We “manifested” the land for our house in 2020: just as the pandemic was hitting, and prices were skyrocketing. We had been laying the groundwork for years, reaching out to everyone we could to let them know we were looking for land, and trying to throw ourselves into the path of opportunities.
We contacted a bunch of local farms to ask if we could house our goats with them in exchange for helping them out; we told ourselves this would also give us more ties to the community we wanted to live in. And it worked! We got one response (out of about 5 emails sent), we met with them, and the next day they told us about some land for sale they heard about through the grapevine. That land is where we now live!
And then we got to work—psych! The pandemic meant construction materials and subcontractor prices skyrocketed as well, so we basically had a two year moratorium on our construction project. And while we did have a lot of extra time, we still put some of these steps off until the last minute…
If you’re like me and you know nothing about construction permits and paperwork, you do have to:
Get designs made/approved by an architect or technician. This probably varies by state/province, so check your local regulations! Most architects won’t sign off on a project they haven’t done themselves because they’re liable for anything they approve, so if you make your own plans, try to make friends with technicians, who may be willing to just touch them up for cheaper (we got ours done for around $2k instead of $5-10k an architect charges)
Get a permit from your town. We had to pass through a couple different committees to get our permit, which ended up slowing us down by a couple months (the first committee met up later in the month than the second one, so there was this one month delay just because of that).
Get a percolation test and septic system design. As far as I know, this is mandatory, so that people won’t do a shitty job (har har har). A common thing people do at this stage (but you might chose not to) is claim certain bedrooms are actually “offices”, so the system can be a little smaller. You can decide if that’s risky or not, but we saved on costs this way!
Also, this might be different depending on where you are, but here, the Inspector is not really there to answer your questions. Perhaps it’s my neurodivergence, but I categorically hate this, because they can absolutely come in and say “This is incorrect, you can’t do this.” But they don’t like it, and sometimes won’t even answer, when you call them and ask “Is this the correct way to do this?” So it’s like, you’re supposed to just figure out on your own what teacher wants from you…
However, something to know in general also about Following Rules: these things above are all steps that could not be skipped, but there are some regulations that can be more flexible. The vast majority of local regulations and laws are put in place so that if there’s a complaint, the local authorities can come in and stop someone. But if no one complains… Well, you can get away with a lot!
For instance, in our local regulations, you technically cannot have be living on your land until the construction is finished. Jay asked the Inspector to get permission to have a trailer on the land during the construction, and they said that was okay, but we were supposed to only do so for six months… we were using the trailer for well over a year. Honestly, we probably didn’t need to get permission in the first place.
I’m sharing this not to try to encourage you to be devious, but we’re people who are used to just strictly following whatever rules are in place, and as new homeowners, we just didn’t understand how local regulations work, so I wanted to share. Local regulations are to stop people who are disruptive; they’re there to promote a harmonious community, so as long as that’s happening, you’re good!
This is also a great excuse to be friendly with your neighbours, even before you start constructing! There’s all kinds of benefits to this, if you can get over that initial awkwardness of befriending people you think you have nothing in common with: it’s so worth it. Our across-the-street neighbour is a farmer, and has helped us so much with his tractor! But in general, it breeds good will, and you’ll be surprised at how much you have in common with some people just based on where you all decided to live.
So tdlr: Make Friends and Get Permits!