Let me be clear, I think it's a great idea, and you should do it. My only purpose of this post was to poke holes per your request. We bought land in 2007, rented a house "for a little bit" starting in 2008, and finally moved onto our land in 2011. We spent a year going back and forth with Gaston County because we wanted to build a "barn" with living quarters instead of a "house". Finally got around that and then took about 1.5 years to build our 800sqft garage apartment because I contracted it myself. Plan was to live there a year or two, then build our "real" house. 8 years later we finally started the real house, and I hired a contractor because I didn't want it to drag out for a year and a half like the first one. A year and a half later 
, and about 30% over budget 
, we finally moved into my wife's house (late 2019). And now it looks cheap compared to today's prices.
