[athenot]

One thing that I've seen quite a bit in Europe is people buying "unfinished" homes. They pay a builder to build a concrete structure with a tile roof, and get it plumbed and wired up to code. But then all the interior finishings (and sometimes even the doors/windows) are done by the owners, by trading a couple years of spare time for substantial cost savings.

[tuanx5]

I heard about something similar in Chile on a 99% Invisible podcast. http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/half-a-house/

[seanmcdirmid]

That is the norm in china. In fact, renovated homes cost less than unrenovated ones because no one trusts anyone else's renovation (lots of cheap toxic crap), so it is understood that new owners would re renovate anyways. Basically, everyone just wants a concrete box. Renovations are quite cheap and quick however with the appropriate migrant worker (though see above, you have to be careful they don't use cheap toxic crap).

[ghaff]

The idea isn't really all that much different from buying a "fixer-upper" though. A lot of people (like myself) buy a house in a location we like on property that we like that clearly needs a lot of updating and we do it over time, some of it ourselves, some of it (usually) with contractors. In my case, I'm not sure how much money had been put into the house over at least the previous 50 years.

[maxxxxx]

That's how my family and all my neighbors did it. I remember our area was a construction site for years.