As said elsewhere if one is willing to move out into a remote area you can definitely pick up land for less money ($2k cash for your own land with mountain views is blowing my mind and making me cry on the inside). Unfortunately, so much IT work is centred around metro areas and property is very expensive.
I live out in the country and have a bunch of building projects that I never seem to get to. I need to see stuff like this to get me off my ass :-)
Yes, there are building codes (which I meet). Colorado actually has some sheisty codes compared to Chicago (where I'm from), so in many places I went overboard, which I think is OK. It's still a bit like the Wild West out here!
For me, getting down to the cabin full-time was the hardest part. 4 years of trying to build a small cabin and building myself up professionally took its toll on what I _wanted_ to accomplish with this project.
So, now the house design and CAD consumes my evenings - I want to be able to document it like the dome chap!
So you need a satellite uplink and a second dome covered in video, wired to a telepresence drone made out of a cheap tablet on a broom handle stuck to a roomba.
All that said, to afford land without a mortgage in BC I'd have to move so far north that I it wouldn't be much fun at all.