Will I be able to purchase land?
If there is land for sale, you can buy it. The United States doesn't have many restrictions on the purchase of land. However, you need to be able to afford it. Dependent on where you are looking $20,000 can either be a lot or very little land, I suspect that the question you were looking to ask is 'can I afford it?'. Have a look around, there should be plenty of places for you to find land for sale. As for credit, it is more important that you don't build bad credit. With things like mortgages, your salary is likely to be more important than your credit score alone, but no one will give you a dime if you have a record of not paying your bills. "Here are some important things to think about.  Alan and Denise Fields discuss them in more detail in Your New House. Permanent work.  Where do you want to live?  Are there suitable jobs nearby?  How much do they pay? Emergency fund.  Banks care that you have ""reserves"" (and/or an unsecured line of credit) in case you have a run of bad luck.  This also helps with float the large expenses when closing a loan. Personal line of credit. Who are you building for?  If you are not married, then you should consider whether building a home makes that easier, or harder.  If you hope to have kids, you should consider whether your home will make it easier to have kids, or harder.  If you are married (or seriously considering it), make sure that your spouse helps with the shopping, and is in agreement on the priorities and choices.  If you are not married, then what will you do if/when you get married?  Will you sell?  expand?  build another house on the same lot?  rent the home out? Total budget.  How much can the lot, utilities, permits, taxes, financing charges, building costs, and contingency allowance come to?  Talk with a banker about how much you can afford.  Talk with a build-on-your-lot builder about how much house you can get for that budget.  Consider a new mobile or manufactured home.  But if you do choose one, ask your banker how that affects what you can borrow, and how it affects your rates and terms.  Talk with a good real estate agent about how much the resale value might be. Finished lot budget. How much can you budget for the lot, utilities, permits required to get zoning approval, fees, interest, and taxes before you start construction? Down payment.  It sounds like you have a plan for this. Loan underwriting.  Talk with a good bank loan officer about what their expectations are.  Ask about the ""front-end"" and ""back-end"" Debt-To-Income ratios.  In Oregon, I recommend Washington Federal for lot loans and construction loans.  They keep all of their loans, and service the loans themselves.  They use appraisers who are specially trained in evaluating new home construction.  Their appraisers tend to appraise a bit low, but not ridiculously low like the incompetent appraisers used by some other banks in the area.  (I know two banks with lots of Oregon branches that use an appraiser who ignores 40% of the finished, heated area of some to-be-built homes.)  Avoid any institution (including USAA and NavyFed) that outsources their lending to PHH. Lot loan.  In Oregon, Washington Federal offers lot loans with 30% down payments, 20-year amortization, and one point, on approved credit.  The interest rate can be a fixed rate, but is typically a few percentage points per year higher than for a mortgage secured by a permanent house.  If you have the financial wherewithal to start building within two years, Washington Federal also offers short-term lot loans.  Ask about the costs of appraisals, points, and recording fees. Rent.  How much will it cost to rent a place to live, between when you move back to Oregon, and when your new home is ready to move into? Commute.  How much time will it take to get from your new home to work?  How much will it cost?  (E.g., car ownership, depreciation, maintenance, insurance, taxes, fuel?  If public transportation is an option, how much will it cost?) Lot availability.  How many are there to choose from?  Can you talk a farmer into selling off a chunk of land?  Can you homestead government land?  How much does a lot cost?  Is it worth getting a double lot (or an extra large lot)? Utilities. Do you want to live off the grid?  Are you willing to make the choices needed to do that?  (E.g., well, generator, septic system, satellite TV and telephony, fuel storage)  If not, how much will it cost to connect to such systems?  (For practical purposes, subtract twice the value of these installation costs from the cost of a finished lot, when comparing lot deals.) Easements. These provide access to your property, access for others through your property, and affect your rights.  Utility companies often ask for far more rights than they need.  Until you sign on the dotted line, you can negotiate them down to just what they need.  Talk to a good real estate attorney. Zoning. How much will you be allowed to build?  (In terms of home square footage, garage square footage, roof area, and impermeable surfaces.)  How can the home be used?  (As a business, as a farm, how many unrelated people can live there, etc.)  What setbacks are required?  How tall can the building(s) be?  Are there setbacks from streams, swamps, ponds, wetlands, or steep slopes? Choosing a builder.  For construction loans, banks want builders who will build what is agreed upon, in a timely fashion.  If you want to build your own house, talk to your loan officer about what the bank expects in a builder. Plansets and permits.  The construction loan process. If you hire a general contractor, and if you have difficulties with the contractor, you might be forced to refuse to accept some work as being complete.  A good bank will back you up.  Ask about points, appraisal charges, and inspection fees. Insurance during construction.  Some companies have good plans -- if the construction takes 12 months or less.  Some (but not all) auto insurance companies also offer good homeowners' insurance for homes under construction.  Choose your auto insurance company accordingly. Property taxes. Don't forget to include them in your post-construction budget. Homeowners' insurance.  Avoid properties that need flood insurance.  Apply a sanity check to flood maps -- some of them are unrealistic.  Strongly consider earthquake insurance.  Don't forget to include these costs in your post-construction budget. Energy costs.  Some jurisdictions require you to calculate how large a heating system you need.  Do not trust their design temperatures -- they may not allow for enough heating during a cold snap, especially if you have a heat pump.  (Some heat pumps work at -10°F -- but most lose their effectiveness between 10°F and 25°F.)  You can use these calculations, in combination with the number of ""heating degree days"" and ""cooling degree days"" at your site, to accurately estimate your energy bills.  If you choose a mobile or manufactured home, calculate how much extra its energy bills will be. Home design.  Here are some good sources of ideas: A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander.  Alexander emphasizes building homes and neighborhoods that can grow, and that have niches within niches within niches. The Not-So-Big House, by Sarah Susanka.  This book applies many Alexander's design patterns to medium and large new houses. Before the Architect.  The late Ralph Pressel emphasized the importance of plywood sheathing, flashing, pocket doors, wide hallways, wide stairways, attic trusses, and open-truss or I-joist floor systems.  Lots of outlets and incandescent lighting are good too.  (It is possible to have too much detail in a house plan, and too much room in a house.  For examples, see any of his plans.) Tim Garrison, ""the builder's engineer"".  Since Oregon is in earthquake country -- and the building codes do not fully reflect that risk -- emphasize that you want a building that would meet San Jose, California's earthquake code."
Sounds feasible.  I make $45000 a year, with two car payments, credit card and student loan debt.  Also, my wife doesn't work.  I was approved for a $116000 house with a USDA loan.  There are limits or how much debt you can have when applying for a USDA (sorry, I can't remember off the top of my head) and you'll also be getting the house inspected under different regulations.   For instance, we couldn't get approved until the seller put a handrail on a set of exterior stairs.  That regulation is specific to USDA along with a few others. I'm living in southern Indiana and this just happened a couple months ago for us. Make sure you have some money set aside for various things like a lawn mower and if the siding blows off the night after you move in (yup, that happened).  Also, shop around for homeowner's insurance.  We did some hunting, and we found a provider who was willing to price match and ended up saving some money on our car insurance as well. Perhaps I can: my city is full of towers of Chinese investor owned condos that were purchased to gain EB5 visas.  These visas require a $500k investment in the US, in an economically depressed area.  The census tracts were gerrymandered together to make a nice part of town qualify.  They were sold with 30 year property tax abatements, and at the end of that period they will likely have to pay something like 50k/yr in taxes, which is likely about what they will be renting for.  These condos do not exist to be lived in, but have manufactured a huge bubble in property value because of the visa program.  Jared Kushner is a primary investor in this vehicle.  These will crash if there are changes to this program or any change that forces more units on the market.  Otherwise they'll crash in 25-30 years when nobody wants a timebomb with massive expenses incoming.    The other bubble is of course the huge real estate bubble China is creating within its own borders, which rivals the real estate bubble within US borders, both of which are driven by unsustainable low interest rates. I'd like to know what the property taxes on something like that would be.  In either event - there are 6,000'^2 houses in my neighorhood for more than $5M - having a 1,000,000'^2 house for a year would be *awesome*.  One floor for paintball, one for a greenhouse, etc. You're off to a great start. Here are the steps I would take: 1.) Pay off any high-interest debt. 2.) Keep six to twelve months in a highly liquid emergency fund. If the banks aren't safe, also consider having one or two months of cash or cash-equivalents on the premises. 3.) Rent a larger apartment, if possible, until you've saved more. The cost of the land and construction will consume a very large portion of your net worth. Given the historical political instability in that region, mentioned by the previous comments,  I would hesitate to put such a large percentage of your wealth in to real estate.  4.) Get a brokerage account that's insured and well known. If you're willing to take the five percent hit to move assets offshore, then consider Vanguard. I'm not sure if they'll give you an account but they're generally acknowledged as an amazing broker in the US with low fees and amazing funds. Five percent (12,500) is worth it in my opinion. As you accumulate more wealth, you can stop moving cash overseas and keep a larger mix domestically.  5.) Invest in your business and yourself even more.  As far as finding new investment opportunities, I would go through the list of all the typical major asset classes and consider the pros and cons: fixed-income, stocks, currencies, real estate / REITs, own a small business, commodities etc., Ok, see that was my thinking too.  Historically, stocks and land values have always gone up, even after the depression.  So, it seems to me, that if you have a buy and hold strategy with a horizon of 10-20 years, then you should be fine.  Is my thinking realistic along those lines? Some lenders will make loans for vacant land, others will not. You have to discuss with local bank what are your plan for the land: live in the old mobile home; install a new mobile home; build a new house; Sell it to a developer; use it for camping... Is the property part of a development with other mobile homes? If so there may be complications regarding the use and rights of the property. Some local jurisdictions also want to eliminate mobile homes, so they may put limitations on the housing options. "Do you know if you were approached by a carrier or a tower vendor?  Edit/addendum:  As someone in the telecommunications industry, I will say that you should NOT lease to a vendor who will sublease the space to the phone companies for a profit.  Depending on the availability of space, the population of the area, and the value of the location, and the amount and size of hardware to be installed, the rental pricing can vary wildly.  A cell site on a choice tall building in Chicago, NYC, Boston, LA, etc., can go for over $25000 per year (more in the case of rental of inside equipment room).  On the other hand, renting space on a church steeple in the middle of a low population rural town, with the equipment installed in a gated paddock at ground level, may only net around $1500 per month.  A ""small cell"" site, which is actually small enough to put on a lamp post or utility pole, can go for around $250-750 per month.  A turf contractor/tower vendor actually leasing a chunk of land to build a structure whose space will be leased out to telecoms should be expected to pay between $2500 and 8000 per month depending on the value of your site.  This value is determined by land form details like elevation, nearby tall forests (can the tower ""see"" over the tree line), terrain contours, and need (local population/tourist/traveler numbers).  Carriers prefer to lease from vendors rather than building their own structures, but roof top sites are a different story.  Carriers are generally more than happy to work with you to lease a portion of your tall building's roof.  FYI...  If they offer to compensate you for the electrical requirements if they cannot get their own meter in, don't worry.  A cell site uses less than 1000 watts, which translates to about $.10-15 per hour in most locations." Obviously you're missing that there is no house on the land so the cost comparison between a house and land isn't terribly valid.   The land might not have connections to the municipal sewage/power/electrical and may need zoning changes and permits for those connections.   You're missing that you don't know how to design and build a house so you'll need to hire people for those tasks; then live through the process, headaches, and probable budget overruns. Edit: You're also missing that lending for speculative land development is significantly different from lending for a single family home. Many developing countries have restrictions on foreigners buying land.  For example, Thailand.  If you ever move there, you will never be able to own any land.  Period.  But countries like India go even further.  If you want to buy some land in J&amp;K province, you can't even if you are Indian.  What if you marry a woman from J&amp;K?  Nope... then you are both screwed and both of you can't buy land in J&amp;K.  Similar restrictions are in place for other provinces (HP, AP, etc)  Imagine living in New Jersey and never being able to buy land in Pennsylvania... that's India.    Building and hoping no one notices worked 15 years ago, but not anymore. (unless you're rich and connected, of course.) I lucked out and bought a beat little 640 sq. ft. bungalow in S.E. Mass for short money in 2008 hoping that I'd be able to build up some equity and upsell into a nicer house (i.e. one with more than three rooms and a roof that doesn't leak).   The good news (I guess) is that I'll be paid off in just a few years, but the bad news is that this little bungalow will have to do for a long time. House prices in the places that I'd like to live are through the roof, and if you're not a cash buyer you're pretty well fucked. I can't afford to sell without the hope that I'd be able to actually buy another house. The answer is generally yes.  Depending on your circumstances and where you live, you may be able to   get help through a federal, state, or lender program that: "If you are living near a land-grant university, you might be able to find help from the university's Extension Service.  In many land-grant universities (the land grants were given to universities formed for the purpose of improving ""agricultural and mechanical arts""),  the Extension Services have expanded beyond farm-related services to include horticulture, food and nutrition counseling, consumer finance, money management and budgeting advice etc.  See, for example this site." If I'm not mistaken, using dairy cattle to buy more dairy cattle is already common practice in Kansas.  Why it is not widespread is more because the banks concerned don't have the necessary expertise to value / monitor / resell these assets when necessary. They are tricky to deal with because they grow / breed / die, unlike your house. &gt; To me, it's crazy that even Indians can't buy land in their own country.  What? How does that work? If you want to build a building you... just take a piece of land and hope nobody stops you? Your only option might be finding a seller-financed property with a motivated seller who is willing to take the risk of loaning you money. However, be prepared to pay a hefty rate on that loan if you can even pull it off.