There is no doubt you can save as much as 50% of the cost of your house buy building your own.
Here are a few tips to help you:
Make sure that the site you are interested in has the following:
A Good telephone service is a necessity in our modern civilization. Be sure it is available without your having to build or pay for building a mile or two of line.
Natural gas is now piped to many localities; and it is very useful, but where it is not available, bottled gas can usually be secured. If not, oil can be used for heating and for heating water.
Or you can use coal, or even wood in some rural forested areas. Or you can use electricity for heating purposes, if you insulate the house properly.
Many electric companies give very low rates for electricity used to heat water, and often for heating the whole house. Gas is not an absolute necessity, but it is well to give consideration to what will take its place.
Public transportation passing near the building site is a great convenience. Everybody has cars nowadays, but some families have only one car, and when a man drives it to work, what does his wife do for transportation? But if a man can take the bus to work, he will save money, and his wife can have the car at home.
Or if both husband and wife are employed, the problem is greatly simplified if a good dependable bus line runs near the place. There is usually less nervous tension generated in riding in a bus than there is in fighting your own way through the rush hour traffic.
The View
The view is not an absolute necessity in selecting a home site, but it can well be a very important consideration. It must be admitted that there are not nearly enough sites with magnificent views so that everyone can have one.
What an inspiration we get from a striking view! The rugged mountains with their snowy caps, and the placid lakes, calm our troubled spirits, helping us to see life in its true perspective. All our feverish hurry and hectic rush accomplish so little.
Many home owners have to be satisfied with an ordinary level lot in a square block, and large numbers of people do not consider a view to be worth while, or they fear that it is out of the question for them.
But in parts of the country that are not level, where there is a choice of the different types of building sites, a person who decides to do some thorough looking around and can use a little imagination as to the possibilities of an unusual site, can generally find something different.
Of course, it costs more to build on a sloping site, but the difference is largely in the labor involved, and a person with pep and ambition, can often find it in his system to do the extra work for the extra reward of being able to live in a better than average situation.
But most people have to be content with a more prosaic location. While we may not be able to manage a breath taking view from every window, the case is not hopeless.
If you can't find a view, make one. By proper planting to shut out undesirable vistas and other planting to beautify portions of your lot, you can make even a level lot in a square block attractive. Tell the people with view lots that it is usually so foggy, or smoggy, or otherwise dismal that they do not get much out of their view anyway, and that your view is close enough that you can see it in spite of the smog.
But do try to get a lot that is large enough so that you can do something with it. Perhaps you can buy what was originally planned as two lots and make it into a very attractive place.
Suppose you can get only one lot 60' x 120' in size. You can still do a great deal with it by careful planning.
The Lot in an Older Neighborhood
It is seldom wise to build a new house on a lot in a section where most of the houses are twenty or thirty years old. A vacant lot in such a section that was somehow missed when the rest of the houses were built is usually cheap enough that there is a temptation to buy it and build on it.
Unless the older houses are unusually well kept and in really first class condition, the neighborhood will become obsolete as a high grade residential district before your house has served a normal life span.
Always use a mortgage calculator to get the best deal if you when you decide to purchase a house
