Affordable Housing

[MorelCabin]

There are a great many places in both the US and Canada where you can buy up land real cheap...like 5 acres for $5k in some places and I am sure there are cheaper places than that. With all the talk about job losses, economic upheaval, I thought I'd toss in a few ideas for extremely frugal home building ideas.

Everyone knows we don't need to live in homes that are 2000 square feet. Goodness some people around here live in homes that are not much more than 500 sq ft...and mine is a mere 840 sq feet and I could still live with less if I had to.

Here are some links to some very affordable builds! Most of these can be built with less than $20K in materials. Imagine that...a real cute dwelling and debt free living.

http://www.countryplans.com/lemay.html

http://www.jshow.com/y2k/listings/3.html

http://www.townandcountryplans.com/

If I had a choice, right now I would be buying up about 25 acres or so and building a small cabin. My DH does not agree with me at all, but I wish he did. We could be debt free with money under the mattress ( I wouldn't dare put it in a bank right now:>) haha!

 

[miss_thenorth]

This is my and my husbands dream..... after the kids are gone and he retires, we plan on going back up north, find a few acres on a river or lake somewhere, hopefully in an unorganized township (if there will still be some by then), and build a small place.

I know when we lived up by Timmins, you could buy land really cheaply, (we had 80 acres on the Frederickhouse river, and we paid $30,000 for it--with a mile of river frontage, and a mile of road frontage).

Unfortunately, we will have to wait until he retires for this, but as the time approaches, we will be looking for deals on land, this time only about 5 acres,nad knowing that this will be our plan, perhaps he will take an early retirement.

I will check out those links--thanks!

 

[FarmerChick]

that first link---love the cabin they built and that fire looks so inviting....very nice!

nice plans.

I too could sell this place and build over on my other 30 acres. we planned on it but Tony wants a big house, one I am not going in debt for. Kinda a tug of war happening on that one right now...haha....but I don't need to make a move so......Selling this home on 5 acres right now will not fetch me alot....lol...darn economy..HA HA

so right now I am staying put.....but these were fun to look at!!!!

 

[MorelCabin]

Ahhh, the Conaught area. There is alot of cheap land around there. My father has 80 acres on Black River Matheson. He inherited it from my grandmother and is hoping to hand it down to my brother. My brother has no interest in it, but I do:>) I would love to put a building on it way back in the woods. My father wouldn't say no, but it is fairly remote and I am afraid of vandalism when I am not there. Maybe when we retire we'll be neighbors:>)

 

[MorelCabin]

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2006-06-01/Build-this-Cozy-Cabin.aspx

Mother Earth News has some pretty interesting cabins as well. There is also another article called "Home Petite Home" in thier October/November 2008 magazine that is on the shelves now. Real cute place, lived in by a family of three...

 

[miss_thenorth]

Ahhh, the Conaught area. There is alot of cheap land around there. My father has 80 acres on Black River Matheson. He inherited it from my grandmother and is hoping to hand it down to my brother. My brother has no interest in it, but I do:>) I would love to put a building on it way back in the woods. My father wouldn't say no, but it is fairly remote and I am afraid of vandalism when I am not there. Maybe when we retire we'll be neighbors:>)

Yep--we were on Connaught road. Black River Matheson area is one place we will be keeping our eyes open for. I know several ppl who have camps out there--not alot of vandalism reported. Another place we're keen on is Ice chest lake area--good hunting!!

I knew you'd know where I was talking about!

ETA, our camp was left unattended for four years--only being used once a year after we moved down here before we sold it. We never had any vandalism to our camp either. had to sell it though b/c we didn;t want to spend our vacation doing maintenance on the place.

 

[Homesteadmom]

Not that I am against your idea, but isn't it more for each individual to choose what size house they live in? We had a 960sq ft house that we were so crowded & cramped in already with 2 children & homeschooling. Then dh's mother passed away & we inheireted things of hers & some of it was furniture which we had no room for. So a bigger house we bought & it is 2346 sq ft. It is no where near filled up which is nice I like the open space we now have & not falling all over each other. Not to mention we can have family & friends over & have a place for everyone to be. And we have a 4th bedrm that is a classrm now. Now that said I was not so keen on this big of a house I was leaning towards 1800sq ft. But the price was to good to pass up! So we got the bigger one. But this is JMO.

 

[MorelCabin]

Hey, you're right, it's not for everyone. I posted this for those that are interested in downsizing into more efficient affordable dwellings:>)

 

[scrambledmess]

As much as my DH is on board to want to become more self-sufficient. Unless we were really desperate, he would never down size that much. I would love it though However, if the economy ever gets as bad as the big D, we will definately be looking to go along those lines.

 

[krjwaj]

Thanks for sharing. It would be great to have a 'get-a-way' somewhere. I see DH doing something like this in a few years.