Hello everyone,
My partner and I have dreamed for years about having our own land for a homestead and small eco-home, and are now trying to bang out the details of how we'll be buying our land in the next year or two. We've precticed self sufficiency once before at an old family cabin before we had to relocate. Right now we're living in another family home and saving every penny we can for our land endeavors. Anyway, while I'm a disabled veteran and eligible for a VA loan, I cannot use it for raw land unless I have construction plans. Not really feasible when we're planning on doing cob or earth bags with a tipi as the interim living quarters.
I do have a stock account that I could borrow against, but I'd really prefer not to dig that hole or get too involved with a bank. We're thinking we'll be able to save at least 5-10k this summer if we're smart about it.
I feel like our best options are either paying outright for an inexpensive lot (a challenge to find it seems), or finding owner financed property. I've checked out landwatch's owner financed section, and there are certainly some great properties in the areas we are looking that are owner financed with 10% down, or 3-5k down. This seems like a great plan, but my momma always taught me to stay away from things that are too good to be true and I have no idea if it's really a safe thing to walk into. It seems like the owner could back out of this with some legal razzle dazzle and we could be out our homestead.
I've also checked out Country Places Inc, which also specializes in owner financed land and offers a military discount with varying interest rates dependent on the down payment. Once again, it seems particularly too good to be true.
The fact that we're looking for something that is both owner financed, and unrestricted really narrows down the options that I have been able to find, so I thought I'd reach out to the community and see if anyone had any tips and advice they might be willing to share with us. We are in our mid-20's and I've never had a penny of debt which seems to make traditional lending approval even more difficult (go figure). My girlfriend has good credit from student loans, but I haven't seen a lot of traditional lending options with less than 40% down payment on raw land, and hell, if I've got 20k to spend on a down payment, I think I'd rather just buy a 20k piece of property.
Thank you all for your wisdom in advance! I'm open to any and all ideas and am really just hoping to get any input I can on our plans, as I don't have any family to reach out to for advice.
Namaste
