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Buy land. Save. Put RV on it. Save. Build utilities. Save. Build tiny house. Save. Expand house. This is what poor people do in latin america, sans the

Buy land. Save. Put RV on it. Save. Build utilities. Save. Build tiny house. Save. Expand house. This is what poor people do in latin america, sans the RV. They just buy blocks as they can and add on to it. This is also exactly what our family did, minus the 'expand' part. We could never afford to buy a house nor get access to credit but we could afford to build a tiny one on shithole land one brick at a time. The great thing is it also more or less works no matter how poor you are, if you die before it is complete your children can continue. Eventually after enough generations enough money is saved to have a house.

tejohnso 1y ago
Are you talking about buying remote, difficult to access land? For most people who want to live within reasonable distance to grocery or hospital, putting an RV or tiny house on a lot is not going to be permitted.
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
Unfortunately, a lot of the intermediate steps are prohibited by code in many locations. You'll get evicted from your own land if you try to live in an RV on it, you can't get a permit for a tiny house, you can't get utilities without a full site plan submitted.
- mothballed 1y ago
  There are places that still allow it. Not enough for everybody to do it. But since there is no 'fad' of doing it right now, not much competition, anyone who might come across my comment and reasonably wishes to do this near a place with jobs can 100% do so.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Most of those places are "middle on nowhere". Location matters in real estate, if I can't get to my job in a reasonable amount of time it doesn't matter what I can do. My job is in Des Moines, if you have me the largest mansion in SF for free (including taxes and utilities) I still couldn't afford to live there (plane tickets would cost me several hundred dollars/day and the flights are 5 hours each way by the time I get to the airport an hour early)
- QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
  Its legal to live in a box made of packing palletes on the sidewalk and illegal to live in a box of pallets on land you own. perhaps the solution is to build your tiny house on the sidewalk in front of the parcel you bought.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Another thing people do in places like the Big Island (HI) is they drop shipping container houses on worthless lava field land owned under a burner LLC and every time the county gets to them they just burn the LLC and move the container to another lava field. The county/state cannot keep up with it.
- jurking_hoff 1y ago
  [dead]
duped 1y ago
This is illegal where I live in the United States. You can't "just build things" here. Now you could probably do this really far out in the boonies where it could be illegal, but also unenforced. My uncle lives in a log cabin built this way. But it's also extremely far away from civilization (aka: jobs with income, and luxuries like groceries and clean water).
- mothballed 1y ago
  It's illegal in most the US but by selecting my county intentionally from the start I found a place within 20 minutes of a ton of jobs, grocery store, etc. I did it legally with permits, but my permit basically said "ok to build house and no codes/inspections" and that was pretty much the bulk of it. You have to pick one of the places in the US with little to no codes / paperwork from the beginning. There are still quite a few of them left, but probably not places you have heard of.
  - duped 1y ago
    Wonderful for people without families/friends/community.
    - sethammons 1y ago
      Take some of them with you. Use your savings to visit from time to time.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    do you have running water, electricity, sewage, and a road (whether paved or unpaved) provided by a municipality? or did you have to solve for some of these yourself?
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Water - bought share in a private well (cost near zero, well share was unproven but miraculously worked perfectly). Some people haul water. electricity - private power company. But started on a small cheap generator. sewage - private septic system (county allows you to DIY build them so could do this for next to nothing) roads - For miles and miles they are all private dirt roads, but with easements to allow me to pass. The easements go miles until they connect to a county road in town. I first built my road with a shovel, hatchet, and ripping small trees out with a truck. Nothing was provided by the government.
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
> if you die before it is complete your children can continue If you didn’t have enough finances to complete before you die the land would be lost to inheritance tax at that point in most of the western world.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Oof. That's a tough one. In the US you have to get to a pretty high valuation (currently over 13 million dollars) before estate taxes start taking a bite.
CalRobert 1y ago
I agree this is a good plan, but many places make this illegal (Ireland, for instance), because if people weren't forced in to life-long debt servitude to have a roof over their head they might exhibit too much agency. Here's a nice website showing how to build a nice, modest home for under 50k. Too bad it's illegal. https://web.archive.org/web/20210216212333/https://www.irishvernacular.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210216212333/https://www.irish...

tejohnso 1y ago

Are you talking about buying remote, difficult to access land? For most people who want to live within reasonable distance to grocery or hospital, putting an RV or tiny house on a lot is not going to be permitted.

LeifCarrotson 1y ago

Unfortunately, a lot of the intermediate steps are prohibited by code in many locations. You'll get evicted from your own land if you try to live in an RV on it, you can't get a permit for a tiny house, you can't get utilities without a full site plan submitted.

mothballed 1y ago
There are places that still allow it. Not enough for everybody to do it. But since there is no 'fad' of doing it right now, not much competition, anyone who might come across my comment and reasonably wishes to do this near a place with jobs can 100% do so.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Most of those places are "middle on nowhere". Location matters in real estate, if I can't get to my job in a reasonable amount of time it doesn't matter what I can do. My job is in Des Moines, if you have me the largest mansion in SF for free (including taxes and utilities) I still couldn't afford to live there (plane tickets would cost me several hundred dollars/day and the flights are 5 hours each way by the time I get to the airport an hour early)
QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
Its legal to live in a box made of packing palletes on the sidewalk and illegal to live in a box of pallets on land you own. perhaps the solution is to build your tiny house on the sidewalk in front of the parcel you bought.
- mothballed 1y ago
  Another thing people do in places like the Big Island (HI) is they drop shipping container houses on worthless lava field land owned under a burner LLC and every time the county gets to them they just burn the LLC and move the container to another lava field. The county/state cannot keep up with it.
jurking_hoff 1y ago
[dead]

duped 1y ago

This is illegal where I live in the United States. You can't "just build things" here. Now you could probably do this really far out in the boonies where it could be illegal, but also unenforced. My uncle lives in a log cabin built this way. But it's also extremely far away from civilization (aka: jobs with income, and luxuries like groceries and clean water).

mothballed 1y ago
It's illegal in most the US but by selecting my county intentionally from the start I found a place within 20 minutes of a ton of jobs, grocery store, etc. I did it legally with permits, but my permit basically said "ok to build house and no codes/inspections" and that was pretty much the bulk of it. You have to pick one of the places in the US with little to no codes / paperwork from the beginning. There are still quite a few of them left, but probably not places you have heard of.
- duped 1y ago
  Wonderful for people without families/friends/community.
  - sethammons 1y ago
    Take some of them with you. Use your savings to visit from time to time.
- andsoitis 1y ago
  do you have running water, electricity, sewage, and a road (whether paved or unpaved) provided by a municipality? or did you have to solve for some of these yourself?
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Water - bought share in a private well (cost near zero, well share was unproven but miraculously worked perfectly). Some people haul water. electricity - private power company. But started on a small cheap generator. sewage - private septic system (county allows you to DIY build them so could do this for next to nothing) roads - For miles and miles they are all private dirt roads, but with easements to allow me to pass. The easements go miles until they connect to a county road in town. I first built my road with a shovel, hatchet, and ripping small trees out with a truck. Nothing was provided by the government.

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

> if you die before it is complete your children can continue If you didn’t have enough finances to complete before you die the land would be lost to inheritance tax at that point in most of the western world.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Oof. That's a tough one. In the US you have to get to a pretty high valuation (currently over 13 million dollars) before estate taxes start taking a bite.

CalRobert 1y ago

I agree this is a good plan, but many places make this illegal (Ireland, for instance), because if people weren't forced in to life-long debt servitude to have a roof over their head they might exhibit too much agency. Here's a nice website showing how to build a nice, modest home for under 50k. Too bad it's illegal. https://web.archive.org/web/20210216212333/https://www.irishvernacular.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210216212333/https://www.irish...