4 ms·

i have been looking into buying land and building a house on it -- ive been reading and researching intensely for a while now and i am simply astonished at how

i have been looking into buying land and building a house on it -- ive been reading and researching intensely for a while now and i am simply astonished at how affordable it is to have your own land and a house, all while being well within commuting distance of the city. the thing about owning land is that instead of paying for your landlords luxury car and his wifes boob implants, you only have to pay property tax. if you make other simple efforts to reduce your expenses, you can bring your total operating costs down to insanely low levels without sacrificing any quality of life. i feel like this is some kind of conspiracy -- i have no idea why people seem to be oblivious to the wonders of cost reduction. it takes monumental effort to increase your income but its pretty much trivial to reduce your expenses which accomplishes the exact same outcome. rent is currently 80% of my expenses and there is nothing i can do to change that, except buy land. even if i lived in a super crummy part of town (i dont want to do that) it would still cost a fortune compared to property tax for land and a modest house (modest but still a thousand times better than most apartments).

sokoloff 9y ago
> you only have to pay property tax You have maintenance/depreciation and insurance expenses, and have the opportunity cost of whatever capital you have tied up in the property. I think home ownership is a great choice for many and I own slightly more than 50% of the house we live in [the bank owns the rest right now]. But there are very real costs to ownership and they don't stop at property tax IME.
- wheresmyusern 9y ago
  besides tax, what are ongoing costs composed of? i think that you will find that a house can be made in such a way that besides tax, there isnt much cost. and you dont have to have insurance to own a house, people think that because lenders force you to buy insurance. and, once again, if the house is designed properly, there isnt any need to buy insurance for it. and bringing up depreciation and op cost makes absolutely no sense.
  - freneticfox 9y ago
    There's really no way to design a maintenance-free house. A typical house has a lot of parts slowly failing all the time, meaning you will eventually need expensive repairs on various timelines (sometimes many years, so it can be "ignored" for a while at your peril). Roofing, HVAC systems, sheetrock damage, repainting, replacing aging flooring/carpeting, replacing failing major appliances, etc. You'd have to design and build a custom home way outside of the designs considered normal for the market to make it significantly more (but not completely!) maintenance-free in the long run, at a significant increase in construction cost. But then you've subjected yourself to another hidden downside: the more strange/custom/expensive a home is, the less liquid that home will be on the market if you decide to sell later. A home that's awesome to you but not-awesome to 95% of the market doesn't move. And if you're stuck with it and it's a significant chunk of your wealth, then you can't move cities for that new job or whatever.
    - wheresmyusern 9y ago
      if the house is made of icf construction, it wont rot, suffer from termites, warp or burn. if you have a metal roof with steel trusses, your roof will last a very, very long time. all of this also makes the house impervious to fires both inside and outside as well as high winds. they make houses in southern florida that arent made out of stick and that dont simply fall over in a strong wind -- i look at those a lot for guidance. the construction cost is only slightly higher excluding the steel trusses. my house wont be very big so i can afford the steel trusses. even without steel trusses, you can make it practically fire proof. coating the outside of an icf house with cement based stucco will make that house classified as a non combustible structure in the eyes of the code, and you can insure it as such. you mention hvac. i will not have hvac. you mention repainting, i dont have to paint if i dont want to. you mention flooring, my floor is concrete. you mention sheetrock, the sheetrock will be fine. all of this is well within code and well within what i would call normal. but i hope that people will find it strange or un-buyable because that would reduce the market value of my improvements to the land and therefore lower my property tax. i am aiming to get the lowest operating cost possible, and having a home that has low liquidity actually greatly helps that. not every home has to be a flipping scheme.
pjc50 9y ago
> simply astonished at how affordable it is to have your own land and a house, all while being well within commuting distance of the city This depends on the city and its planning regime. I'll agree that in many cities ownership+mortgage is much cheaper than rent, but I'd be interested to know where you can "just" buy land and build a house. (Also, not having buildings insurance, which is not actually all that expensive, is a very big bet on your fire safety)

sokoloff 9y ago

> you only have to pay property tax You have maintenance/depreciation and insurance expenses, and have the opportunity cost of whatever capital you have tied up in the property. I think home ownership is a great choice for many and I own slightly more than 50% of the house we live in [the bank owns the rest right now]. But there are very real costs to ownership and they don't stop at property tax IME.

wheresmyusern 9y ago
besides tax, what are ongoing costs composed of? i think that you will find that a house can be made in such a way that besides tax, there isnt much cost. and you dont have to have insurance to own a house, people think that because lenders force you to buy insurance. and, once again, if the house is designed properly, there isnt any need to buy insurance for it. and bringing up depreciation and op cost makes absolutely no sense.
- freneticfox 9y ago
  There's really no way to design a maintenance-free house. A typical house has a lot of parts slowly failing all the time, meaning you will eventually need expensive repairs on various timelines (sometimes many years, so it can be "ignored" for a while at your peril). Roofing, HVAC systems, sheetrock damage, repainting, replacing aging flooring/carpeting, replacing failing major appliances, etc. You'd have to design and build a custom home way outside of the designs considered normal for the market to make it significantly more (but not completely!) maintenance-free in the long run, at a significant increase in construction cost. But then you've subjected yourself to another hidden downside: the more strange/custom/expensive a home is, the less liquid that home will be on the market if you decide to sell later. A home that's awesome to you but not-awesome to 95% of the market doesn't move. And if you're stuck with it and it's a significant chunk of your wealth, then you can't move cities for that new job or whatever.
  - wheresmyusern 9y ago
    if the house is made of icf construction, it wont rot, suffer from termites, warp or burn. if you have a metal roof with steel trusses, your roof will last a very, very long time. all of this also makes the house impervious to fires both inside and outside as well as high winds. they make houses in southern florida that arent made out of stick and that dont simply fall over in a strong wind -- i look at those a lot for guidance. the construction cost is only slightly higher excluding the steel trusses. my house wont be very big so i can afford the steel trusses. even without steel trusses, you can make it practically fire proof. coating the outside of an icf house with cement based stucco will make that house classified as a non combustible structure in the eyes of the code, and you can insure it as such. you mention hvac. i will not have hvac. you mention repainting, i dont have to paint if i dont want to. you mention flooring, my floor is concrete. you mention sheetrock, the sheetrock will be fine. all of this is well within code and well within what i would call normal. but i hope that people will find it strange or un-buyable because that would reduce the market value of my improvements to the land and therefore lower my property tax. i am aiming to get the lowest operating cost possible, and having a home that has low liquidity actually greatly helps that. not every home has to be a flipping scheme.

pjc50 9y ago

> simply astonished at how affordable it is to have your own land and a house, all while being well within commuting distance of the city This depends on the city and its planning regime. I'll agree that in many cities ownership+mortgage is much cheaper than rent, but I'd be interested to know where you can "just" buy land and build a house. (Also, not having buildings insurance, which is not actually all that expensive, is a very big bet on your fire safety)