Hello BP, thought I'd finally start a diary on my project. To make a very long story short, we have finally broken ground on our 10 acres of land in Acton, CA which lays in the northern part of Los Angeles county, just below Palmdale and about Santa Clarita. Anyway we bought the property 6 years ago (almost to the day) and initially tried to build a site built home, which I designed and drew to construction documents for. Although I did get my plans stamped and approved by the building department, the home I had designed became way to expensive for us to build with our budget, and we ran out of money and time. After sitting on the property for a while, even putting it on the market for 6 months, we decided to try again and here we are! 

The House:

This time we went with a Modular home. This is not a manufactured or mobile home, but instead it is a stick built home, with 2 x 6 walls, that is built in a factory and shipped out the site in pieces (modules) and put together on site. We paid much extra for this time of home as opposed to a manufactured of the same floor plan. The reason being, the Modular home is deeded at the county as a regular single family home, no modile, no 433, etc. On paper it is no different than a site built home and appreciates and appraises the exact same.

It's a 4 bed room, 2 bath 1782 square foot home. Features: corian counter tops, hard wood maple cabinets, a 9" wide distressed pine plank flooring, 4/12 roof pitch, master bath with corner jacuzzi tub and separate shower, walk in closets, can lighting, open floor plan, stainless steel appliances, etc.

The Land:

10 acres in Acton, CA. A semi rural, horse property area in Los Angeles county. 

The Numbers:

Land - $50,000 (paid off)

House and all amenities - $155,000

Site work - $106,000

Loan and interest fees - $26,000

Total - $337,000

Appraised at $450,000. (future appraisal done to close the loan)

Status:

We just broke ground on Monday 2/29/16. The grading is about complete as of today and they are starting the foundation on Tuesday. I will keep updating the status as we go along. Thanks for reading!

Had to excavate and recompact the soil at the building site. Took about three days.