{"id":645,"date":"2025-12-24T02:23:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T02:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/2025\/12\/30\/%e5%a6%82%e6%9e%9c%e5%be%9e%e9%9b%b6%e9%96%8b%e5%a7%8b%e8%93%8b%e8%87%aa%e5%b7%b1%e7%9a%84%e9%80%80%e4%bc%91%e4%bd%8f%e5%ae%85%ef%bc%8c%e8%a6%81%e8%8a%b1%e5%a4%9a%e4%b9%85%e6%99%82%e9%96%93\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T16:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T16:25:12","slug":"how-long-does-it-take-to-build-your-own-retirement-home-from-scratch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/2025\/12\/24\/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-your-own-retirement-home-from-scratch\/","title":{"rendered":"How long does it take to build your own retirement home from scratch?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Understand the Basic Application Construction Process, So You Don’t Encounter Obstacles on Your Dream-Building Journey<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Taiwanese couple returning home to open a store despite financial difficulties<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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In most people’s places of residence, influenced by various factors from studying, working, and starting a family, it is often difficult to design or make choices completely according to one’s own wishes. However, after gradually stabilizing, have you ever considered what kind of place you want to live in at the end of your life? How do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle do you want or what kind of house do you want to build as the final stop of your life…?

Today’s article shares the story of a couple who always make decisions opposite to others and spent 18 years building a private residence in Pingtung Fangliao.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the era of money flooding in Taiwan (1980-1989), peers flocked north to seek employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, even buying property, but this couple decided to rent out their house in Kaohsiung, raise funds with family, and return with their two daughters to their hometown Fangliao to prepare for the second half of their life and their house-building plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They opened their first restaurant “Greenery Square” in their hometown Fangliao, selling the fashionable burgers of the time (the kind you see at breakfast shops now). The whole restaurant was designed in the shape of a large “G,” and they intentionally left a native mango tree on the land. The area behind the restaurant was planned as a lawn courtyard with an outdoor elegant seating area. The owner Yang San Er, besides personally supervising the construction, also made a fountain himself. Before they turned fifty, they raised two children on the income from this restaurant, and in the tenth year of operating Greenery Square, they decided to start from scratch to build their retirement home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Romantic Dream of Being an Engineer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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Yang San Er (known as Master Yang) once worked in Arabia and was employed by Arabian Oil Engineering. This foreign worker from Taiwan, after returning to Taiwan, participated in the Ten Major Construction Projects. Building his own house is a project that Master Yang, who struggled in the engineering field in his youth, is eager and determined to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was around the year 2000 when the decision was made to construct another future home. Master Yang believed that steel materials were too expensive [note 1], and he was unwilling to use the RC brick construction method, which faced issues of water leakage and wall cancer over time. While searching for suitable building materials, he read about a lecture on wooden architecture in a newspaper. After attending that lecture, Master Yang chatted with the speaker, Professor Chen Qiren, who is currently the president of National Kaohsiung University. From Professor Chen’s research room, he borrowed a book titled “Japanese Wooden Houses,” co-authored by Mr. Matsui Ikuo and architects Kobayashi Kazumoto and Miyakoshi Yoshihiro. This illustrated book, approximately A3 size, became a prized possession for Master Yang. After flipping through this book several times, he decided to construct his retirement home using the Japanese wooden joint construction technique starting in the year he turned 50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[Note 1] Reinforced steel is approximately NT$20,000 per metric ton (current steel SD-280 average price per ton is approximately NT$14,150 \/ ton _ Price update date is February 2, 2015)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The purest “naked value” revealed through sweat and perseverance<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Making the decision to build a house by oneself is similar to deciding to apply for a working holiday abroad before turning 30. For Mr. Yang, who has an engineering spirit, his motivation to build his own house, aside from saving on labor costs, is to personally experience and create the process of building a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a home is a major project of life, and it is recommended to start this romantic plan when your physical strength, financial resources, and mental capacity are most abundant. As you envision your ultimate journey in life step by step, ask yourself what kind of life you want to live, imagine various future living scenarios, and hope that the blueprint of the home you personally tailor reflects reality, then you can slow down and see the “naked value” of this plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choosing a non-mainstream way of building requires plenty of patience and an unavoidable determination. The harsh reality is that living in a utilitarian environment means time equals money. We live in this era of coexisting with digital resources and shared resources, where upon opening our eyes, there are a pile of bills and basic living expenses that must be paid, making it impossible to ignore the existence of fixed monthly payment bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, the strategy of Master Yang and Madam Yang from the Great Wood Family is to lower their desires for life, save on living expenses, and treat living in a tent at the construction site as a pleasure. They use waste materials and dry leaves to start a fire for boiling water for home use. These tactics are not just a mere camping experience lasting a couple of days; they are a genuine change in lifestyle that has been maintained for nearly ten years during the home-building process, with wholehearted effort invested in creating their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Basic Construction Procedures for Self-Built Houses<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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People often ask: “Why does it take so long to build a retirement home?” A certain family would respond: “We aren’t very wealthy, so we choose to build the house slowly.” If you have a sufficient budget, you don’t have to choose to build the entire house by yourself like a certain large wooden house, which took 18 years just for the main structure. In fact, outsourcing the house construction is a good option to simplify a complex process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding self-built housing, one significant difference compared to purchasing a completed house is that in Taiwan, if you only own land without any development, it will be more challenging in terms of loans and financing. The options are quite limited, and the amount of loan you can secure is also not high. This is the primary threshold to overcome. As a result, during the initial phase of the dream to build a house, most people choose the mainstream method of buying a completed house and negotiate credit with the bank. While you can decide “where to buy,” the type of house you can live in will depend on how many construction projects are available in that location for viewing and selection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, purchasing a completed house has never been an option for a family like the Da Mu family. When Master Yang was young, he returned home with US dollars from working in Arabia. Following his father’s advice, he bought a fifth-floor apartment in Kaohsiung City. He experienced inconvenient access, excessive sunlight on the rooftop, and constant maintenance issues affecting the whole building. In recent years, disputes over insufficient parking spaces have increased, and various uncontrollable factors in daily life have troubled their lives, making it impossible to live comfortably. Therefore, even though funds are not abundant, building their own home remains the only option for Master Yang and Mistress Yang to insist upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rhythm of self-built houses in Taiwan and the application procedures for construction can refer to the following steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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House Builder Guide<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When you consider what kind of house you want to live in and what kind of life you want to lead in the future, do you often find yourself in a state of reverie, filled with anticipation? Of course, you don’t have to mobilize your entire family like Master Yang did, insisting on building a house for 20 years. You can choose to hire a home building agent, who, with their experience of having traversed the long road of home construction, can become your best guide on the journey to fulfilling your dreams, clarifying the feasibility from your vague aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting from the planning blueprint, assist in calculating suitable construction methods, provide reference materials under the preset framework to avoid visiting different places for price inquiries and always being unable to obtain reasonable market prices. This way, you can use the time that lingers outside the walls, finding it hard to enter, to think and establish your residential blueprint, allowing the building agent to help you translate the wishes on the blueprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three major conditions for self-built houses, which are also the three key points that need to be reviewed before starting any project:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. People (family support)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Money (house budget)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Time (dedicating vacation days)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Building a house on your own or contracting to build a house will be a solid period of pursuing dreams in your life. However, the payment experience is completely the opposite of buying a ready-made house, where you enjoy first and pay later. The speed of self-building a house will change according to the builder’s daily schedule; it may be delayed because of being tied up with work, it may stop because the budget for the next phase of construction funds has not been gathered, or it may change due to family needs. This is a romantic action that requires you to continuously ask yourself. Various pauses seem to question again: Will this self-constructed house be the destined residence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you are also looking for the best measure of life in a residence<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Start looking for your destined home builder agent for home building consultation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Understand the Basic Application Construction Process, So You Don’t Encounter Obstacles on Your Dream-Building Journey Taiwanese couple returning home to open a store despite financial difficulties In most people’s places of residence, influenced by various factors from studying, working, and starting a family, it is often difficult to design or make choices completely according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abookhouse.tw\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}