vicariously. Kind of like the New York Times' house-hunting section, wherein they pretend that an $800,000 walk-up is an entry-level home.