I’m not driving a car these days, which is a good thing in the long run. I’m searching for a place to relocate to, and one of the must-have requirements is being able to walk, bike, and have accessible public transportation. The city I live in (Tucson) now has the highest crime rate in AZ. Using their bus system has been an education in reality. I always wonder how those people will deal with what’s coming down, especially those with babies stuffed in multi-seat baby carriages. Throw in the rapidly depleting water supply and a power outage when another record high hits (it’s 112F today) and it will be insane. Add to that the fossil fuels falling off the Seneca cliff and there will be a massive exodus out of the SW. Trump better finish that wall of his (the new iron curtain?) fast to keep all of us gringos in.
yagasjai Wrote: "I am currently renting in the area I would like to live. However, I will need a loan in order to buy something. Whether I do it now or wait for prices to drop. In a way it seems better to try to lock in a lower interest rate sooner than wait for prices to come down, which may mean a smaller loan at a higher rate. "
1, Focus on increasing your income so you can save more money: Obtaining newbetter skill sets, applying for overtime, or working a second part time job, or start a side business. The more income and savings you can establish the better off you will be.
2. Only buy during a recession. In most cases, Central banks drop interest rates during recession to stimulate the economy.
3. Start researching how to retrofit, or learn about building a new home that is energy efficient. You really don’t want to buy something that is going to cost a small fortune to renovate or needs to be torn down to make it energy efficient.
4. Be sure the area you are looking to buy doesn’t have restrictive zoning regulations. Ideally you want to be able to operate an outdoor wood boiler so you can heat your home using biomass or coal if there is supply issues with Oil, NatGas, or electricity.Some towns are banning outdoor boilers and even wood stoves (FWIW: I don’t like the idea of using wood stoves since it increase the chances of fire and you be treking ash & debris, as well as extra dust from smoke everytime you start the fire.
5. it would be crazy to buy in the US SouthWest Do limited water supplies and extreme temperatures. A ideal place is somewhere with a moderate climate: Mild winters, and not excessive summer temperatures. Plenty of rainfall (ie rarely in a drought) Away from coasts (hurricanes) and Tornado alley. Away from any nuclear power plants, Chemical plants, or potential military targets (ie Miltary base, Airport, Defense contractor Mfg facility, Federal gov’t offices or property).
6. low to Moderate taxes; You don’t want to waste your valuable savingsearnings on paying taxes. Best areas are usually rural/semi-rural with few or no public schools.
Best approach it so scout out potential spots that fit your criteria, using vacation time. You can use google maps while at home to learn about potential areas. See what stores and businesses are located there. Look online for properties for sale (ie Realtor.com) to get an idea on land and home prices. When you think you found a potential spot, build a list of properties you interest you and then go to visit the areas during your vacation time. Also monitor the areas local weather reports, local news (ie does it have a crime problem? does it have a infrastructure problem: ie bad roads, pension issues).
FWIW: its likely going to take you several years to find a spot that meets your criteria, and during that time, you should be increasing your savings.
Some Important Properties characteristics:
- Should be relativily flat so you don’t have to deal with a steep driveway or need excessive excavation to build a home, or difficulty getting a modular home built on site. Also want a sufficient flat area to grow crops, add outbuildings.
- Should have lots of trees that you can harvest for firewood or construction materials. Trees can also be used to hide your home from the street if you are concerned about security. Generally criminals perfer to find easy targets that they can spot from the street.
- On a paved road that does have any wooden bridges, and the road should be on steep hill. You may need to frequency use the road in bad weather. In a long term economic crisis, funding for roads will likely shrink and if a small bridge is damaged it might take years to get repaired if repaired at all (I’ve seen it happen when a small bridge was damaged and impassible and left unrepaired for years stranding people on the otherside).
4, Access to ground water & land that will perk. Ideally find property that already has well, and access to grid power. Before you sign off on buying the land, pay to get the perk test for a septic system. If your buying a property with a home, make sure the septic is up to spec (get an inspector to examine the septic system). - Make sure there are no leans on the property (ie back taxes) & make sure no one owns mineral rights on your land. Check for any easments on the property, Can you build a driveway to the roard? does a neighbor have a right of way easment? Are there any zoning or conservation easements that will prevent you from building your new home, or retrofiting (ie historic building)?
- How close are the storesmedical facillities? Is there a local building supplier (ie lumber yard, stoneconcrete) Are there local building & other trademan (plumbers, electricians) available. It can be expensive if you need to truck in materials that are distance from your property.
Job changes:
Presuming you relocate a a ruralsemi rural area, What job opportunities will you have available? Do you need to retrain yourself so you can find a job that you can work at home or find a local job? When you find a region you like, besides looking for property look to see what jobs opportunties are available that match your skill sets, or determine which jobs you can retrain with in a reasonable period & without the need to spend big $$$ for training classescertifications. Try to take advantage of free online learning presentations (For instance Youtube is loaded with free training videos )
Homesteading Skill sets:
While your waiting to find an ideal property start spending time learning useful skills to be self-reliant. Instead of watching TV, watch homesteading videos. Plant a garden with different types of edible plants: Tubers (potatoescarrotts), beans, corn, wheat, melons, etc. Even if your living in an apartment, you can grow potted plants on a balcony or window sill. Learn how to build and maintain fences. Rasing and slaughtering livestockpoutry. what ever skill deficients you think you have that will help become self-reliant. Your going to need to learn some skills anyway. So why not make good use of your time until you are able to afford property and find an idea property.
Find out what areas around you can have a mobile home (not permanent) or permanent. Be sure to confirm what size lot is necessary. Then look for a piece of property there on deep discount. Be sure to look for tax sales, too. When you get the property, then build a septic system with two split inputs, going to two possible house locations.
Then buy a cheap mobile home for $1000 -$3000 + $1500-$2500 moving costs; and put it in at the less desirable location.
No kidding, they go for that little. When people have to pay $500 rent per month that it doesn’t move, some lowball offers get taken.
Then step by step put down a concrete slab on the other one that CAN later serve as a foundation for your real house; then save up to build a foam insulating concrete form house on the slab, without debt. About the time your concrete house is ready, you’ll be more than ready to move out of the mobile home. Then you can either sell the mobile home, or fully rebuild/ repair the mobile home as a fixed home.
Either way, you’ve done it for minimum cost.
…to your questions. Frankly, if I were to try to take all that advice into consideration at once I would be massively confused and realize that I would have to immediately eliminate most of the US from consideration. No coasts, no tornado alley, no arid areas, no extreme weather, near good water, low real estate prices, on easy transportation corridors, good employment possibilities, etc. etc. Compromise becomes necessary.
In the interest of keeping it simple, I would make only a few suggestions. First and foremost, live beneath your means. Never believe what a real estate agent says you can afford. You cannot have “clear title” to land unless you own it outright. If you must finance, get the lowest interest rate and shortest term possible. Don’t wait around for a recession that may be a decade or more in the future. Relying on what so-called experts tell you about our shared economic future is highly speculative. The sooner you buy, the sooner you start building equity. The lower you buy, the faster you can build capital.
In general the region that would be most friendly to your economic well-being would be the east that was settled before the industrial revolution, gets good rain, has an in-place sustainable infrastructure and is forested with hardwoods. Distances are shorter to most things you need and there are folks around who have those old time skills. Plus, there are many poor areas where real estate is still cheap.
Of course, all that depends on whether you have a reliable, if not highly lucrative, source of income. If you are young enough you may have time to learn a trade and begin earning a living from it. If not, you will have to apply your already learned skills in an area where they are salable.
And, of course, beginning on a new property means lots of hard labor before it is self sustainable. Be honest with yourself. Can you work a full time job where you earn your living and then come home and work hard to develop the homestead. It is a long term proposition. Where will you be healthwise 25 years from now? Can you sustain a high level of physical and mental functioning for that long? And then, what about kids and family? It turns out kids are expensive. Who knew?
Bottom line, set your expectations of income low and be willing to work your ass off. There is no easy way out unless you are born wealthy or stumble upon wealth along the way. Those two options are unlikely for most of us.
Finally, be wary of sustainability gurus. Many years ago I became enamored of Eliot Coleman, the ag guru. It took me a while to realize that he has built his mini empire on the backs of very cheap or free labor of youthful idealistic summer interns. That pattern seems to be true of virtually all of those who offer a way of sustainable living. Look behind the scenes. As “deep throat” wisely advised, “follow the money.”
Years ago I visited Shelburne farms in Vermont. They do some experimental sustainable agriculture there that is quite impressive, until you realize that it exists on a former Vanderbilt estate that has long term trust income to support its ventures. Its a stunningly beautiful place on the edge of the Green Mountains overlooking Lake Champlain with the Adirondacks in the background. Most of us can’t pick up that kind of place on the cheap or have the staff and infrastructure to keep it going.
Rudmin Wrote:
“Then step by step put down a concrete slab on the other one that CAN later serve as a foundation for your real house;”
Bad idea in my opinion:
- If you planning a slab construction you need to figure out all of the drain locations before pouring the slab. You would at least need to have the home plans draw up and get a building permit before you can pour the slab. Also need to work out the details of where the septic tank and drain field will need to go.
- A home with a basement is preferrable since you can run all your plumbingelectricalHVAC systems and be able to service them. A basement also serves as an emergency shelter in case of severe weather or war. A basement usuallys stays cool during the summer heat, so if end up on a grid down you have a place to go to avoid the heat. I am aware that basements are always an option (ie Florida do to water table & Texas) but neighter of those states are a good place to build a homestead, do to weather (heat & storms) as well as large populations & lack of clean well water.
If you go with a Slab, make sure you put foam insulation & vapor barrier below it before you pour the slab. Installing radiate heating (pex tubing) is also a recommend.
To your points: 1) I thought that what I had put before, about splitting the input for wastewater to your two locations, implied that yes, you put your septic for both in at once. In fact, it also implies that you make sure your wastewater can handle both. That does cost a little more up front, saves a lot down the road.
And your building permit is going to have to be good for a stand-alone slab that also happens to be good enough for a house later. Design it yourself first, then take the rough design down to permitting, and see if that’s even possible. Some counties may prohibit doing things that way; some won’t care.
2) Agreed, a home with a basement is preferable, but as someone else pointed out it is a good deal more expensive. If he wants a basement, he should do what he wants… if he can afford it. That’s a design detail he needs to decide on himself.
That said, a lot of property sometimes is on a slope; so if you can put the mobile home on a flat, and the basement slab on the basement level of the house, some ways down the slope, and the septic field farther down… that would be ideal, I’d think. But that’s all details that come with specific design. Sometimes you go to install septic and the health department says “you can only put the septic on the flat up top”… in which case you’d probably better not buy that property in the first place, because you’ll then need to get approval for an alternative septic system… which is far more expensive.
3) Good points about slab construction; my son is working on a house design, and we’ve done ALL that.
Also, Doug: I certainly hope he doesn’t take ALL the advice and try to do it. I expect him to pick through it and decide which is appropriate to his situation, and then from that decide how much of it is worth something. He has to live his own life, and surely will make his own decisions, some of them right, some of them wrong, and of the right ones and wrong ones, some of them he’ll get lucky or unlucky, and the right or wrongness will turn out to have opposite benefit. There’s no guarantee with any of this.
Here are a few headlines from the past 24 hours:
Manhattan is now a buyers market at all price points
Southern California home sales crash, a warning sign to the nation
New Home Sales Tumble To 8-Month Lows Despite Price Plunge
Housing Prices Hit “Breaking Point” Leading To Collapse In Demand
‘Buyer Fatigue’ Setting Into Silicon Valley Real Estate Markets
Portland’s hot housing market is cooling off
Dallas summer housing market is seeing a cool front
Sydney and Melbourne house market plunge blamed for Australia’s first annual property price drop in six years
More and more data points indicate that the most overvalued markets have nosed over or are in the process of topping out.
Thanks to all who posted responses to my question- you’ve given me some good points to think about. The subsequent question I have is that I am realizing that I read years ago in Mike Maloney’s book that at a certain point, housing values will drop and PM values will rise, such that if you put money into PMs now, down the line the shift in values will allow you to buy one or more houses outright. This has been in the back of my mind for a long time now, and I am wondering what people think of this strategy for someone who might otherwise need a loan?