Ok, here’s the deal. To build our dream zero-energy design home, we need the right plot of land in the right community, time, energy, & money.

After some brainstorming, we decided that the ideal piece of land needed to be:

• Southwest / South facing (So we could leverage sun to heat our home and not use additional energy. And so we have more light to build a food garden.)
• Close to a community
• At least 2 acres
• Under 150k (Though if it’s just land that we are looking at, it should really be less than 50k so we still have some moolah to build.)
• In an area with minimal zoning laws so we could experiment and design our home as we saw fit with minimal bureaucracy
• Septic tank/ well possible if we can’t get connected to a sewage/water infrastructure

We tried to do a quick search to see if we could find such piece of land.

In spite of Burton’s GIS skills, we were unable to find any suitable piece of land. So it occurred to us that we may not get land for a little bit.

In that case, since our ideal location to build is in a different state, we plan to relocate, focus on establishing financial freedom while passively looking at land options, and continue to live happily ever after.

We decided that the easiest way for us to establish financial freedom is to purchase a multi-unit property where rent income could help pay our living costs, taxes, and mortgage.

But let’s say we found and bought a home to live in– what about our current jobs?

This is where the scary part comes in. So much uncertainty. What if the tenants we have need to be evicted, or there’s huge up front costs we didn’t account for in the property? What if we can’t find remote work? How will we pay the new mortgage we have? What if we can’t sell our current place!?!?