re: Are neighborhoods the most beta thing ever?

Not all neighborhoods are cookie cutter like the ones around you. A lot of the older ones don't have a single house that looks like another house. It's just the new neighborhoods that are completely uniform tan stucco with some bricks

Although it's not technically an HOA, we have rules and standards. Architecture must be approved. Have to keep up your yard, pick up your trash cans, no boats and RVs parked in the driveway. I love it. My first neighborhood would have mostly nice houses, then a house with a broken down car on blocks in the driveway. Or every bush in the front yard was literally completely dead in the middle of summer. Now I know if I put in the effort to look nice, everyone else will as well.

And it's not overly strict, but you certainly aren't putting an above ground pool in your front yard (or anywhere actuslly). Cookie cutter is an issue, but until I can afford a 500k+ house, that's what I have to deal with.

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The problem with building in a " rural area" is that zoning is weak or nonexistent.

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But rural land is cheap, so if you don't buy a big chunk of it you aren't doing it right. I've got 30 acres which includes a 4 acre lake and the land was 1/3 the cost of the house. The land is the whole reason to go rural.

I don't get the idea of buying a cookie cutter house in which a contractor building by doing just enough to meet code..