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This Fairbanks couple saved money on housing by building their own home

A man stands with his hands on his hips, looking at a series of beams on support pillars. The pillars and man stand in a green field, surrounded by trees, with a partly cloudy blue sky above.
Courtesy Josh Paul
Josh Paul in July 2022 working on the beams that the floor — and whole house — would eventually rest on.

Listen to Marketplace each weekday at 1 p.m. on KSKA 91.1 FM. 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.

“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,” Schmidt said. “And we were like, that’s a great spot.”

At that point, it had only a roughed-in driveway, but Schmidt and Paul saw it as the perfect location for their future home. “It was pandemic time, so we had a bunch of, you know, pent-up energy and had saved some money. So we were like, 'Let’s do this.'”

A man and a woman stand side-by-side in construction gear. They are smiling and standing near an upright wood panel.
Courtesy Josh Paul and Justine Schmidt
Josh Paul and Justine Schmidt in September 2022 after putting up the first wall panel on their new 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.

“We built basically a large box,” said Schmidt. “But it is, like, exactly what we wanted.”

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 in the player above.

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.