Winter is Coming #6: Earth
Our first search for a place to call homestead
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When we moved back to Montana, we didn’t have a clear idea of what we wanted. We knew what we didn’t want. But that still left a broad swath of options open to us, and it felt a bit like we were wandering in a new country without a map.
Once we purchased our Airstream, things started to take shape: while we were drawn by the appeal of full-time life on the road, that wasn’t a practical option just yet, as we (especially Beau) were still tied to jobs that kept us in one place. And after all, we’d moved to Montana because we wanted to experience actually living there after so many years of being elsewhere. So while we enjoyed our tiny living adventure in the Airstream, we also started to look around us for a place to build our own home.
Looking for land in Montana in 2018 was eye-opening for several reasons.
First, we were surprised by the financial situation. Having purchased (and sold) homes twice before, we figured we’d just go to the bank and get a loan. While we eventually did just that, the process this time around was a great lesson in things we didn’t yet know.
Data point #1: self-employment income isn’t considered for loans until you have two years of tax returns on file.
Data point #2: unimproved land purchases require a larger down payment than traditional home purchases, in this case 30%.
Data point #3: The banks we worked with wouldn’t consider non-salary funds/savings when qualifying us for loans (which still just seems weird to me.)
So while we could have leveraged a VA loan to purchase a finished home—significantly increasing the range of home price available to us—when it came to land, we were much more limited to properties we could afford on Beau’s school salary, and with our available down payment funds.
The second consideration was the real estate market in our area. Even before Covid relocations drove real estate prices through the roof, we were living in a seasonal resort community with many second (or third) homes and market rates considerably higher than other parts of our state. While we could have broadened the range of our search, honestly, we didn’t want to. We’d picked our little town because we wanted to live in, and near, it. Not to commute 45+ minutes each way in a place where winter is long, hard, and snowy and roads can often be treacherous.
Finally, once we decided to hone in on land, we were shocked at how hard it was to find parcels unencumbered by restrictive homeowners or property owners regulations. For instance, many of the lots that first drew our attention required the main dwelling building to be a minimum of 2000 square feet. Others wouldn’t permit you to live in an RV while building, which was our plan. And we wanted to ensure we wouldn’t run into issues with wetlands or septic installation, which ruled out a few otherwise attractive options.
We had aspirations to find a chunk of land that was bigger than a few acres, close enough to town to support our daily commute, and within our budget. We looked at a few options, initially dismissing one that felt a bit too crazy before coming back to give it a second look. On paper, it fit many of our criteria: within our budget (barely), only about a 10-15 minute drive from town, and mostly untouched. The main objection was its remoteness: two miles up a former fire service road, it would have cost us in the vicinity of $250,000 to run electricity to the property, which was no doubt a primary reason that the parcel was still on the market. But this was appealing to us, since Beau had long been curious about trying a solar setup. Could this be the place? Were we crazy enough to give it a shot? Could we figure out how to make it livable?