If you’ve been keeping up, my husband and I have been annoying a property owner into selling us part of his land that looks abandoned.
I love this property. It’s perfect. It’s nearly 7 partially cleared acres with a house (seriously dilapidated, but still). I would love to own this land and begin working on it. Unfortunately, even though the owner corresponded with us a few times, he hasn’t responded to us in weeks. I still believe there’s a reason we came in contact with that land. Either we were meant to use that land or learn something from the experience. If the owner does try to make some sort of deal with us, I would take it. I would do almost anything to live on that land.
However, even though I still believe that I may end up on that property, I’m not going to sit around and wait for it. I’ve waited for things in the past, and it usually ends up with me holding the short end of the stick.
So today I dragged my husband along on a field trip. I’ve been looking at properties all around that are really cheap, and we went and looked at 2 of them today. Neither of them were what we were looking for, but all that means is that we can move on to other properties.
It really helps my search that I don’t care how much work it’ll take to fix a place up. There’re already restrictions on the location, the lot size, the price, and the utility availability. Most of the properties that fit that bill are wooded and don’t have a house on them. If that were a problem, there’s no way that I’d find anything near me (or possibly anything at all).
If there does happen to be a house on site, that usually bumps the price up to around $70K or more. I don’t have $70K, and I’m not really interested in financing a house for 30 years. I’m looking more in the $15K range, and I’m willing to do A LOT of work myself. I don’t have a 9-5 job, so I could spend several hours a day working on whatever property we end up with.
I realize that having a small female do manual labor isn’t a super popular idea, especially in the rural South, but I don’t care. I don’t mind doing hard work. My husband who’s tall and strong does have a job where he leaves the house everyday, so he can’t do all the hard stuff. If something needs doing, I’d rather do it and have it done than let it sit waiting on my husband (this view really irked my husband when we first married).
I’m so excited to be looking at places! I feel rather uneasy about times ahead, and having a few acres of land will go a long way towards appeasing me. It may take a while to get there, but there are plans for a food forest and a fish pond and a pretty big rabbit operation. I can’t wait to get started!
Frugal Treehugger 