In the Midwest market I live in, everything usually follows the "bigger is better" mantra. My wife and I have been looking for a smallish house (1200-1300 sq ft) on a little bit of land (a half acre or more for gardening and privacy) for the past couple years. We have quickly come to realize that as you go up in price, the overall quality of houses/land doesn't particularly increase as much as the size of the house does. We started looking in the $150,000 price range (about average for the area) and those all seem to be houses that look fine, but the materials used are mostly builder grade and almost certainly have skimped on insulation, windows and doors, etc (our building code is fairly lax to non-existent depending on the area) all on small lots crammed into neighborhoods. When bumping up to look in the $200,000-$230,000 range, it seems the houses just get huge but follow that same general low quality. Many houses in this range are over 3,000 sq ft, with a few even exceeding 4,000! INSANE! The few houses we have found that were more "our size" on a lot that would work for us have been very old with single pane windows, questionable insulation, and in one case, knob and tube wiring and a 40 year old HVAC system. yikes.
So, we have been in early talks with a local architect who only does ultra green/eco friendly builds for net zero homes. I really like this idea, as part of our Mustachian plan is always to minimize ongoing expenses, so once a house is paid off, having no ongoing utilities really appeals to me. That being said, my area of the midwest is not really all that forward-thinking, so i'm concerned that investing additional cost into things you can't "see" like insulation, expensive windows, etc may not lead to a return if we ever ended up deciding to sell the house. I'm also concerned about being overpriced for the locations we're looking in. A house like we're wanting to build would likely exceed $150/sq ft. I want to be in a somewhat rural area and would ideally have a couple acres so that we can grow food, maybe have a couple goats, etc. Houses in areas like that in the $200k+ price range are usually well over 2500 sq ft., so I'm concerned about building about a house about half that size and potentially needing to ask a similar price. I realize that green and energy efficient building are fairly new ideas, but wondering any thoughts or experience you might have in this area. I've been advised by a realtor that costs to build in general are very high right now, but he also would benefit much more from selling me a $200k house versus a $30k plot of land, so I'd like some impartial feedback as well. Thanks!