Not the original commenter, but I’ve done extensive renovations of different sizes, and walls off restorations of 3 houses.

The 30k to me, sounds possible ish, but also hard especially without a helper.

Personal example, I’ve gotten many materials for free. Including several hundred square feet of hardwood floor.

But thinking through some basics of just tools needed, and being cheap- and also with an assumption that you have time, and land with wood. And assuming you find cheap / used tools but not junk.

Decent chainsaw: $600-$1,000 Alaskan sawmill: $120

Stuff to setup basic kiln house: $600

6-12 months wait on wood.

Planer: $400-600 Jointer: $200-300

Impact, drill, sawzall, oscillating saw, jigsaw, circular: $700

Mitre saw and stand: $400 Table saw: $200

Basic plumbing tools, pex or copper : $200

But when I start to think through things aside from that: If you start to buy materials…

I think it could be done, if you did a cement or block foundation yourself, and did very basic construction.

But my just off the cuff guesstimates, assuming 1500 sq ft ranch house:

Lumber for framing: $4,100 Toilets: $240 Fasteners: $500 Drywall: $1,500 Piping, fittings: $1,000 Electrical: $2,500 (assuming electric stove, and electric dryer) HVAC: $8,000 …. I start to see a hard time doing it for 30k, but, I’m sure there’s a way!

Re: free stuff, this is how my house was built.

Leftover materials from a construction site have to be disposed... Unless you are a builder who wants a house and owns a truck and some land... It is a weird house, but built with pretty nice materials. I bought it from the nephew of the builder.

This is how my grandfather started his home-building business. He built one house using scraps, cutoffs, and reclaimed materials from demolitions. Once he completed the house a local man who had been watching the construction offered to buy it. He sold that house and made enough money to buy another lot and build another larger house. People started coming to him to have him build homes and he became a custom home builder, building homes, churches, businesses, etc. all over the area for around 60 years till he passed away.

Do not attempt to mill your own lumber for your own house. Unless you are building a log cabin in BFE Alaska where you can't truck anything in and need to remove the trees anyway it just ain't worth it for the labor you'll have invested.

Second, blocks and bricks are a massive f-ing waste of labor when working as an individual since you have to handle them so many times. It's worth forming up 10yd worth of stuff and paying for a truck.

You can probably get it done under $30k if you are super cheap and only buy materials at auction and buy used tools.

I built my block foundation in 4 weekends. I would use a truck for footings and grout next time as mixing and wheel barrowing 300 60# bags of quikrete was brutal. Total cost was <4000, but that includes excavator rental and site prep. If you hire a truck i think it is difficult to handle that much without help and you are fucked if it sets too soon.

A concrete truck would not even make it down my road though... and many of the blocks were carried in small bundles by 4x4 truck. Building a road for heavy trucks would probably cost as much as the house.

> If you hire a truck i think it is difficult to handle that much without help and you are fucked if it sets too soon.

Foundations, walls and footings are cake because they're all formed, you just gotta finish the top. It's the flatwork that has lots of finished area for volume and is very laborious

Having milled my own lumber, I will 100% say it is not worth it for the time and energy involved if I was using it to build a house.

It is worth it when you have trees that will otherwise go to waste, and you can get high quality appearance / live edge / etc cuts out of it.

If I had a lot of trees that needed to be cleared, and lots of time, I might be tempted to try using a portable mill in the 25hp range.

Bricks as an individual are miserable to handle. Even with tongs it’s tedious. When I was younger, I once reclaimed tons of brick from a house that was being demolished. More recently from a driveway someone removed. Both times in small amounts(<1,000 bricks) for specific projects.

I do know of a story of a restaurant, local to me, that somehow ended up needing to reclaim all these bricks that had mortar still on them. They invited over everyone they knew, gave out free beer and wine, and lots of eye protection, hammers etc. I can’t imagine it was an easy project but they successfully reclaimed it to build part of their facility.

6" CMU (blocks) is what I used for foundation. Much faster than bricks, and lighter until filled with grout.

I wouldn't recommend it if anything were to go wrong. It's a quick way to end up in bankruptcy if anyone gets hurt, or if your neighbors property gets damaged

Not getting hurt isn't hard. Not trashing your neighbor's property is even easier. But this isn't the kind of project one should take on with zero experience. Do yourself a favor and buy a backhoe that's a runner to start with even if it costs 5x more than a project.

> Not getting hurt isn't hard.

Are you certain?

I've done plenty of DIY projects, and as soon as you start using hand tools, the risk goes up, especially if you include cutting or drilling.

Thats what liability insurance is for, which you need if you own property, whether anything is built on it or not.

Claim denied (mumbles reasons and lengthy and expensive appeals process). Balance due immediately.

You can own a house as an llc.

'piercing the corporate veil' may well apply to your primary residence.

I mean sure, maybe. I could also contract a disability or disease or get hit by a bus while risking my hide earning an extra couple hundred grand to buy a house.

I wonder if you could end up in jail.

Probably, if you do something blatantly negligent and kill someone. Short of manslaughter, though, I suspect jail or prison time is pretty unlikely. You'll still be financially ruined if you don't have insurance or your insurance won't cover your foolishness though.

The most likely path to jail probably involves putting a bullet in a problem neighbor or government official rather than an accident of any sort.

One less person to compete for the scraps and pay top price for the mass produced craps. /s

600 sqft 2 bd / 1 ba

Mostly no help

Not include tools or land but include renting an excavator to do the site prep and dig footings

Vinyl and drywall

That costs $100K not $300K

You built a shed.

Legally it has a valid county permit as a home.

How did you get a permit without an inspection and being up to code? Is it just something you buy in your county?

I drew a square on a map, they stamped it, and that was that. And for record I built to minimum code, but no one was looking.

permits depend on location. Big difference between say NYC and unincorporated land in BFE.

Rural area permits can be more of a "you're not building too close to the edge of your property, ok great" kind of a deal.