reality check

Many people are curious about our thoughts on buying vs. building after I posted asking for opinions on facebook. While we were in Vermont (seriously need to upload garden-in-process pics!) we got sucked into thinking about buying again. The housing prices are low low and mortgage rates are also low low. If we were ever going to buy now seems like a sensible time to do so. This would also give us space from the farm and some in-town presence for potential farm store in the future.
It also came out that we will likely be the family moving in to the farm house at some point in the future... we just don't know at what point. So we need something temporarily.
So buy? 200k.
rent? 1k/mos
build? 100k
trailer to replace trailer that is falling apart? 20-70k

Buy
... We can't afford 200k, we can't. And what if we couldn't sell it? And we're really home bodies so if we had a house off the farm we'd slowly move our projects to our house which we don't want to do.

rent
... we could do this but this has the same issues of having the off-farm house that buying does. Plus, rent at 1k/mos means in less than two years we'd have paid off a trailer. If we knew it was a 6mos wait until the farm house was available, sure. But it could be 2 days, it could be 10 years.

build
...hmmm, maybe we can't even afford 100k especially because we'd like to get a cheese make room up and running as well as a cheese cave. That should take precedence. And part of the build included a photo studio... do we really need that? Should we consider that in another building at a later date if we're missing it? And the 100k house also included space for future fostering of children. But we don't have those children now and if we can't afford a room for them maybe wait until we can add on or until we're in the farm house?

trailer
... I've been very anti this from the beginning. Would you invite someone over to your trailer for dinner? No? I don't really want to either. But we could do it... 10 years would blow but it could be doable.

So we look at trailers... well it looks like:
option a) 1977 model
option b) 50k-75k
If we could find a trailer that falls into an option c then trailers will be discussed again, I'm sure.


hmmm- couldn't we make a house for less than 50k?
Okay so maybe not a 2k square foot house but do we need that much space?
We're constantly in the same room - all of us. I'm sure that will change as the kids age but as they age we anticipate having money to expand small house and/or have the farm house. Plus we're anticipating being outside a. l.o.t! Farming=outside. How much space do we need to eat and sleep? And if a small house gets cramped -all the more reason to go outside to work, play and maybe even eat and sleep.

So I think that's what we'll do... same building materials, probably not octagon, much smaller (like half the size or less).

ps we have considered a yurt and it's not totally off the table but it's definitely near the edge.