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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

You ever notice why all the people satisfied with their custom home are either obscenely wealthy or the kind of people who buy a front end loader just because it's a good deal even if it needs work? There are two ways to get a custom home done right.

1. Be stupidly rich and don't give a crap about how much you spend

2. Do damn near all of it yourself.

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Absolutely correct. In fact to expand on this slightly... I've had a lot of clients wanting to find land to build...what they don't understand is how few lenders are willing to lend on just land / single home building projects (at least in my market). Then you add in the well and septic where so many just waive their hands "no big deal right?" Um - it sure is a big deal if you are the "lucky" party who doesn't hit water for > 1000 feet. I've got a lot of prospective buyer / builders who show up with tech money and end up very surprised at how quickly you can eat through a million dollars cash when you start from bare land.

People lease land to build on instead of buy? That sounds absolutely bananas. (I'm not from the US so unfamiliar with your market).

No, I think they meant that many lenders won't be willing to lend you money to buy bare land for a single home building project.

This. We live in farm country and bare land loans have gone from 20% down to 25% down in the last couple of years. You receive loans in chunks for building a custom home as the builder completes milestones. There was a "restoration" loan that came with certified builders and a government mandated architect that signed off on payment to the builder as milestones were reached. I am not sure if this type of loan is available any longer. In my opinion it is very difficult to purchase a mini farm (less than 100 acres) and make a go of it in the south. Some of our friends are building "barn" homes. Buy the land cheaply 5-10 acres. Have a metal barn built for less than $60k and then convert the interior to a home. This is very popular currently in Carroll county GA (feeder to Atlanta for jobs).

Although I think throwaway is correct that that isn't what they meant, people do indeed lease land in the United States. It's more common in commercial real estate, but there are also (predatory, in my opinion) land leases for "manufactured" (i.e. mobile) homes where the resident buys the home but doesn't own the land under it.

Yes, throwaway understood my meaning... and you are right too that there are circumstances where people own a home but not the land underneath. Apart from the example you gave, I'm also vaguely aware of cases where tribes own reservation land where homes have been built by non-tribe members who technically have a lease to the land.

And actually you bring up another wrinkle, which is if you don't own the land underneath, there are plenty of lenders who also won't lend to you to buy a manufactured home, because they consider it to be personal property rather than a permanent dwelling (which they could more easily foreclose and sell)

Check out who owns inner London land. Or the Duchy of Cornwall.

There are examples of "leases of years" like Canberra/ACT in Australia, where all titles are for 99 year leaseholds.

They've started renewing them since the first leases were granted in the 1920s.

Well ok but those are exceptional cases. What the person was talking about was a generic case.

> those are exceptional cases

the 99/100 year lease is quite common in many Europan countries. It's not "exceptional" here

And don't close until you are sure you actually can get workable internet there too.

Isnt that the point of the article - the "bone structure" is supposedly built so that unskilled labour (ie you and three mates) can erect the building yourself?

I have to admit that having a prefab building that has one side a foot longer than the other side not sound like a condemnation of the concept but the factory that built it. I presume one would have recourse under contract for such a foul up?

> I presume one would have recourse under contract for such a foul up?

Possibly, but delays in construction are what kill you. You can't really FedEx overnight new structural steel framing components, so now you're blocked until they can get

a. rebuilt, and

b. freighted out to you

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