Thanks for this - I have what you might call champagne taste on a beer budget. I've always wanted to live in a small, but highly efficient house in the woods. You know, something that looks like it came from an architectural magazine. But I am consistently blown away by what even pre-fab homes cost. I clearly don't have the budget that the author does, but the process felt eerily similar to mine so far.

It's never mentioned how much acreage was purchased, I don't think. My mental block is anything sub 5 acres where I am looking. My current trouble is that I don't live anywhere near where the property I am looking at is. Getting there is… quite a to-do. I'm leery of putting much trust in a realtor as my eyes/ears given that 1.) the property is cheap enough that their commission will be small potatoes and 2.) they have an incentive to sell you _something_. How does one navigate that part? How much of the soil test/survey/etc was done pre-sales, how much was a contingency, or do you just YOLO it?