About me

My background is neither in building, construction, nor contracting. Rather, I have a PhD in Molecular Biology. My passion is scientific research. But, logistically, everyone needs a place to live regardless of their career choice. Apartment rent was easily taking close to half my monthly salary, and rising. Buying a house seemed the logical alternative. Or, perhaps it was a good alternative 5-10 years ago. Now, in 2023, buying a home is basically signing away your financial independence for most of the rest of your life, at least in my experience. As a hard-working individual who had always saved and paid all bills on time, I was shocked to be treated disrespectfully by multiple banks and mortgage companies, who accused me of having “poor credit” and demanded thousands of costs in mortgage insurance. To get a home reasonably near my work (<1hr), the max I would qualify for was 275,000, which would buy an older home in need of many repairs, with hardly any yard. Further, such a situation would mean I’d be paying over $1900 per month for a 30-year loan. This adds up to $684,000…nearly 2.5X the cost of the place! One mortgage company even wanted $17,000 in closing fees, in addition to a downpayment of 20%.

Am I just ignorant, that I didn’t know these things before? Well, I came to realize that many people in my age range (late 20s – early 30s) had been through the same, and had been treated even worse. A place to live is a basic need that everyone has, so in a perfect society shouldn’t it be the cheapest, easiest thing to obtain? Greed has overtaken America. Basically, the more “livable” a property is, the more expensive. However, this leaves a loophole. As a selling entity, what’s the least valuable piece of property you might have in your portfolio? …an undeveloped plot of woods in the middle of nowhere. These are skyrocketing in cost also, but are still far more affordable than a property with a move-in ready house. I was lucky to find one such lot of almost half an acre for under $20k, and used all the money I had saved towards the down-payment for a house to buy the land outright. A bold move, and with one small problem – this is land with no structure, not even a driveway. Society’s acceptable option for this predicament is a building loan or personal loan, or some type of loan – the only important thing is to make sure you get into debt for at least $100k. Why?

Because it takes a lot to build a home everyone says. It should be at least $150k right? Although some people are able to build tiny homes for under $100k, so it might be possible to get away with less. Then again, it’s always a good idea to budget extra, so probably around $300k to really get it “done right”. But where are these numbers coming from? It seems to just be a “gut feeling”. No one could give me a clear breakdown of why they thought I would need so much, “well, there’s your septic tank, you’ll have to hire a good contractor, materials costs are going up…” But I’m stubborn and don’t like the idea of having to pay most of my salary to a bank the rest of my life, so I negated all that logical advice. Inspired by the kid on youtube who built a tiny home for $7k, and our ancestors who used to live in caves and self-built huts, I decided to see how much I could do on my own.

Follow along with this real-life experiment!