Finding Land

I have found one website very helpful in locating parcels of land in the areas I'm interested in - LANDWATCH.COM .  The one thing that annoys me about this site is that it seems that landlords interested in renting commercial space to businesses have found a way to list their offerings under "land", so that the really cheap parcels are in between pages and pages of commercial and office space for rent.  It's really tiring to keep on looking for good deals in amongst all this - but the deals are there.  If anyone figures out how to filter out aaaallll the commercial space for rent from the search for land, let me know please.

I'd like to put a video on here from SIMPLE SOLAR HOMESTEADING.  Pay attention to what the narrator says about finding land.  Most of the time, people are paying too much for land.  When I see that someone is charging over $10,000, I just flip to the next ad.  You can sometimes get land for as little as $1,000 in the right situation, so just keep looking.  I don't intend to pay more than $5,000 for my land.

When my land is purchased, that will be the time to put a prefabricated cottage, tiny house or RV on it if it doesn't have a livable structure there already.  That will be the fun part;)

Renting is Hazardous to Your Health

Renting in NYC has been the biggest blight on my life in the last 17 years.  Here are some of the things that have happened to me as a result of renting:

1) massive monetary expenditure, for absolutely nothing in the end.  I guess it could be argued that the money was spent to be in close proximity to opportunity.  However, that is arguable.

2) conditions that were damaging to health.  Some of the conditions that I've encountered:

- mold that made us cough and itch

-insufficient electricity for the demands of space heaters, appliances, etc

- no heat in winter due to electricity insufficiency and inability to use a space heater that caused me to have "walking pneumonia" without realizing it for a period of 7 years until a doctor figured it out and gave me a course of antibiotics

- insect and rodent infestations

- constant noise that deprived us of sleep

- landlords who actually came in uninvited and prowled in the apt, did not respect boundaries

- roommate "sharing"  situations where the roommate turned out to be mentally unstable or dangerous, a drug addict or a thief

- stressful situations with other renters in the building

- and finally the over use of pesticides that caused me to have series of Emergency Room visits, Doctors visits, etc, upset me and my family greatly and caused a huge health scare that could have been very serious, and cost us money.  This brought me out of the renters market for good.



And a host of other calamities.  They could all have been avoided had I simply thought more about the situation and used my resources right in the beginning to secure property and a vehicle right away that was close to the place I wanted to live, without being right in the middle of it.  I suppose it was my misguided urge for community that brought on some of these calamities.  But hindsight is the best sight, so they say.  I feel good that the recent "Tiny House" movement got me to focus on my living situation and clarified a lot of these issues for me - namely, that I didn't have to put up with ANY of it, and there were alternatives to the way I had been living - both the high prices and the health hazards.

Options

There are a lot of other options for housing other than the mainstream track of securing a 20, 30 or 40 year mortgage.

1) Save money and purchase your place to live outright, without a mortgage from a bank.

2) Make a deal with an owner to finance your place to live and cut the bank out of the equation.

3) Buy land and build your house yourself, at your leisure, while living somewhere else in the meantime.


I think we can all agree that saving enough to purchase a house outright is something that not a lot of Americans can do.  And there aren't a lot of owners who are willing to take a risk on financing their home to an individual.  They are out there, but they aren't very common.  You can keep asking and trying to find a deal, but it's just not something you can easily find.

I have decided to try option 3.  I have seen really good deals on land floating through Craigslist and other sites, so I'm going to take one of them.  And then I will be looking for a prefab cottage or Tiny House to put on it.  Either that, or I'll build one myself.  I've been following the Tiny House movement closely online - I'd like to take part in it.  BTW, my house will be the size of a Manhattan one bedroom apartment so it won't be that "tiny" compared to what I've been living in so far.

This blog will let you follow the story as it unfolds.  This is the beginning.

My Quest For Descent Housing

I grew up on the move.  The daughter of a college language professor who found himself having to move each year, I lived in 10 different states before I was 10 years old.  My family finally settled in Centreville, VA when I was 10.  When I was 13 we moved again - this time into a house we owned.  I always kept expecting to move again somewhere inside of me - but my parents never moved again.  I did, though.  I went to University of Maryland after high school graduation only 5 years later, and afterward moved to Manhattan where I proceeded to move over 10 times more due to the rising cost of housing in the area thanks in part to Mayor Rudy Giullianni abolishing rent stabilization - a very bad move on his part that would have far reaching ill effects on all renters in the area.

I've had over 20 places to live, and counting.  I want the place I'm living now to be my last.  When I think of how much of my and my family's money was wasted on move after move after move, it's astonishing.

Despite making a descent living, I am underqualified for most loans and mortgages that don't have usuriously high rates due to being self employed and not having perfect credit.  My most recent attempt at stellar credit was tragically ruined by a period of sickness - brought on by my most recent landlord's over use of pesticides in the apt right before I moved in.  8 Emergency Room visits and 4 Doctor's visits and counting, some of those not covered by insurance, means lots of 800 numbers bombarding my phone and dings on the credit I had laboriously polished up the previous year.  Credit is a losers game, made for people who are either very lucky or who have the means to preserve stellar credit no matter what happens - and I have decided not to play any more.  Trying to play by the rules that have been outlined for us by banks and credit companies to secure housing in or close to NYC that will not make you sick or get you killed is very, very obviously not working.  This has been amply demonstrated over many years, so other strategies must be employed.

I was not, in fact, looking forward to being a "mortgage slave" and taking that grisly bet that I'd be able to have the wherewithal to keep a 30 year mortgage going, taking a chance on foreclosure and all the hazards that mortgages come with.  Seeing how much it had negatively affected my parent's lives and some of my friends, I was in fact dreading it.  So I am in a way glad that this episode of sickness has lead to me striking out on my own to find my own way, and jumped off the mainstream track of a 30 year mortgage.  There is more than one way up the mountain and I'm finding it.

It feels strange to have a fairly descent income but be considered not eligible for a descent loan.  But I feel this will lead me to a position that is better than being responsible for a mortgage - more free and secure.  Mortgage means "death contract" - who wants to be involved in a "death contract"? I certainly don't.

Some mortgages take a year to complete the process from start to finish.  What if I were to take that year and focus on buying land, then putting a prefabricated cottage, Tiny House or RV on it to live in - then building a house at my leisure?  I'd be farther away from NYC than I had originally planned, but I'd be getting the fresh air, sunshine, land and healthy living that I had desired on most definitely.  I'd be in a beautiful environment that is much safer than where I had been previously- in NYC and it's boroughs.   And I'd have control over my situation in a way that I'd never dreamed possible before.

I think I'm going to do it.