Starting in the middle

So the first thing you need to survive cheaply in this world is land, and that's what we set out to find.

Owning land is the least expensive way to live in this world. When you rent, you are at the mercy of the owner of the house. If they don't want you to build something or knock out a wall or heat with wood or dig up the lawn for a garden, you can't. If they want to sell their property, you have to move. If they want to raise the rent, you have to move or pay more.

Owning a normal American house isn't much better. When you live in a normal American house, you're living in a house that in many cases was built for the least amount of money possible, using the least expensive materials, and sold for the most possible profit. If it's like most American homes, it was built to make you dependent upon oil companies, utility companies and builder supply chains to keep it livable. It wasn't designed to work with nature - it was designed to work against it. Today I was driving in the country and saw a modular home with the entire north face covered in windows... in the Northern Hemisphere, mind you! No thought given whatsoever to the fact that the cold north wind will blow icy air right into that window.

On to our search -- 

We originally had wanted to move to Maine, where land was cheap and people were scarce, build a tent, then a small structure, then add on, build an earthship and get some goats and chickens to help us take care of the land. But circumstances led us to gain custody of 4 of Andrea's grandbabies. By court ruling, we couldn't leave Ohio. So with 4 grandbabies, 20 cats (many were leftovers from Andrea's cat rescue, and a few I brought with me, and a few more we found starving and couldn't just leave, and all fixed, tested and vaccinated), a dog, a sparrow and 2 fish it was unlikely we'd find another place to rent, especially within our price range. 

On top of this, our landlords wanted to renovate the house we were renting and sell it. When we were first informed we were told we had 2 years to move out, which would ordinarily be plenty of time. We'd already put about $1000 or so away in a tea can for our Maine money. But now we were on a time limit. We needed to move fast. Maine was no longer an option, and Ohio land isn't cheap. 

Andrea discovered the concept of joining a sustainably active intentional community. We spent a year getting to know a few of them, found one we loved, and spent a lot of time with, and made some great friends. They invited us to move down in the spring and rent a nice little house on the property for what we were paying in rent now. If it worked out we could basically "buy in" to the community and become a member, and build our dream home with people who shared our values.

Though the cats had been a topic of discussion the entire year we'd known them, even to the point where they were suggesting accommodations for them, I don't think it ever was fully understood that we'd had 20 until the last meeting before we were invited. Some of the members were concerned about them and it seemed to snowball into a major issue in a short amount of time. We were given options to rehome as many of the cats as we could, but the reason we had the cats was that they were so difficult to rehome. It came down to a choice between placing them in a shelter or giving up the community. I sleep better not having put them into a shelter. Our intention was to become an asset to the community, not a burden, and it was best to abandon the idea so we could all remain friends. It was clearly going to cause some rifts.

Our options dwindled down to looking for foreclosed houses in the ghettos of Ohio's dying urban neighborhoods. Some of them were only a few thousand dollars. If we could nab one of those and fix it up, we could try to do intensive urban gardening, cover every square inch with some kind of edible plant, catch rainwater off the roof, put solar panels up to save on utilities, and hope we save enough money to sell the improved house for a profit and use the money to buy land.

Andrea hit Zillow - every day, every night, every break from whatever daily tasks she had, for a full year. We travelled all over the state, toting frightened realtors through some rough-looking neighborhoods. We took photos, trolled Streetview, kept records on Google Spreadsheets and images and prices on Google Maps trying to find the best deal, and the least vandalized houses. We studied urban permacultre and urban homesteading online whenever we had the time.

We found one house in East Cleveland that really caught our eye - a foreclosed home that had not yet been vandalized because it was out in the open away from other houses on one way streets. The houses around it were all abandoned, it had a good size yard for the city, and lots of sun. We had our savings, which had increased a bit, a big income tax check because we had the grandbabies, then borrowed from friends and family, paying back 10%/month with interest. That gave us enough to pay cash for the house.

We sent the earnest money check to put a bid on the house, but someone beat us to it. 

With the only constant in this world being change, after 2 years of looking, we'd received 2 pieces of good news - Andrea could have schooling paid for at Columbus State through a government program that would land her a better paying job, and our landlords weren't ready to throw us out as they had too much going on in their lives to spend time and money renovating our home to sell, so we could stay at least another year.

With most of the money in a small tea can, enough for an earnest money cashiers check in a dedicated bank account, and what we had in the bank, we began bypassing the foreclosed home idea and went straight for looking for land, trying to find folks who would do a land contract. 

Most of what we found were companies that sold land without the mineral rights at outrageous interest rates. We scrapped that idea and started looking for land sold by the owners. I went to all the Craigslists in Ohio, did a search for land under $30,000 - figuring that would be the most we could afford to pay monthly on, especially the first year and still paying rent - and piped all those craigslist ads through my Inoreader RSS reader, creating a folder, so I could access all the listings in one place.

I created a Google Spreadsheet that calculated monthly payments and price per acre - I just had to key in the total price, the down payment, the rates and the years. This helped me quickly figure what we could afford to do with each situation, which had the lowest price per acre, or the lowest monthly installments.

Whenever we found land we could afford we'd email them and ask about a land contract. I was amazed at how many folks went for the idea! I thought maybe a few people would consider it, and charge outrageous rates, but two places that we were really interested in actually offered no interest at all and were happy with whatever we could pay a month. 

Eventually we found exactly what we were looking for and hence - this blog.

Land is out there. Maybe not today, but every once-in-a-while someone somewhere will put up a piece of land. Be ready to take something that no one else wants. Be ready to adapt to strange environments. Be ready to start REALLY small. My research has suggested most people abandon the idea of building a natural building because they start out too big. Be ready to live in a tent. Then you'll appreciate the house you CAN build.