You mean the better side brother, ohhh yeaahh!

Yup in a ‘normal’ housing market I would totally expect to pay more to do a custom build. House builders are like walmart, they get volume deals that you don’t have access to building a single unit. I used 'Sweet Home 3d" (basically sketchup light just for buildings) to plan the house/site over several months before using online estimators for material as a ballpark, now finally working with a professional. For site planning I hired the geotechnical engineers and the waste water engineers to submit their findings/blessings to the county.

Some of the gotchas I’ve encountered:

• Land is very hard to finance, I ended up saving until I could buy cash
• Building ‘on-grid’ would have saved a lot in permitting and setup (luckily I had electric service at the road). If you are going off-grid, I would check the permitting requirements for sewage/water and the average depth of wells near your spot, this can get expensive quick if you have to drill deep.
• I’m working with an architect atm but we’ve pivoted to using ICF blocks for wall construction as they are made in the USA and tariffs would have killed me otherwise.

I would expect the cost of the building, using the highest quality materials (not luxury) to still beat (by like 100k) the cost of buying an equivalant old home in the area I purchased; however, if we are talking pre-housing-price-explosion of the last few years, I would say building would be more expensive.

I’ll let you know when it’s all done lol - it’s a long and expensive process!

Yup - had the ability (and even tried last downturn) to buy but was consistantly outbid by overseas (and domestic) cash, after 10+ years of trying I finally decided to buy land and go through all the red-tape and expense of buiding something new. Turning houses into financial instruments was a real mistake.

Bought 5 acres (with 1.5 of those acres flat on a hill) about ~20 min outside a medium city, ~1 hour equidistant from 2 very large cities. Geotechnical engineers have been to the property, report submitted to the county (took months). Sewage engineers have been out to the property and approved the drain field (took weeks). Well will be drilled once the county approves the build site. It’s slow going but it will be worth it in the end! My only fear is trump cancelling the rural broadband fund as I am slated to get the fiber cable run to my property line within a year. Staying with starlink for longer will not be awesome, but oh well, sacrifice.

Ultima Online OST for life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUNtqRPkmo4&t=15s

OLED for my tv has been awesome, thinking I will go laser projector next though

<insert outdated xzibit meme here> Agreed, the wildest of wests.

I miss macromedia flash so bad, actionscript for life