I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania.
Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivion on debt that they locked in with 30 year mortgages so you get weird results like the cost of vacant land is way cheaper than the same piece of land with a house that can really only be bulldozed (latter would be cheaper in most times in history). End result is I built an entire house on property cheaper than a burned out uninhabitable trailer. Building on unmortgagable land is a way to bypass the fact houses are all locked up in 30 year loans at negative real interest rates.
End result is it's far cheaper to build a house than buy even a shitty burned out one because to do the latter you have to buy someone out of their money printing machine of a negative real rate loan, which obviously they are only willing to do for a king's ransom.
------ re: location ---------
I won't share my address but if you are looking to do this yourself: look up fishing canneries in Alaska, most of them are close enough to cheap plots you could do this on, often even without permits or property tax. These canneries are also usually desperate for workers and pay a livable wage to those with refrigeration technology certifications.
I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania.
Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivion on debt that they locked in with 30 year mortgages so you get weird results like the cost of vacant land is way cheaper than the same piece of land with a house that can really only be bulldozed (latter would be cheaper in most times in history). End result is I built an entire house on property cheaper than a burned out uninhabitable trailer. Building on unmortgagable land is a way to bypass the fact houses are all locked up in 30 year loans at negative real interest rates.
End result is it's far cheaper to build a house than buy even a shitty burned out one because to do the latter you have to buy someone out of their money printing machine of a negative real rate loan, which obviously they are only willing to do for a king's ransom.
------ re: location ---------
I won't share my address but if you are looking to do this yourself: look up fishing canneries in Alaska, most of them are close enough to cheap plots you could do this on, often even without permits or property tax. These canneries are also usually desperate for workers and pay a livable wage to those with refrigeration technology certifications.