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American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters say
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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I hope someday to be able to afford a plot of land to be otherwise homeless on where no one can legally fuck with me or put me in jail for doing it. In theory this might work as long as it's done far away from anything resembling a HOA. I'm sure there are measures in place to prevent people from doing that, maybe there's a minimum purchase price or acre requirement for land outside of population centers or something.
Out in the country you see people doing this with campers sometimes. Never talked to any of them though.
Most cities have habitability rules. Outside city lines it's far more common. Good news is if you own the land throwing up a basic shed to receive utility hook ups is far cheaper than building a whole ass house. And most states won't let an HOA force you to join if you're already there when they start.
Its what most people in Canada do; buy land and drop a 5th wheel on it until they finish the cabin.
I'd guess that people in Canada are probably already familiar with the issue, but I'd note that trailers often don't have great thermal insulation, and it can get pretty cold in Canada, so one may need to do a lot of heating (well, and cooling, but that's probably less-vital).
You can add insulation, but they're pretty space-constrained.
You can buy a piece of land and put a trailer on it -- cheaper than a camper/RV if you don't plan to move it.
But it's got some drawbacks.
My sister did that for a while, but if you don't have a house on a foundation, at least where she was, you also didn't have a postal address, so you can't get mail or packages. IIRC also couldn't get an electrical hookup to the grid (though if you're far enough out in the boonies, that point may be moot anyway).
The bigger problem is, at least in the US, not the price of land. Land is cheap. The problem is land near desirable jobs.
If I were going to live somewhere and wanted to minimize housing costs and I had no location constraints, I'd probably choose a city or town which has seen population outflow, which lowers housing prices. Then you still get municipal water, sewer, access to the electrical grid, maybe natural gas service, stuff like snow clearance from roads, high-speed Internet service, nearby stores and amenities, etc. Lot of stuff that one takes for granted if living in a developed area.
I used downtown Huntington, WV, as an example in a previous comment:
https://www.zillow.com/huntington-wv/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Afalse%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-82.460912051591%2C%22east%22%3A-82.39087420979412%2C%22south%22%3A38.37258334248018%2C%22north%22%3A38.45369011178824%7D%2C%22usersSearchTerm%22%3A%22Huntington%2C%20WV%22%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A12012%2C%22regionType%22%3A6%7D%5D%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%2C%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%7D%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A13%7D
holy telemetry, that's a long link.
Maybe this is state dependent? I have visited many trailer parks that have natural gas and electricity.