Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by mountainFrugal »

250 - 130 = 120 -Housing solved
120 - 30 = 90 - most expensive grad program
90 - 30 = 60 - tricked out van
60K travel budget

- or -

30K travel
30K start-up capital/salary

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Ego
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by Ego »

TopHatFox wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 12:52 pm
The new reality sucks :’c
TopHatFox wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 2:05 pm
Maybe I’ll just payoff my parent’s nice house at 130k and live here indefinitely. I bet you its now worth 500k. Take that 2023 reality. :evil:
You are in a transitory state. It may feel a bit like chaos. Once you settle into a routine, clarity will likely return and you will have a more accurate understanding of what exactly you got yourself into. My guess is, when it does you will be happy that you did not make any big commitments that lock your into your current reality. For the time being, doing nothing is an option. You don't always need to be working towards a big goal. Sometimes it is good enough to simply be moving in a positive direction, knowing that when the time comes and the opportunity presents itself you will be positioned to act.

Laura Ingalls
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by Laura Ingalls »

TopHatFox wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 12:12 pm
Probably the biggest hurdle is finding a property that isn't from multiple decades ago. Sometimes the houses are like $160K for a house in a small city built in 1940. Like, even if I re-build all the finishes, the bones are still 100 years old.
Don’t conflate old with crappy. I would rather have a house from the 1930’s or 1940’s than some 1990’s builder grade house. The wood is just so much better.

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Slevin
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by Slevin »

Laura Ingalls wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:45 pm
Don’t conflate old with crappy. I would rather have a house from the 1930’s or 1940’s than some 1990’s builder grade house. The wood is just so much better.
Depends on where you are as well. I’ve looked at the inspection reports for hundreds of houses around me (thats how it works around here where inspections go up when the house is for sale), and the 1930s and before houses weren’t really built for modern usage and to modern standards. Around here they usually don’t have good foundations either. Not to mention earthquake safety, built with leaded paint and asbestos (anything from the 30s to 50s will likely have a lot of asbestos in inconvenient places), etc. There are some nasty legacy costs (read hard to fix) in a lot of those little surprises.

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

most contractors will file the permits with their licence but let you do the work, super common if you are subbing out with cheaper unlicensed/undocumented labor. I love this builder on tiktok and his free content covers the basics and he sells in super detailed course with every fine detail to build a home to code and get it on the property tax rolls. https://www.tiktok.com/@caselucasrobins ... 6178764078.

Key thing is that you can do 70% of the home build with some simple hand tools but 30% will require 50k heavy machinery. You can either sub it out or if you got the balls you could learn on a rental :) just buy the rental insurance lol

You will most likely need heavy machine operators to clear and level the land (stump removal is a bitch without heavy tools) and a heavy machine subcontractor to connect to grid and sewer. Even if you go well and septic you need some heavy machinery for that too. Wells can be super tool intensive depending on water table depth.

You could DIY the foundation with a pier foundation but most people want slab and that's a hell of a lot of concrete to hand mix so you will prob have to sub out the foundation who will need a concrete truck

The framing could be done with a helper but I heavily suggest you get a pro to help you since a poor frame job means total tear down

Now it's a mad rush to protect the house with siding and a roof. If you get unlucky and it rains right after framing goes up but before roof and siding, you can have some mildew if it rains a lot after framing goes up. the slower you are to wrap up framing and roof the higher the chance so there is some logic to subbing out the roof while you do siding or the other way around. the other option is just do cinder block and then you can take your sweet sweet time

Once you got the framing, siding, roof and foundation down, you got to rough in the plumbing and electrical. If you go with slab foundation, plumbing goes in before the foundation but this is also a tough one to diy your first time. Bring in a sub to help you out the first time and be his/her helper.

At this point it's all super DIY friendly. You have a shell and all that is left is insulation, kitchen, bathroom, flooring and drywall. These are the classic DIY parts of homemaking that all have 10 million youtube DIY videos

If you want to do this via bank loan just becomes friend with a GC and he will let you rent his licence for a small cut, but if you are paying cash then just become friends with your local permit office and see the steps for home owner permitting. Pretty much all areas even the liberal ones have special rules for DIY home builders to self file permits.

I've never done it from scratch but totally a goal of mine too. I'm just a unlicensed home remodeler who spent a lot of time learning the steps to get ready!

Cheers

PS if you are really set on doing a 100% solo build look up earthbags it's a slightly modern twist on the ancient methods of home building which is literally just dirt in bag to make walls. Good luck getting that to code but it's damn cheap and won't require any permits since the architectural diagrams will cost more than the building lol and it just one step above a yurt in terms of insulation and comfort. also consider just doing a manufactured home or prefab home if you want to say you did it yourself without the backbreaking labor :) there is a ton of money you can save if you do the prep work diy

loutfard
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by loutfard »

On foundations, there's screw pile foundations too. Super fast, diy friendly, zero leveling required. And do check wood framing with old style small square straw bale infill for insulation.

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

Any idea if straw bale passes code anywhere or is this a eco home method without electrical?

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

loutfard wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 2:20 am
On foundations, there's screw pile foundations too. Super fast, diy friendly, zero leveling required. And do check wood framing with old style small square straw bale infill for insulation.

Any idea if straw bale passes code anywhere or is this more common with off-grid eco homes?

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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by jacob »

ether wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 11:22 am
Any idea if straw bale passes code anywhere or is this a eco home method without electrical?
It definitely passes in places w/o code. Otherwise, the debbie-downer take is that the resale value is low insofar you ever want to move out. Much like tiny houses. It thus comes down to whether one considers housing as "part of this complete investment portfolio" or "a regular expense which in this case is paid upfront" and therefore needs to be amortized.

loutfard
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by loutfard »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 11:32 am
It definitely passes in places w/o code. Otherwise, the debbie-downer take is that the resale value is low insofar you ever want to move out. Much like tiny houses. It thus comes down to whether one considers housing as "part of this complete investment portfolio" or "a regular expense which in this case is paid upfront" and therefore needs to be amortized.
That certainly might be something to take into account in the US. Around here, that's much less of a problem. It's quite a common way of building. If there's any impact on resale value, it will be a positive one because of the excellent insulating properties.

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 11:32 am
It definitely passes in places w/o code.
I've never worked in a US county that has no code. Do people even report their property to tax rolls or even have permits in those areas?
Last edited by ether on Fri Sep 15, 2023 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

loutfard wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 11:45 am
Around here, that's much less of a problem. It's quite a common way of building.
what country? Always like to here how other places build.

loutfard
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by loutfard »

ether wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 3:08 pm
what country? Always like to here how other places build.
Belgium. The traditional way is brick and mortar, but there's quite a few wood framed straw houses now here too, especially in Flanders, the northern half.

rube
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by rube »

There are strawbale houses at many places in the world, they do pass local code. They are fire resistance (often better than just wooden houses) and rodents aren't an issue. All if properly build of course, just like a more traditional/common house.

Simply think of strawbale homes as houses with wooden frames (you have these everywhere) whereby the strawbale simply replaces the more traditional insulation. Wall finishing can be simply done to taste and local code (plaster, wood, brick etc.) like any other house.

Resale value doesn't need to be low(er), again, as long as it is build properly like any normal, common house.

Some listings of beautiful (and often expensive) strawbale houses in the US: https://strawbale.com/homes-for-sale/

Only if you do not follow a specific code and use for example the strawbale load bearing method (no supporting timber frame) it might be more challenging to keep it's value over time. This method however is not as common and mostly only used as trials, "specials" and are far cheaper to build anyway (so in absolute terms you will lose less anyway).

The earthbag method is very interesting for certain regions but it quite different from the typical strawbale house.

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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

ether wrote:I've never worked in a US county that has no code. Do people even report their property to tax rolls or even have permits in those areas?
One of the reasons people build tiny houses is that in many places in the U.S., auxiliary structures of less than 200 square ft do not require a permit pull. In some rural areas, on land that is still as originally platted, small structures such as these may be constructed even if there isn't a main residence on the property. Another possibility is to buy rural property with primary structure grandfathered in before current code, and build tiny structures to supplement it. Building code is kind of like tax code; there are loopholes if you look hard enough.

In my state, it's actually illegal to camp on your own land for more than two weeks/year, even in your own backyard in a recreational vehicle, but the likelihood anybody would enforce that if you owned 20 wooded acres would be extremely slim. One of my friends is slowly retiring on to his wooded acreage, one 200 ft. shed at a time. His "primary" shed was built of wood by some Amish carpenters, so it's like a cute little cottage. A couple others he bought pre-fab, hauled in with his van, and then carted deeper into the woods.

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

rube wrote:
Sat Sep 16, 2023 2:23 am
Some listings of beautiful (and often expensive) strawbale houses in the US: https://strawbale.com/homes-for-sale/
This seems so low cost and logical I'm surprised it's not more common! I learn something new each day

ether
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by ether »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Sep 16, 2023 8:54 am
One of the reasons people build tiny houses is that in many places in the U.S., auxiliary structures of less than 200 square ft do not require a permit
That's so cool you don't even need a electrical or plumbing permit. That's the main reason the tiny home builders try to keep it under 200 sqft huh?

Laura Ingalls
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Re: Follow-Up to $250K USA house --> How to Build a House?

Post by Laura Ingalls »

ether wrote:
Fri Sep 15, 2023 3:04 pm
I've never worked in a US county that has no code. Do people even report their property to tax rolls or even have permits in those areas?
In my current county if you are zoned agricultural (requiring 20 acres) you are required have your septic approved.

There are no building permits needed.

You most certainly are on the tax rolls. The county assessor’s office sends someone out to look.

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