Thinking about buying land and building a house. Your thoughts?

[Tyler D.]

The area I live in is currently very expensive, dare I say overpriced. It's a medium-sized town with mostly service jobs, and the average house is going for over 300k. An absolute dump will sell for 150k.

I want to buy a house to live in, and later rent out, but I can't find anything close to a 1% rule. More like 0.5%. However, there are many nice plots of land available for around $50k, many with several acres of land in a good location.

Using a local stick-built company, I could build a 3BR home for ~150k. Or I could build a duplex for ~250k. For a manufactured home, I could build for significantly less, 80k according to one website.

Since I've never built a house before, I am sure there are things that I am missing, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether or not this is a good idea. Thanks in advance for the info.