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Comment by finnh | Hacker News Reader

If you want to live in a city, it's not the cost of the house that kills you: it's the dirt.

In Seattle, where I live, my property tax statement tells me that my (large, nice) house is worth roughly half as much as the land it sits on.

Given that these domes don't float, you still need a place to put 'em. If your goal is to opt out of the cost of housing - an evil which this blog post expounds upon at length - your first order of business isn't so much "what to live in" but "where is it going to be".

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Exactly. This structure basically assumes you're living in the country somewhere. If you're willing to move out to the country, on a programmer's salary you could quickly save enough to pay cash for a smallish, newly constructed home with many modern comforts, such as "rooms".

I moved to Colorado from the SF Bay Area. I'm near Boulder and Denver, and can walk to a dozen restaurants, a grocery store, a bar, multiple cafes, and a big library with free Internet access (oddly enough, almost ALL of the above have free Internet access, now that I think of it -- even the grocery store). And if you like public transit, I'm really close to multiple bus lines, but the city I live in is also very bike friendly.

And I don't have a mortgage on my 2500 sq. ft. house. No living "in the country" necessary. ;) Similar house prices can be had in Denver proper as well, though I'm in more of a suburb.

Programmers can make a lot of money. If you don't waste it all, it's not hard to save up a lot. I only do paid work about half the time now; the other half I work on my own projects.

But you're renting, right? Isn't part of the point not to be wasting capital on rent? (I'm a CO man myself)

Why is rent wasting money? I am not entirely sold on that idea. If you have a lot of cash that you do not need to access in a foreseeable future then maybe.

It's a waste in capital _relative_ to what this chap's doing. Now, in terms of _experiences_ or _ease_, it's not necessarily a waste. Plus, rent usually comes with deposits. I've had the experience of rarely getting back deposits. So, there's some overhead right there.

Rent is generally quite cheap in Colorado, at least it was when I lived around Boulder. I remember seeing this interactive map, but now I can't read it on my phone to justify my claim:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...

At some point, buying is definitely the best investment, often times if you rent, you are basically paying the mortgage without any of the incentives of owning.

Buying vs renting is definitely not the best investment. You must consider that the down payment put into, e.g., stocks can earn a serious return (perhaps enough to pay the rent), while you avoid property taxes, maintenance, etc.

From Shiller himself: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/owning-a-home-isn...

In fact, a study (I can dig up the source if requested) found that owning a house vs renting has very, VERY rarely made financial sense in the last 50 years in the USA. Yes, real estate exploded, but so did many other investment vehicles. Keep in mind you can rent a ranch-style home in the suburbs, not just metropolitan apartments.

>Why is rent wasting money?

It's isn't. The idea that it's wasting money, or that you're paying someone else's mortgage, or whatever other argument is thrown out there are part of one of the biggest financial misconceptions going.

Do the cost/benefit of renting vs ownership, accounting for maintenance, taxes, interest rates, macro-economic conditions and whatever else and the costs should be very similar. Of course, it ebbs and flows with the markets, but at the margins is where the decision should be made. Owning is never a clear winner in all circumstances.

That said, with the drastic drop in house prices since 2007 and historically low interest rates, buying has been (in the US at least) a financial gift from the heavens for the past few years. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

> The idea that it's wasting money, or that you're paying someone else's mortgage, or whatever other argument is thrown out there are part of one of the biggest financial misconceptions going.

That I believed this was assumed, and that I was comparing _renting to purchasing a house_ was also assumed (but probably not so clear!). I was comparing renting to what the dome-builder was doing. With that said, renting vs. ownership is obviously situational.

To live 2 miles (walking distance) from downtown Denver:

~650 for rent ~150 for a garage w/ electricity ~100 for utilities

$900 month.

When I looked into buying in Denver anywhere in the same distance, I was looking at $1250 month w/ no garage, unless I lived in the Arts District (a bit rougher), and most of those houses needed to be torn down.

Sure, if you're looking at the final dollar amount.

Other factors need to come into play when you own a home. My rent was about $1000/month with utilities for about 1000 sq. feet. I now pay a mortgage of $1375/month + about $75 in average monthly utilities. But with that I get a home with 1600 sq. feet living space, not including the finished attic or the unfinished basement and the 7500 sq. foot lot I now have to mow, minus the garage and house space. Per sq. foot of space, you're likely to do really well, if space is what you need.

There are three main reasons I bought: 1) I have a young daughter and I thought she might like a yard. 2) I'm tired of the noise from apartments and 3) the interest rates were about as close to free as I think they'll get for a long time and I plan to stick around here for at least the next decade or so.

In your case, you might not need the space or want the hassle of maintenance.

Personally I think making the rent vs. buy argument into an investment argument is ultimately worthless. There are better investments out there, like your time. Shelter is not an investment, it's a basic human need. Buy/rent exactly what you need and nothing more. It's a lifestyle choice. Put your money to work in real markets.

Living in a geodesic dome will probably ruin your social life, but if you don't need a social life, great!

What does space have to do with renting vs buying? You can rent whole houses, too.

Slightly OT, but when renting a house you don't generally have a lot of security. At the end of your lease (which is typically only a year long), if the landlord wants to move in or rent to someone else or sell the place, you've got to pack up and get out. Moving every year or two can quickly add to the cost.

Note: This obviously applies more to renting an entire house than an apartment in an apartment building.

Why does this `obviously' apply more to houses than to apartments?

Sorry, I am not from the USA, so I don't know the peculiarities of your peculiar housing market.

Couldn't you just negotiate a rental agreement that gives you more protection?

He means that the owner is more likely to sell a single-family home than an entire apartment block. If the apartment does sell, it is 99.99% more likely that the buyer will want to keep the tenants in place.

As for negotiating a better rental agreement? Why would the landlord give you more protection? He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. The reality is that if you're a good tenant (don't trash the place, pay on time), no landlord will want to kick you out if he doesn't have to. I've been a landlord; good tenants are money in the bank!

> As for negotiating a better rental agreement? Why would the landlord give you more protection?

That's why it's called a negotiation. You have to give the landlord something they want in return. E.g. slightly more rent is the most obvious choice.

As for a sale: Just negotiate in your rental agreement that the new owner is bound by the same terms as the old one.

Perhaps you could expand the agreement, and not piss off your landlord.

You'd probably kick you out too if you'd caused enough trouble to overtake the cost of finding and inducting new tenants.

I'm talking about the tradeoffs, with space being one example. You can certainly rent a whole house, at what will most likely be more than the owner's mortgage so if you want to compare apples to apples on the final dollar amount, you're going to have to give up a few things.

The owner is taking on some risk, and hassle. So mortgage plus makes sense.

For the curious, it looks like in this situation it is always better to rent given the following assumptions:

- $900 rent - Rent increasing 3%/year (default) - $356,000 home with 3.5% down (FHA minimum), closest I could get to a $1,400/mo mortgage since the parent said $1250 didn't get the amenities of a $900 rent - Home values increasing 2%/year (default) - 3.75% mortgage rate (my current rate) - 1.25% property taxes (default)

From the NYT Rent v. Buy calculator: "If you stay in your home for 30 years, renting is better. It will cost you $209,282 less than buying, an average savings of $6,976 each year."

At this point it's a lifestyle decision. Either you want to own a home or you don't.

Lots of good discussion about financials and which option is cheaper. But I think one major point not being brought up here are all the subjective benefits of homeownership, which--for me at least--were much more important than a few thousand dollars this way or that way on the TCO. Some thoughts:

* Landlord can decide to sell the house any time

* Improvements and diy projects are a pain, have to negotiate with landlord (if possible at all)

* In the category of standalone house type properties, rental inventory is vastly inferior to inventory available for purchase

* Hard to do any lasting improvement or landscaping with the axe of eviction via rental sale hanging over one's head

You are not building equity when renting. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Mortgage payments (minus interest) are then just going back into your own pocket vs. rent which is going into your landlord's pocket. Even if you never want to do your own maintenance, you can pay a handyman and still be far ahead in cash.

You are not building equity when renting.

If the net cost of renting is lower than the net cost of renting money to own a mortgage, then you've still got the option of investing in other assets which may appreciate over time. Say, a business. Which represents real net economic growth, not merely asset inflation.

If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home.

Stating that as a blanket recommendation is so false it's not even wrong.

A buy-vs-rent decision depends on a great many factors, including transaction costs (high for real estate sales), moving costs, appreciation risks, etc. There are many areas where even a 10-15 year tenancy may favor renting over buying.

Mortgage payments (minus interest) are then just going back into your own pocket.

Not if your property's under water. Haven't we learned anything?

wait, is under water here to mean literally under water - as in sinking into the ocean?! Or is that jargon for something?

It's a figure of speech. The idea is that your apartment's current market value is lower than your outstanding debt (or perhaps the total price you paid for the apartment).

This is extremely optimistic. It's usually more like if you are going to stay in a place for 3-5 years then maybe it's worth buying. The first few years you are paying almost all interest and not much principle. In addition you need to factor in transaction costs (realtor fees, lending fees, etc.). Plus it can often take close to a year to go through the full cycle of buying and then selling a home. Using your one year rule just isn't realistic.

I would say more than three years to recoup costs of buying.

> If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home.

Even in the big inflation years I recall the over under on this as closer to seven years. Depends on your circumstances of course.

So run the numbers: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...

> If you plan to be in a location for more than a year

To paraphrase another response, this is so wrong it physically hurts. This type of nonsense is exactly what causes people in their early 20's to buy a $350,000 house and end up foreclosed on 18 months later.

Running any rent v. buy calculator for my area shortly before buying my home (at the end of 2010) told me that I needed to be in the area (e.g. within a 30-minute commute by car) for 7 years to break even on the purchase of a home. After that the benefits of buying quickly took over the benefits of renting, but for those first 7 years it is technically a financial loss.

This is just flat-out dangerous and wrong "advice."

I think the implication is it's paid off.

I missed that.

Bingo.

"Wasting capital on rent" may be the worst nonsense in our financial folklore. Always run the numbers. Rent vs. mortgage calculators and spreadsheets are readily available. Understand the factors they use, and perhaps tweak for your own needs and priorities.

I'm glad that I did, as I completely dodged the disaster that was the housing bubble as a result -- my rent always looked like a killer deal compared to nutso house prices. On the other hand, I know those who "had to have a house" who are now seriously underwater on their mortgages. But good thing they weren't "wasting capital on rent!"

I also sat out the housing bubble and its insane prices, but now we have a house we love and very small mortgage. Of course capital invested during a bubble is wasted, but that doesn't mean all investment in that asset class is a bad idea.

But saidajigumi didn't say that buying is always a bad idea. He said "always run the numbers."

As long as you know how to factor in the costs if it turns out you were nowhere near the peak of the bubble, and you factor in the "lost" capital from paying rent rather than paying down on a mortgage. It can turn out to be extremely costly to wait out a bubble even if the alternative is buying a property that is guaranteed to drop in value at some point.

The downside to this is if you live in a place where the bubble didn't pop and are (seemingly) locked out of the housing market forever, or at least until the bubble does pop.

Bubbles happen in many more things than just housing. It just happened to hit way more people than any of the previous bubbles.

I don't know much about the market conditions outside of SoCal, but here the housing seems to have recovered to 2005-2006 levels. It doesn't look like it has much fuel to go up for a long time, but those who bought 2009-2012 are definitely comfortably in the black. Some could be up as much as 50-60% from especially distressed properties. Doesn't sound bad to me...

Factor in ridiculously cheap borrowing costs (even a couple months ago, there were 30 yr. mortgages for around 4%), and you have pretty decent investment opportunities.

In an unbalanced market, one can always find ways to realize short-term gain. Trick is to not get suckered in and overplay the hand.

I bought right around the peak of the bubble in early 2006. Even with prices being what they were at the time, my mortgage wasn't much higher than rent was for comparable homes in my neighborhood. After having a couple of roommates move in I was paying very little to live. I sold the house early last year and actually made a small profit after doing a few renovations. I know my experience may not be typical but if you stay away from places with crazy inflated home values and are willing to deal with the headaches of owning a home, it's not too hard to turn a little profit. With renting it is a certainty that will not be the case.

I wonder how much your second job as a landlord (`headaches ouf owning a home') actually paid per hour.

Considering on a given month I was making 700 dollars while doing almost nothing I'd say I had a pretty good hourly rate!

Thanks. I just want to try to get an apples-to-apples comparison.

The best online rent-versus-buy calculator I have found is the one created by the New York Times [1]. As others in this thread have already noted, in suburban-to-urban population densities, the cost of shelter is in the dirt, not the improvements. The wisdom of embedding wealth into dirt in a highly technologically-developed economy where the value chain is much, much more abstracted away from the dirt is lost upon me. Bidding up the cost of dirt just seems to me an easy way to factor away any incremental new wealth created by those living on and paying for the dirt.

Even lots of programmers here on HN eagerly brag up "good buys" they made on their houses, characterized as "good" because the house "went up in value".

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...

Personally I want my house to drop in value, as long as it doesn't drop faster than my repayments, and as long as other properties in the area also drops: I want to be able to trade up cheaply.

As for the "wisdom of embedding wealth into dirt": Long term, if property values drop, so what. You lose a little bit on your purchase vs. renting in that case, but you get massively cheaper housing from then on if you opt to switch back to renting and/or the value for money will be massively better if you decide to trade up to a bigger house. But if property values rises dramatically, owning a property is a very effective hedge against seeing your living costs skyrocket. See it as insurance.

In that respect people do make good buys when the house goes up value: It means they largely locked in their housing costs at a lower rate and their insurance is paying off.

"In that respect people do make good buys when the house goes up value: It means they largely locked in their housing costs at a lower rate and their insurance is paying off."

No, the rent vs buy question is a lot more complicated than that. Renting can be and often is financially better even over the long term when house values are appreciating at historic rates, or even faster. As just a couple more factors to consider, property tax and maintenance costs go up as property appreciates and along with inflation, respectively. Remember that renters don't make any downpayment, and that that money and early term savings over mortgage can be invested in assets that tend to grow at rates much faster than house values.

And the rent vs. buy issue that's hard to resolve is for comparable homes being rented or owned. The fact of the matter is that many people buy more home than they need, when they could have happily been renting a smaller home, and trade up only when necessary, skewing answer more toward side of rental being more cost-effective. (You could do this with a house, too, but people tend to buy more house than the need at the time, perhaps partly b/c of practical difficulties of selling a house and the large commissions that get paid to brokers.)

The "dirt" also acts as a proxy for location. What you're mostly buying is proximity.

Interesting the calculator includes utilities and tax bills as costs for the buyer but not the renter. Is this common in the US, for all bills to be included? In Europe here, once you factor in the additional costs of council tax and all utilities, the cross-over period reduces to about 4 years, as many people have commented previously.

It looks to me that the calculator is expressing the following rental situation: you rent from a landlord that includes for example, water and sewage utilities as part of the monthly rental fee. The fair way to account for this rental situation for the equivalent buying scenario is to add the true cost of those utilities to the buying scenario because when you look at buying the equivalent, you will have to pay for those utilities, and thus lengthening the break-even point when compared to renting.

So that provides a reason for temporarily avoiding purchases when the prices are inflated and/or mortgage deals are bad.

See purchasing as a hedge. "Worst case" your property becomes worthless, and you're left with nothing when the mortgage is paid down and may have paid more per month on average until them (but if so, while you may have lost vs. renting, properties are now ludicrously cheap, so who cares?). Meanwhile, if prices skyrocket, your equity likely rises at roughly the same rate.

In the long run even those you know who are now seriously underwater are likely to do just fine as long as they can afford to sit tight. Of course people can "play the market" and do a good job timing when it's better to rent and buy again later, but as with anything it's very easy to mistime.

It's extremely hard to come out badly if you are prepared to hold a property long term, though, as long as you don't overstretch, and can afford to sit tight for a few years if you go under water early on.

Even if you end up paying more per month for a mortgage initially (I never did), chances are you'll be able to remortgage and bring the rates down to below rental costs within a couple of years once you've built up a bit of equity, and from then on save money every month on top of repaying the capital on the mortgage and be left living "rent free" apart from maintenance costs and insurance at the end of it.

I'll never go back to renting - if I'd bought as soon as I could, I'd had roughly about 200k pounds more equity today, and would have had roughly the same monthly costs for most of that time. As it is, I'm now paying half as much on a mortgage as I would to rent the same size property, and my debt is dropping in absolute terms, and my interest rate is below inflation, so in real terms I'm getting fantastic value.

"It's extremely hard to come out badly if you are prepared to hold a property long term"

This is a major sticking point for many people, particularly once you factor in opportunity costs.

True, though it should be pointed out that "hold a property long term" may not necessarily involve living in that property long term.

"It's extremely hard to come out badly if you are prepared to hold a property long term"

You seem to equate some appreciation in house value with "not coming out badly". Well, if that's all you want, then fine. You can consider things as not having come out badly.

However, if your definition of "not coming out badly" is actually more like, "having done better financially than renting" then it's a much more complicated question. Renting can leave you with better financial outcome even in cases where a hypothetical purchased house appreciates greatly. Not always, of course, but appreciation in value of the house is just one among many factors in the rent vs. own equation.

After grad school, I shopped around all the sawmills in the state, bought the materials, designed and built a 2500 sqft log home. No mortgage, awesome house. It is out of town, on a great 5 acre wooded lot. I love the woods, with the deer, birds, etc., but it is a 20 minute drive to the office. On the other hand, the only debt I have is a student loan.

European here! Here in Germany a great deal of people are renting instead of buying houses including me and I never felt it harming. To the contrary, I could freely relocate within the country several times in the past years without hassle. Owning properly in my mind seems like a chain holding me down which would have been very restrictive in my early adult years. I also see people that did buy a house and now have 3-4 hour commutes every day as their job is at a different location that their house. Buying just seems so inflexible. Are renting conditions here in Europe that much different that in the States?

Yes, renting in Germany is very different to the USA or UK. In Germany, if you pay your rent the landlord pretty much can't legally get rid of you. Similarly, the amount they can increase your rent is legally capped. It's very much set up to encourage long-term rental and your rights while renting are extremely strong and well-protected.

In the UK (and I assume the USA) the landlord can (with a few months warning in most cases) throw you out, raise the rent arbitrarily, pretty much whatever they want. It's their property, after all!

When I moved to Germany there was significant cognitive dissonance when I was asked to provide a copy of my work contract to prospective landlords, to prove I was worthy enough to pay them money. It turns out even if you stop paying them it's extremely difficult for them to legally evict you, hence the caution.

wow that's interesting - didnt know that its different in germany.

The rental policies there must then suppress house prices because its much more cost effective to rent than to buy, especially if you can put the extra money you didn't spend (on purchase of a house) into another form of investment.

I wonder if that system is better long term than the ups and downs of the market like the US/UK's.

> The rental policies there must then suppress house prices because its much more cost effective to rent than to buy

It's not that straightforward: Someone have to buy the units that goes onto the rental market as well, so it depends on how attractive property investment is vs. other investment opportunities.

In the UK, cheap access to "buy to let" mortgages coupled with high returns as people were unable to afford to purchase and thus bid up the rental market certainly helped push prices up during the bubble (thus pricing more people out of the market).

how is it possible to have both cheap access to mortgages, and yet have houses be unaffordable - that seems contradictory to me - and yet it does happen. Economics baffles me o_O

Cheap access to mortgages encourages people to buy. Lots of people. You are not acting in isolation. The price of housing jumps.

Adding good new stock takes time. Its not simply a matter of the time to build a new house. Its the time to develop the new area, zoning, commercial properties people want close, infrastructure, etc. It can easily take a decade in highly regulated areas.

So supply can't shift to meet demand. Prices rise because lots of people see mortgages they can afford, and jump on it. Then speculators get in the game, and tie up stock without anyone living in it. Flippers are fixing up houses, instead of letting them out. So a bubble is formed because people with good intentions made mortgages too easy, and prices climb.

No, I own the house outright. There's an argument to be had over whether my money should be in investments rather than in home equity, but it's hard to argue with the fact that I'm only paying taxes & insurance on the house, which seriously reduces the burn rate.

I agree with your statement whole heartedly. There are trade-offs to everything. I hope that you don't think I am claiming to have solved the housing issue. I am simply offering an "alternative" alternative structure. But there is a place for them and it works for me.

Please see the tiny housing / simplification movement for discussion about the trade offs of relocating and living simply. It's not for everyone.

I used to live in a pretty small house. I loved it.

Then I had two kids =)

EDIT: added smileyface.

Yeah, as a father to three... all I could think of when reading the article was "The bliss of ignorance a 20-something, single kid-less person has... if only I could live in a Dome with no restroom"!

Well, ahem, you may be aware that in some places in the world some families have plenty of kids and no restrooms in their houses. Actually there is quite a lot of them.

Restrooms is not the problem here, the problem is this focus on frameless structure. Why not just doing a tent, like in so many traditional cultures? It must be easier to build and may even be more pleasing to the eyes.

SHHH - you're insulting my armchair activist! :-)

While I am well aware that ther are billions that live in lesser conditions than the hipster-dome under discussion, one of the points of the article was that there is "inefficiency" in the home rental/ownership paradigm; while this may be true - I do not see how this is solved by sacraficing something as crucial as a bathroom (or kitchen [I lived in my house during a kitchen remodel, and I cooked using my backpacking gear for 2 months, and that FARKING SUCKED])

So - Yeah - this would be a great fort, or cool guest room, I'd not want to actually live there.

Ever have to walk from your "room" to the bathroom when there is a monsoon-like storm outside which you must traverse (at 4am). No thanks

Exactly. My church helps build inexpensive (~$10,000) homes in central America, and this looks like an interesting option.

So can you tell us what you did for the land/property part? Your Twitter profile says Asheville. How far is this from the city? Were there zoning issues?

True, to an extent. But considering that some people still live in unkempt shacks, there is some room for improvement.

Mass producing the dome parts seem like a nice proposition. Might not even be for housing at first but as an addon for a existing house. Say you wanted to clear your garage and store your stuff somewhere else in the property. Maybe for government-sponsored housing programs.

Or, I don't know, Africa? There are places where shelter is more important than the land.

Africa would be an awesome idea, but you'd have to do a lot of work with the locals to get them to see this as a viable shelter.

I worked on a project that tried to bring new types of homes to Haiti. This was a HUGE problem because if the locals don't like it (no matter how cool) your idea won't take off.

The fact is that most Haitians thought that wood and corrugated metal were what a "house" was (assuming you couldn't afford a concrete home).

This isn't only African's. You could look at forward swept wings in a similar manner (I'm oversimplifying some of the technical difficulties there though).

i remember someone who did a lot of aid work in africa said something similar - various ngo's would come to a village and build stuff and the locals weren't interested - have heard similar in the amazon.

for instance someone had built communal latrines which were unused.

his starting point was asking the villagers what they wanted to do

they said "the chiefs house is a mess" - so they worked on that first, then built individual latrines for each house and made other improvements - they were able to do this by finding out what the locals wanted and working on that, if he'd just gone and built a bunch of stuff that he wanted to he would have been much less successful.

I'm interested in what types of homes were being tried in Haiti. Can you share a link or any info?

I know that a lot of the "unkempt shacks" you see in India are like that because they are on illegally squatted land, and if they build a more permanent-looking structure they will be forcibly removed. If you look from above you can see many with TV satellite dishes.

In that case, this kind of dome is easily demountable, and offers a lot more protection from the elements than a shack. On the downside, that would also make it easy for people to steal your walls.

It's not about making the dome easy to take down -- it has to look like a dilapidated temporary installation. Perhaps if you covered it with cardboard and corrugated steel it would be allowed to remain.

This is exactly my dilemma. I've come up with numerous novel ways to live cheaply but all of them require a plot of land which always ruins the budget. Further compounding the problem is few banks will loan money for unbuilt land. Strangely the land is worth more than houses but in the eyes of a bank the house is what you secure the loan against.

Not true! I purchased 5 acres in Southwestern CO (with mountain views!) for 2 grand in cash. I built a small cabin, and program out of it. But, it lacks luxuries for my many "projects", so now I'm building a house.

http://frank.lovecch.io/projects/walden-ranch.html

The SLV! I am strongly considering buying a plot there but the lack of water is the trade off. Can you provide a ballpark for your construction costs? Are you drilling a well, burying a tank and hauling water, or something else? What's the nearest town? Have you had trouble with burglars/vandals while leaving your cabin unattended for long periods of time?

The finite numbers I have are thus:

Land:

I purchased 5 acres for $2,000 of Craigslist. It's worth about 5-6 getting it from a real-estate company.

Slab:

4" deep, 8" deep around a 1' perimeter..1100 sq ft total

- 18 yards concrete, $2200

- Bobcat rental (days w/ gas), $450

- Rented tools (concrete blankets for cold, et), $150

- Rebar/tongue-groove insulation: $1000

Solar:

Currently, I run off a generator, which was about $500. On the cheap end they seem to last a few years. Solar is cheap, though, and a decent setup from Arizona Wind Solar would cost about $2500 (4-5 panels, controllers, converters, wire, and extra batteries). You'd have to be careful with what appliances you used, though.

Heat:

I purchased a wood stove for $200 for the small cabin. Eventually, a nice Morso one will run me about $1500.

Framing:

- 16, 16' 13/12 gable trusses (building this by myself, so it's a modern pole barn), $1500

Windows:

- 15 3'x 5' picture windows (it's fucking dusty here), $2500

Well:

$8,000 50' out, piped 4' down to the house.

That's as far as I've gotten on the new build costs and well forecast. The costs are in the _slab_ (which will be stained for the floor) and the _well_.

Initially, I did not know about the "theft" problem. In 4 years owning this property (and having an unfinished cabin w/ easy entry for about 2 of those), nothing has been stolen. I'm not sure there is one, but I have heard stories. That said, I'm 3 miles off the highway, and you can't see me from the road.

I'm half-way in b/t San Luis and Fort Garland, which are each about 15 minutes either way. Currently, I bring in water. It sucks!

How deep is the water table? Is that why the land was so cheap?

Wells are drilled to 125'. Land is so cheap because you don't get trees, there's not really much commerce out here, and it's _quite_ rocky.

There is a large aquifer in the valley so wells do pretty well but the water rights are tight. A residential well permit is for interior water use only. With 35 acres you get the right to irrigate one acre. You aren't supposed to recapture grey water or rain. There's a lot of potato farming in the valley and the old farmers have most of the good water rights, the rest of the water is owed to new Mexico and Texas and has to be left to flow downstream. Rainfall is very minimal, sub-9 inches per year IIRC. Weather easily hits double digit negatives in the winter but is mild in the summer. Some land has Limited road access and public service are minimal with few sheriffs to cover a large amount of land. Some of the land was sold to hopeful retirees sight unseen in the past and has been let go extra cheap once they realize it is a tougher living than expected. All of those things said, I personally think it is worth the money and will probably purchase a small parcel just as a getaway and play space.

You're absolutely right about the water rights; I don't _think_ I'll end up getting animals, but purchasing another 30 acres would be a good investment if I did want to homestead in that fashion and use water for other reasons.

The weather extremes are actually a good thing! Plenty of sunshine for solar-powered anything. That, combined with the 30 degree temperature difference in day and night helps ease the load on fridges running off solar; during the winter you just pull in cold air :)

Why aren't you allowed to recapture grey water? That seems crazy. I guess rain makes a little sense since the water is supposed to flow to New Mexico and Texas.

What about sewage/septic tank?

I'm currently on a simple compost system; not such a big fan of septic.

I dislike the current compost systems that are out there for under $5,000 - the toilets all are so flimsy. So, I've been designing one that uses a no-flush, wall-hung stainless-steel toilet. Because it's custom, I don't expect that to be done until at least Christmas with all the other building going on. I'm debating on a waterless urinal installation as well, but quite Frankly, peeing around the perimeter (as a male) keeps most of the larger animals away. Except cows.

Also, because I'm weary of introducing compost smells into the new house (in case I mess up the mix), I've designated a small walkway between the house and the 6x6 louvre room. The shower still sits inside the main unit, though.

I truly honestly envy you. To be out there free from all the drama and crime of the cities. I dream of escaping to the country side myself one day.

Thank you. It is beautiful, and part of the reason I'm out here! I do love the vibe a good city can give off, though - getting lost in the mix and such. It's nice to be able to do that on occasion.

You obviously do not have the requirement of living close to Vancouver BC in order to maintain an income.

As said elsewhere if one is willing to move out into a remote area you can definitely pick up land for less money ($2k cash for your own land with mountain views is blowing my mind and making me cry on the inside). Unfortunately, so much IT work is centred around metro areas and property is very expensive.

Yea, you're absolutely correct on this one! I do drive to Denver (3 hours there) a couple times a month, though, and I work at my company's HQ while visiting/staying with friends, etc.

I started reading your blog because I love stuff like this. The cabin looks cool. Do you live in an area with building codes?

I live out in the country and have a bunch of building projects that I never seem to get to. I need to see stuff like this to get me off my ass :-)

Thanks!

Yes, there are building codes (which I meet). Colorado actually has some sheisty codes compared to Chicago (where I'm from), so in many places I went overboard, which I think is OK. It's still a bit like the Wild West out here!

For me, getting down to the cabin full-time was the hardest part. 4 years of trying to build a small cabin and building myself up professionally took its toll on what I _wanted_ to accomplish with this project.

So, now the house design and CAD consumes my evenings - I want to be able to document it like the dome chap!

This idea you need to live physically near a place to have an IT job needs to die. I'm working (at Red Hat) with a large team, several of whom I have never met, many of them I will only meet twice a year at most. We've got the internet - video conferencing, chatrooms, asynch messaging, distributed source repositories, distributed code review, remote shells. We all can and do work very well remotely.

Unfortunately, so much IT work is centred around metro areas and property is very expensive.

So you need a satellite uplink and a second dome covered in video, wired to a telepresence drone made out of a cheap tablet on a broom handle stuck to a roomba.

Yes, I think you are right. I do work from home quite a bit but I don't think I could convince my current employer that telepresence is a viable option. Maybe I need to find a new employer...

All that said, to afford land without a mortgage in BC I'd have to move so far north that I it wouldn't be much fun at all.

Wow.. this is amazing. I'm kind of blown away by how cheap it is. Is this your permanent residence or a vacation home? Does it feel weird to not have neighbors?

As of this month, the cabin has become my permanent residence while I build the house throughout the rest of the fall/winter/spring.

I actually have neighbors...sort of. There is a permanent resident of _extremely_ poor individuals 1.5 miles from me (they're quite nice when I've run into them), and next to them is a vacation residence put up years ago inhabited by a retiree on occasion.

This land is "open range", and there is a large cattle farm I can see about ~5 miles away whose cows occasionally wander out this way and graze.

And the land is pretty cheap! But, costs anywhere in the mountains _do_ increase even the shittiest of goods, including labor, which is why it's as much DIY as I can.

Living out here means monthly trips to larger cities to visit friends, check in with work HQ in Denver, and pickup all the decent food I can (I can't stand the markup at Whole Foods, but they have the best bulk foods of anywhere I've been).

Nice. What do you do for connectivity/internet? Water?

15 GB Data plan, and I tether. Water is brought in until the well is dug!

For those interested in buying cheap land in the US and constructing a permanent residence I also recommend checking out "earthships": http://earthship.com/

Will be more expensive than a dome, but they have ideas and systems for building a complete off the grid house.

Call me Victorian, but I have seen some earthships near Taos..and they just don't catch the eye like a normal house. I guess that's relative.

They _do_ have great passive qualities to them, but this _can_ be done with stick-frame construction, it will just cost you more (and be slightly less "environmentally friendly").

We also have a thing called apartment buildings. Hundreds of homes stacked vertically and centrally heated is still the efficiency champion.

Being inexpensive is just part of what makes this cool, part of the simplicity. Another part is ease of building. It makes me want to participate. I really do feel like going out right now and tinkering.

This structure and the post about it is art.

Thank you for sharing.

If you live way out in the middle of nowhere the property taxes are TINY. $25/year for 2 acres. No building codes, tons of freedom.

My only issue with this awesome dome is that because of its shapes it wastes a lot of material. I'd like to see some kind of cube or cylinder shaped home built from square pieces that maximizes the material's use.

>Given that these domes don't float

This has been an idea I have been pushing around fro a while.

Building a living platform floating in the SFBay.

Admittedly, this has been nothing more than a day-dream - so I am unfamiliar with what imperial entanglements attach themselves to the reality of this....

But assuming that it can be done, what would be the barrier to entry for the following scenario:

* Standardized deployment platforms.

* Assume a Hex shape

* Standardized MEP+IT infra in the base of each platform.

* Set solar capacity for each platform

* A range of models of living spaces

* Communal-esque structure for shared work/meeting type spaces

* [a range of other options, I could go on and on]

---

I do not know the legal preclusions to an idea such as this... and clearly there are costing issues. But if you can have an open design for the platforms, figure out how to get them economically built - and provide the standards/spec requirements for the on-platform structures.. it may be viable, and while this has long been just a thought-exercise for me; I'll just ask the obvious: Anyone else interested in this type of thing?

> I'll just ask the obvious: Anyone else interested in this type of thing?

http://www.seasteading.org/

Don't forget Blueseed, the floating startup community

http://blueseed.co/

For inspiration: http://www.rohmer.nl/?view=detail&pageAlias=projecten&subAli...

Knowing that you don't need a big house gives you a lot more flexibility in choosing where to put it.

In some ways. The dome is great, but one thing it isn't is stackable.

Maybe it is. It's light. Maybe you could have giant shelves with domes on them.

But then you need structural supports to hold up the shelves, which is what the dome is designed to avoid. The low wall weight would help, I suppose, but you still need to hold up everything inside the units. Once you're pouring concrete onto rebar, it seems like you might as well just have an apartment block.

You could support a stack with scaffolding.

Actually, not necessarily. A lot of zoning regulations in cities require a minimum square footage of a house.

And a lot of zoning rules also prohibit nonstandard construction. It's terribly frustrating when you're looking at alternative building methods.

In some states you're pretty mostly stuck building in either really rural towns or in unincorporated locations.

My own favorite alternative building technique is a "monolithic dome." [1] You get a form (an inflatable balloon in the shape you want the house, effectively) and literally spray a concrete and foam mixture on the inside; you can make a small house like OP or a huge building. Insulation is amazing, and it's weather-proof. They're rated safe against tornadoes, for instance. As a bonus, it's also fireproof, so you can put one up in the mountains and not worry about forest fires destroying it.

The frameless dome is a neat trick and an elegant design, but there are a dozen other techniques I'd rather use to build a "simple" home. It's more art project than practical building method.

[1] http://www.monolithic.com/

I looked at (made and redacted an offer) on one that was (probably is) finacially 'upside down' in austin (burleson and douglas) built out of preformed foam blocks. They are hollow lego-like blocks that are assembled and pumped full of concrete. poor fellow roofed it with stucco and no drip rails, so quite a bit of roof runoff ran down his foundation walls that the PFB concrete skeleton was built on.

crying shame, I was excited to live in a monolithic dome, they're certainly cool.

i like the look of earthbag homes http://home.howstuffworks.com/earthbag-home.htm

Cool idea. Thanks.

A hybrid approach -- earthbag and shotcrete dome -- might be an interesting approach. A ring of earthbag construction as a foundation with a shotcrete dome on top could get you lots of interior space.

Depends where you live - if you're capable of working remotely, land can be incredibly cheap. AUD$49,000 gets you this:

http://www.realestate.com.au/200677503

"2.5 acres [10,117 m2 or 108,900 ft2] with a large flat area at the front of the block and some scattered timber at the back. Electricity at the front of the block and rural/town water available."

Just 2.5 acres? Here's 160 acres for $39,000: http://www.marktwite.com/Drexel-montana-hunting-land-for-sal...

Of course, that puts you in the middle of nowhere, but it's like $240 an acre.

Yeah, I was assuming that you'd want power and water to the property.

That Montana property is beautiful though. Sometimes I'm jealous of you folks in the US; not only do you get rain, you're allowed modern firearms as well.

The only way to scale it seems is for cities to go extremely vertical. Then if there were attractive choices for DIY housing that meets building code

The alternatives include taking on a longer commute or being farther from the action.

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