I am person of modest means. I love intentional communities and I have considered joining or forming one for years. I have considered every form of intentional community from a full scale commune like Twin Oaks in VA, to a cohousing setup where everyone owns the land together, but individual houses are owned and built individually.
There are a couple nice cohousing intentional communities in the town where I live, but the basic barrier to entry is money. You pretty much have to buy a plot of land that costs $100,000 plus.
I don’t want to go into more than $30,000 of debt, but I want to get into my own house. I am willing and ready to build it. I don’t want to buy a full plot of land myself, so I am thinking about making a proposition to someone who already owns a plot of land. This is my idea. I would advertize something like this:
Got Land? Want Some Extra Income?
Wonderful couple looking for a landowner wiling to sell an interest in 600 sq feet of your property where we will build a delightful ADU (additional dwelling unit). You get money (exact amount TBD), wonderful neighbors, and a delightful ADU built for free on the property increasing the overall property value. We are especially interested in being on land in or near an intentional community. Obviously, lots of details to work out. Contact XXX if you are interested in hearing more.
So that is my basic idea above. If someone owned say 5 acres and wanted to sell a 800 sq foot corner of the property for say $25,000 to us, we would not actually subdivide the property (cause there are limits to that) but instead we would basically buy into the property. They could sell say 10% of the property…but the contract could say we could only receive $25,000 when the property was sold in the future…or something like that…
Anyways, what yall think of my grand plan? Any suggestions for exactly how to do this if someone is interested?
I’m a commercial (not residential ) real estate agent and possibly one can chime in, but the most obvious problem that suggests itself is that almost all zoning regulations, especially those for larger tracts (for obvious reasons) have minimum areas required for residential lot subdivisions. You can’t just slice and dice up a larger lot to get a smaller residential lot without jumping thorough several municipal administrative hoops, and in many cases it’s not going to allowed period.
BTW you can call it “buying in” all day long as a dodge, but the municipal authorities will treat it as a residental lot subdivision.
This sounds like a really bad idea. The legalities will be fierce here, and probably will be outright against code in most jurisdictions. Beyond that, if you only own 10% of the property they can tell you to GTFO when they feel like it. Plus, are you then on the hook for 10% of the property taxes? You probably can work something out with a lawyer, but you will end up being penny wise and pound foolish. You might end up losing any savings in lawyer’s fees, and I’d imagine it would be very hard to ever sell your interest. Much better to just buy a parcel and build on your own land.
Even if you can jump through the zoning hoops (and that will probably be a daunting and expensive exercise) you won’t be able to get a standard home loan secured by a mortgage. ANy loan you will be able to get will have a higher interest rate and probably a (much) lower lending limit - think car-loan levels of credit.
By not owning the land you’ll have much lower security of tenuter (you’re essentially a renter). Oh and building your own home means navigating the building laws and consent systems of your locality as well.
There are places that are not zoned, including several towns in my county. You would have to follow county regulations as to sanitary facilities and state regs imposed by the Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR), which controls siting near wetlands, rivers and lakes.
What you are proposing might best be handled by leasing land and moving either a trailer or a manufactured home on to it. Lending institutions won’t be easy to find.
In my local areas that have zoning, agricultural zoning is the most flexible for arrangements like this. Although the minimum lot size for a single dwelling in my immediate town is 20 acres, if you have a farm that already has a farmhouse on it, you are pretty much unlimited if you want to build additional dwelling units on the same site. Some farmers have done just that, and rent them out to workers. To look at the homes, they are just as you describe, a corner of a larger parcel.
If this can be done where you are, I think you’d have to work out an arrangement with the farmer, and you might have to accept a long-term lease instead of a purchase.
You mentioned VA in the OP, is that where you want to live? Land prices vary wildly throughout the country, so if relocating is a possiblity…Where I live $70,000-125,000 will currently get you 9 acres.
Accessory units are allowed in a lot of places where a subdivision would be difficult. I don’t think the legal arrangements (ownership by landowner, life estate or long-term lease to tenants) would be terribly difficult.
Keep in mind that the per the OP this is intended to be a stand alone residential space with full water and sewer facilities. If it’s not on a municipal water and sewer system and relies on well and septic as many rural (ie inexpensive) lots do, it’s a non-starter simply due to the well and septic approvals required, and and the minimum lot sizes related to the size of the septic field, and the well and septic separation distance. Required lot sizes are often an acre or more these days, to get a well and septic lot approved.
Regardless of zoning, or lack thereof in unincorporated areas, the county septic requirements are going to blow almost all the “nip a corner off a farmers land” plans out of the water. They are a separate issue from zoning.
On the other side re existing water and sewer systems, given the reality that almost any property served by a municipal water and sewer system is either going to be incorporated or have some sort of urban service district plan that controls sewer access you’re not going to get water and sewer service to what is effectively a separate house structure. “Accessory Structures” are generally narrowly defined in most zoning codes and do include full stand alone residences sitting on the edge of the lot of an already existing residence at some distance from the residence.
There may be exceptions in some places to the usual regs listed above that might let you squeeze your little tiny house onto someones lot, but given the financial exposure and lack of control any person doing this would face it does not sound like a particularly bright idea.
Why not just buy a half acre of land and build your house on it? Why make it so complicated. Most people that own larger tracts of land, do so because they don’t want neighbors close.
If I can find 1 other family that is interested, we can buy the piece of land together, build a main dwelling for them, and an ADU (additional dwelling unit) for me. The main dwelling does need to be 900sq ft. The ADU can be much smaller. This might be the best way to go so we start off at the very beginning with a clear legal relationship… I am just trying to sort out what exactly the legal arrangement should be…
Yes, ADU’s are legal where i live.
I know 4 people in town doing this with a 5 acre piece of land. They all own the land together.
There are intentional communities in town that own land together…at least one uses an LLC structure.
I am just exploring whether I really need to start from scratch with a blank piece of land and another family/person…or could I just propose something to someone that already has the land and a main dwelling. Also trying to get a sense of how I should explain or advertise this…also some idea what legal setup I should propose.
That make any sense?
I am thinking a “lifetime lease” might be a great idea…
Frankly, I’m wishing you good luck with this, assuming you want more than a mobile home or shack way off in the woods.
Cohousing and suchlike can indeed reduce costs (I’m a big fan), but not to these levels. I think you probably need to make a choice: get a mortgage for a decent amount of money, or just keep renting. I’m not saying renting is bad, and there are certainly options to rent in intentional communities; renting could be the right choice for you. I just am dubious that you’re going to ever own a decent place for less than $30K, even in some kind of intentional community.
As far as the particular idea-- build a house on a property that’s already owned by someone else – legalities aside, to me, that’s something that might be a solution for the right two people, who already had a long-standing relationship and particular circumstances that made it work. But I would never go looking for a random person to enter into that project; there’s just too many ways things can go wrong in such a complex situation.
On the other hand, getting a co-housing group together, to buy land and build (or buy a structure and renovate it), as a condo or subdivision, is feasible, and has been done many many times (you seem to be familiar with cohousing, so you already know this). That’s what I would do. A lot of work, both on the development end and on the building community end, but worthwhile for a lot of people. Two families might even work, but again, I don’t see how it can happen for virtually no money, like you want.
I know of two cases where people have built houses on land they don’t own. It seems to be practical in certain circumstances. Both cases have long term leases, so the house owners know they are secure on the property. The main problem is that the value of their houses are limited by the circumstances. Anyone purchasing the home must establish a new lease at the pleasure of the landowner. Further, neither house owner has any standing in the local community as a typical homeowner in terms of utilities or as taxpayers. In one case, the house owner is constantly in danger of having the municipality condemn their septic field (along with several others on the same property). Only the property owner has standing to address this with the municipality, and apparently puts minimal effort into it. It seems like the owner of a house on someone elses property has less rights than a renter. But in both cases I know, the cost of the house was very economical, which motivated the owners to take this approach.
Writing this, I recall this was done decades back for vacation homes in the Jersey shore area, and I think also some inland lakefront area in PA.
There’s nothing particularly mysterious about leasing a parcel of land and building a house on it. I believe much of Baltimore City was originally developed that way. Much of downtown Chicago was school board property, so even large office buildings were built on 99-year ground leases (most of these were sold off in the 90s).
You can also build log cabins for under $30,000 as well if you have the skill set (generally log cabin kits go for more than $30k and are way overpriced, if you actually have the skill set you can acquire the logs yourself for far less than a typical log cabin kit.)
There are low cost kits that would suit the OP as well. But you are right, most of the kits advertised are over-priced, and many come from other manufacturers that you can order direct from. And they will usually provide building plans as well. What they will be missing are finishing and detail pieces. You may have to buy your windows and doors elsewhere, but there’s a good chance those can be supplied as well.
I think the OP would be more satisfied with a log cabin kit that is highly modifiable and adaptable using simple tools and materials. The highly manufactured homes can be very difficult to modify and maintain.