This story originally aired on “Marketplace” on Jan. 23, 2025.
While biking near their rented home in Fairbanks, Alaska, Justine Schmidt and her partner, Josh Paul, stumbled upon a plot of land that spoke to them.
At that point, it had only a roughed-in driveway, but Schmidt and Paul saw it as the perfect location for their future home.
Schmidt and Paul, who both work at the University of Fairbanks, purchased the land in May of 2021. Though they both lacked construction experience at the time, they decided to design and build a house themselves.
“Josh is a very good researcher,” said Schmidt. “He spent many, many hours on YouTube University, learning how to do all the things.”
By sticking to a simple design, they managed to build a livable home in about two and a half years.
Overall, Schmidt said the project cost around $200,000. That’s significantly lower than the median home price in Fairbanks, which is around $290,000, according to Redfin.
“It was essentially both of us having part-time jobs — like at least 20 hours a week for two years, on top of our normal jobs, so that definitely cost something,” said Schmidt. “But we definitely could not have gotten this house on the market here in Fairbanks for that much money.”
You can listen to Schmidt’s full story here or read an edited transcript below:
Justine Schmidt: I’ve lived here about six years. It’s a lovely, cold place. Me and my partner, Josh, saw this property up for sale on a bike ride once, and we were like, “You know, that’s a great spot.” It’s at the end of a dead-end road. It goes right up against state land that there’s a bunch of trails on.
It was pandemic time, so we had a bunch of, you know, pent-up energy and had saved some money, you know. So, we were like, “This is a great idea.”
We built and designed and did the whole thing from the ground up, starting with cutting down all the trees and stacking all the firewood that we’re still using. We started in 2021 and we moved in last fall.
So, there’s a fun thing about living in Alaska, especially — we’re outside of the town of Fairbanks, right? There’s very little regulation. So, there’s a lot of people, kind of like us, who have almost no experience in construction and are like, “You know what? I can do this.” And that means a couple things: One, that you can kind of build what you want, which is really cool. And then the second thing is, there’s a lot of houses that end up for sale that are really weird.
We built basically a large box. We have no, like, indoor walls and like doors, which we’re fine with because it’s just the two of us. We like the big open space. We have giant windows that are Arctic-grade, and the walls are super thick.
A little less than $200,000 is how much this house costs us to build, which, you know, housing prices are different all over the place, but we definitely could not have gotten this house on the market for that much money.
You know, I think a lot of people would come into this house, and it is not like a normal house, right? It’s all open, but it is exactly what we wanted.
I think we both feel very connected to our house, like it’s a little baby that we had. It’s our child.
This series is part of Marketplace’s “Adventures in Housing” series, because an adventure is exactly what finding and affording a place to live has become.