What's our best move?

Greetings!

Note: we are from South Puget Sound WA. Olympia/Tacoma area.

We are selling our house of 15 years in the next couple of months. We expect after the dust settles, to walk with around 80k. We have purchased a 29' travel trailer as our transition home while we 1)  acquire land
2) start building our strawbale home/off grid homestead permaculture dream world!

Here's the road block. We cannot decide if we want to put 25-35% down on land, and fianance the rest ...OR, go smaller and purchase out right.

By selling the house, we are paying off all debts (not a lot) including the trailer. We want to go off grid debt free. This comes from much advise by off griders. NO DEBT!

Anybody have a simlair situation here? There are many more details to this journey. I would honestly love to chat with anyone wanting to listen to more details. We are a family of four and it's been our dream to make this move for a long time now.

✌🏼🌱

It sounds like you've been getting advice from other off grid folks to avoid debt.  If so, why take on a mortgage if you don't have to?

Can you get the amount of land you want without a mortgage by looking for marginal land that you could restore / improve?

How much land do you want?  I've personally found that 20 acres of degraded land is probably more than I can care for, but about the minimum size for privacy from neighbors.  When we were shopping for land we initially thought 5 acres were all we could afford for cash, but realized that we could get 4 times as much land for only about twice the price, as the smaller parcels were much more expensive per acre plus they tended to be in more built-up areas.  We looked farther out and got more land.  We paid cash for the land but got a mortgage for the house, which we paid off in about 15 years.  If you can swing it with no debt at all, I think that would be best.  I can't express how much more secure I feel owning the house and land.  We can live on a very small income now.