Ah, refreshing!

Last weekend was pretty normal for a weekend at my parents' house. Dad actually played Halo with us though--that was kinda fun. Anna, Kayla, Jason and I have been playing the same characters all the time, and they're characters from Red vs. Blue, but Dad made up his own character. Anna plays as Tex, Kayla plays as Church, Jason plays as Caboose, and I play as Tucker. Dad's character's name is Chef, and has the same color armor as Church.

We watched The Princess Bride on the projector screen on Sunday night. That was fun.

I also talked to Dad about my financial figurings, and how I might get money for downpayments and such. Not very many options there. I thought about refinancing my car (I found out I'm paying 10.9% APR), but with only 2 years left to pay it off, getting a lower interest rate would actually cost me more per month than I'm paying now.

Dad told me that when he bought that house he didn't have money for a downpayment--he borrowed money from my aunts and uncles, as well as my grandpa.

After that discussion was well and truly dead, he told me about an idea he'd had for a business, which was sparked by my current housing search and the brochures he'd gotten from the Fleetwood dealer (I'll explain later).

Yesterday, I got my allergy shots after work, and I meant to do my laundry while I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I got about six chapters read (and dinner eaten) before I decided to take a nap instead. So I set my alarm for 9pm (or was it 9:30?), which would have given me an hour and a half to sleep, while Bones recorded. The alarm went off; it was on my cell phone, so the ringtone for "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" played instead of a beep. I was still sleepy, so I went back to sleep. I "woke up" sporadically (2:30am, 4-ish, 6:45, maybe other times too), but didn't actually get up until my alarm went off at 7:30 this morning. I feel very refreshed now. Turns out, I needed that, because of all the stress of house-finding I've had lately.

Anyway, here's Dad's idea.

Most builders are caught up in building these houses with costs somewhere in the hundreds of thousands--or even the millions--these days, but that doesn't help people like me who are just starting out on their own, or young families who can't afford much.

So, his idea was to revive Dutch Master Builders--Grandpa's old house-building company--only, he would stick-build small houses which would be sold for about the cost of an equivalent-sized mobile home. And instead of spacing them out like regular houses, he'd get about two acres of land and put 30 of those houses (of different models and sizes) close together in groups. Each group would have space in the center for a playground, a basketball court, a tennis court, a pool, or whatever, and each house would have 5 feet of land on each end and in the back, and twelve feet in the front (for a driveway and some green space), with an unfinished basement underneath. There's definitely a market for cheaper housing that doesn't require monthly lot rentals as well as the cost of the house, so I think the company could really take off.

Considering the trouble I've been having finding somewhere to live on my tight budget, I think it's a great idea. It won't be started up right away (Dad says he could begin in a year or so, after some research and a lot of planning and stuff), but we can start planning for it right now, and I would totally quit my current job to do something with this. We figured out that the largest of the houses we'd build (about the size of a smaller double-wide trailer, with three or four bedrooms and two bathrooms) would fit into 1/30 of an acre, with the extra space around it, and room to spare.

Before the company can get started up, however, we'd have to do a lot of stuff like draw up plans for each of the models we're going to start with, plan out the first two-acre community, find investors to fund the company, get land and permits for building and subdivision, get employees (contractors, accountants, secretaries, etc.), and not to mention find office space.

It's an exciting prospect though, and I'm raring to get started.