Over the course of a week or a month, I meet a lot of people who dream of living out on their own piece of land.
They want a life without other people telling them how to live, what kind of house to live in, what color to paint it, or what they can do in their own backyard.
Unfortunately, all too often many of them run into an obstacle that throws them off from their dreams. Especially if you are new to the process, it can seem like there are so many moving parts, you can't know where to start.
Once a family gets started planning to build a home on their own land, they'll inevitably run into a problem they don't think they have the resources to overcome. Maybe the land they like is too expensive; maybe it has issues they don't know how to address; maybe they're just afraid that the land will have some kind of unknown problem that turns out to be too costly to fix, and they don't want to commit their life savings to something with that level of uncertainty.
All of that is perfectly understandable. Each one of us has expertise in our own career, so there's no way to have all the knowledge necessary to address the potential problems you can encounter when you're building a home on your own land unless that is your career. You're focused on learning and getting better at the things you're already spending your life doing.
But when I meet with people who dream of building a home on their own land—but who are discouraged by known and unknown obstacles—I encourage them not to give up on their dream just because the hurdles seem too high.
There are people who do this as a career, and who have spent their lives gaining the knowledge and expertise needed to help you clear those hurdles.
The biggest hurdles when you're building on rural land typically don't have anything to do with actually building the home. Because of that, it's important to work with a professional who has experience not just in building homes, but in building homes on land that are outside the norm.
They'll need to know how to build on land that isn't already perfectly flat with easy access to utilities. They'll need to be able to navigate city or county government to find out hidden issues like flood plains, special permits, pipeline easements, or other "gotchas" that aren't all that obvious.
Your forever home is too important to trust to someone who only builds on rural land every once in a while. Working with someone who primarily builds on rural land will give you the support you need to clear any homebuilding hurdles on the way to your dream.
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