Why don't you wait until you get back from working and living internationally before making a huge investment like property or a house? Surely it bothers you that you'll be away from your land for two years? That's two years of taxes you'll be paying on land that you won't even be around to use- that's money you could save if you just waited until you get back to buy. What will you do with your Tiny House? Won't it cost a lot of money to store it while you're gone? Why not wait until you can build your real house to move onto your property? Why not just buy property with a real house already on it when you get back?
I hope to answer all but the last two concerns here today. The last two questions aren't so much about why we're doing all this now, but rather why we're building a tiny house at all, and I'll answer those questions in a separate post. Today I'm just focusing on why we've decided to do all of this when we have.
To start with, I don't feel that Sam and I need to justify our decisions to anyone except each other- and to Sam's father who is our financial backer in the purchase of the N. Stonington property. (Although, I should probably note that even though I feel like we should be able to justify our reasoning to Sam's dad, that's not how Sam's dad feels about the situation. His extraordinary no-strings-attached generosity is what makes this whole thing possible, and for that I'm extremely grateful.) So the purpose of this post isn't so much to defend our choices as it is to explain them to anyone who is confused, curious, or who maybe finds themselves in a similar situation.
The timing of our Tiny House Build was really made feasible by the purchase of our property (which, actually, is still in the works, but as soon as we close we're pulling the trigger on Operation Tiny House Build), so a good place to start is why we decided to buy property. We decided to buy now rather than in two years for several reasons. The first is that we knew we wanted a sizable piece of undeveloped land, as far south in New England as we could get it, and we wanted to be in a rural location while still within commuting range of several metropolitan areas for job security. This is not an easy order to fill, and large amounts of vacant land is becoming harder and harder to find (especially in Southern New England) as more and more of it gets developed. So when we saw a 65 acre parcel priced to sell that fit all of our requirements, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. The second reason, I'm told, is that the housing market is still somewhat depressed from the economic collapse of 2008, but it's getting stronger, and so as buyers we're in a better position now than we're likely to be in 2 years. Or something like that. Full disclaimer: I'm not an economist, I have no earthly idea what the housing market is doing now, and even less of an idea of what it will be doing in 2 years time.
So that's why we decided to make an offer on the N. Stonington property. Now, why did we decide to build our Tiny House before we left for the Peace Corps? I suppose the simple answer is because we wanted to. We were already planning on leaving our jobs in March to prepare for a late June Peace Corps departure. When we thought about where we would like to live during our last April, May and June in New England for 2 years, Providence or N. Stonington, the answer was clearly N. Stonington. Fortunately, the math supported us in this decision: 2 months of our Providence rent costs us just about the same amount of money that it would cost to store our Tiny House for 2 years in an RV & Boat storage lot. This means that if we can get out of our apartment 2 months sooner than we were planning (we don't have a lease on the place, so we can leave whenever, really), building now as opposed to 2 years from now is a cost neutral decision. It might even end up saving us money if you count whatever we would pay in rent while researching/planning/building a tiny house after we got back from Peace Corps service in 2 years.
There is one other very significant benefit to buying/building now that only became apparent to me after we had already started down this road. All of our preparations are for a plan which includes us going to serve with the Peace Corps mid-summer. But, if it turns out we don't get invited (and we may not), it's really good for us to have this other big project in our lives to fall back on. I think that if we didn't start these things, and then didn't get invited to serve with the Peace Corps, our lives would feel very stagnant. But as it is, even if we don't get to go serve in a 3rd world country, we'll still have an adventure in front of us, and we'll be able to pour all that energy into making our homestead.
So I think that really sums up why we've chosen to build/buy when we have. If you'd like to read about other people who have made a similar choice, in my Tiny House research I did stumble upon one other couple who decided to build their Tiny House immediately before departing on a multi-year international adventure. To read more about their experience, check out their blog at www.2cycle2gether.com.
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