Why alternative real estate? To save money and to travel, as we all know, there's lots of reasons why people choose to live in tents, RVs, cabins, underground homes, rental rooms & anything else that is less common than the houses, condos & apartments that most people call home. Below are a quantity of these housing options, & their advantages.
Camping at a hot springs area, they sat around the campfire five night with several young men living in the desert in their elderly converted school bus. It cost them nothing to park it in the desert (on BLM land you must move every one weeks, though), bathed for free in hot spring tubs that were as nice as those in nearby costly resorts, & played guitar around the fire each night. Not such a bad life.
In Houston there's whole communities that spring up each winter, full of people living in their RVs. Advantages of RV housing are obvious, & include moving with the seasons, trying out different places, & not paying property taxes. I have talked to people living in Rvs that cost $350,000 & ones that cost $550, so the selection of accommodations is varied, to say the least.
My wife & I lived for very a month in our conversion truck as they travelled from Texas to Florida & then to California. Advantages of a truck include better mileage than an RV, & being inconspicuous. They found that could park & sleep very anywhere.
Other Alternative Housing
In most areas where rents are high, renting rooms has become common. This makes sense for single people. pay a set amount each month or week, & (if it includes utilities) you have a predictable & lower cost of living. I rented out rooms in my own home for years, & even put carpet & lighting in a shed so I could get $70 per week for it in summer.
A mate of mine lived in a shack they built for $3,200 on a small piece of land they bought for $8,000. Finally they ran in to problems with the county because they had no occupancy permit. Apparently you cannot live on your own land in the woods if your home is small. However, you can camp on it, so a $2,100 used RV parked on your land makes for a cheap & legal housing alternative.
Some people live on houseboats & avoid paying property taxes. Some live in the jungle near the beaches in Hawaii, so they can afford to be in paradise. I know people who lived in a basement while slowly building the house above for funds. People live in cabins built in the national forest wilderness, moving every few years as they are discovered. Truly, your imagination is the only limit to your alternative housing options.
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