Seems like that is something that you and your family will have to figure out - about how much would a new house cost? Would you have to install utilities (private well? Septic?) or would those already be available? What type of house and would you be able to minimize costs with it? What about permitting fees? Depending on what county you are headed to, those can be minimal or substantial.

Regarding HOA fees - we pay about $300 per year, which doesn't seem bad, That pays for road maintenance in our neighborhood and upkeep on the gate to our neighborhood. The gate is a nice layer of privacy that we appreciate. So - I don't necessarily think that all HOA fees are awful.

Cheaper land is generally unimproved land, and further out from the urban conveniences, neccessitating a longer commute to your job and other amenities. It will need more expenditures to break even with the more expensive, closer in land. It could even cost more in the long run. You have to do the analysis that factors in more than just land cost and construction cost. Those are ultimately the cheapest items to go into a "build" when you start to count the real costs of living in a location and paying for that over time.

Our preference is to live rural anyway, as we both work from home. We always want well water, we don't want city water, so we would have to dig one anyway. It's rare to find raw land with a well already dug. So we are rural folk. I probably should have mentioned that. Our HOA also gets $300/year but they barely maintain the roads and the gate is broken and never closed anyway :-)

We were fortunate to find land with access to public water. Having to have a well dug is generally a huge financial unknown

I agree gladys, but we generally assess that issue before buying and we always use a dowser.

I totally failed having tried to downsize on cost and upsize on land mass. Not the story you want to hear. A cheap piece of land in the area I was looking for in the NW, 4acres, had nothing to offer in terms of resale value or potential appreciation, if I built a large or any size property on it. It had power but no water/well, septic etc. Ended up purchasing 6 acres, a signature lot, approved for building, in a beautiful 64 acres gated development with only 13 lots; all utilities on site at lo; HOA $1200/year. Currently in own design phase.

It has everything to do with where you are leaving and where you are going. Not all rural areas are the same. Ours is rural, but uses standard or stricter codes and regs for everything (whether they make sense or not, depending on the inspector.) We knew we'd have to install a well and septic, but because we have a high winter water table, the septics in our county are very engineered, have to use a specific size class of sand, etc. They are nothing like the systems in the state I grew up in. A well is a wild card because you pay by the foot and you don't know how many feet you'll have to drill (a look at neighbors' logs may help) and (again, depending on where you are) there are no guarantees regarding water yield.

Putting in our road/driveway was a lot more than I had imagined, too. Especially having to essentially re-do it after it got hammered by all the heavy truck traffic. So I would say rural is not = cheap.

But downsizing, in terms of building a smaller and more efficient house, is still a great thing, to my mind. (Whether it is a net loss or gain financially? I'd have to do a spreadsheet model to figure that one out!)

A smaller house may work for you, but that depends on your expectations and lifestyle. We are also in a rural area (Granite Falls, WA for those who know where that is), so we are here much of the time. We don't go out to eat much (limited restaurants in town), don't go to the gym to exercise (no gym). So we wanted a larger house than we would if we lived in town. We also wanted a one story to make it easier to age in place - and one story costs more than a similar sized multi story house would.

In our case, we moved from dense suburbs in FL to rural SC. The cost of living is much lower here. We bought 7 acres for about half what a tiny (1/6) acre lot would be in our old neighborhood. We were getting clobbered on property taxes and homeowner's insurance. On just those two items alone, we are saving about $5000 a year.

Where our plan is different is that the only way we could afford to do this was by doing a mostly DIY build. Otherwise, we'd have far more invested in our new house than the old one was worth. It's pretty hard to beat the price of an existing home by building a new one, so you might want to look at existing homes in the new area you want to live.

By going DIY, we were able to build a very energy efficient fully custom home. It is small (1400 sq ft), but has an insulated walk-out basement, so we could double the useful square footage easily and inexpensively. We went ICF construction, R-50 insulation in the attic, and very good windows. We've been able to keep the house comfortable with a single small (12K BTU) mini-split heat pump, and electric bills have been under $100 for an all-electric home. There will be a lot of custom touches that would be found in higher-end homes. It's a hobby for me, so the time spent isn't much of a factor.

The takeaway for us is that we have the house we want, on the land we want, in the climate we want, and no mortgage! Zoning is lax around here, and there are no HOA's to answer to. Above and beyond the energy savings, our house is strong, quiet, and there are no cold spots- the entire house is very even in temperature with no drafts. Everything exceeds code, so we won't have to contend with faulty wiring and plumbing issues.

As others have said, developing raw land can get expensive. Bringing in utilities, digging a well and septic, plus a driveway add to the cost. If everything goes well, it still adds up. If there are issues- the sky's the limit. Check into permits and fees, too. The most extreme case I know of is a friend of mine that wanted to build on partial wetlands in CT. He wound up spending $66,000 on permits and fees! By comparison, ours were $480 for a house and barn. I'd have to dig out a bunch of receipts to tell you what we spent on developing our property, but I would guess we spent at least $20K, and we don't have a well. All told, we've probably spent $150K, and that's mostly DIY. Our house in FL did sell for more than that, so I guess technically, we did achieve a savings, as long as I don't count 3 years of my own labor. The real savings will be when we retire, and have lower taxes, insurance and utilities, as well as not having a mortgage.

Thanks everyone for your input. You have given me some new ways to look at this and questions to ask. I'm considering hiring an estimator to give me a realistic look at building supply costs and I will talk to subs I am considering using to check costs. Last time we acted as GC and hired our own subs. We were overall lucky but also made some dumb mistakes that I know not to repeat. So far I have not found any suitable land at all so this concept is still just a thought at this point.

What state are you going to be building in? Do you already have plans? If you already have plans, the lumber yard can give you an estimate on the material for free.

Hi Robin, Tennessee. But building materials are so much more than lumber. I do suppose though that lumber makes up the largest part of it. Not a bad idea, thanks.