Market Data 
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vermont residents Ian and Mary Clare Armstrong, a hydrologist and graduate student for teaching, respectively. The couple, both 27, paused their house hunt after a frustrating year and built out a $4,500 van they bought on Facebook to live in. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Clare: We rented in Burlington for four years, which at this point has been the most expensive place I’ve lived so far. We went to school in southern Indiana and it’s so cheap to live there. Our rent in Burlington was around $1,700. For over a year, we looked at houses here and got pretty invested in some properties we saw.
Mary Clare: Our real estate agent kept pushing us outside of our budget, like over $200,000 more. We got pre-approved for a good amount of money, but we ran the numbers and knew what we could truly afford. But our agent kept pushing. She wasn’t seeing eye to eye with us. It was really frustrating.
Mary Clare: In November 2023, we lost out on another house and we felt pretty defeated. We weren’t done looking but we decided to take a break from the hunt. Then, Ian found this bus on Facebook Marketplace.
Ian: I was on Facebook Marketplace to actually look for land. We thought about buying land and putting a yurt on it. You can find a lot of lowkey pieces of land on Facebook. The bus was totally by accident. It’s a 2006 Ford E3-50 shuttle bus, about 20 feet long and about 10 feet high.
Mary Clare: The seller told us they bought it with an ex. They were like, “If you guys don’t buy it, I’m just going to scrap it.” It was a 12-seat commuter bus and they had already started converting it. All the seats were taken out and there were already hardwood floors.
Ian: We bought it for $4,500. We decided if we built out the van by spring, we could stop renting and live in the van full-time. We were just so giddy. It was a total 180. We went from losing out on all these prospects to finally having something in our grasp.
The van was in such bad shape it fell apart on the way home
Ian: It was in pretty rough shape. Driving home, you could hear and feel a lot of things wrong with the van.
Mary Clare: I was driving behind Ian in our car and literally watched the muffler drop out. I called him and was like, “Oh my god, pull over!” We tied it up with ratchet straps.
Ian:. We consistently worked on it three to four days a week after work and then probably one full weekend day. Probably around 20 hours a week.
Mary Clare: It just became our routine. My favorite memories are working on the van together and listening to Indiana University basketball games on the radio. I felt like a Dad spending Saturdays in the garage.
Mary Clare: It was definitely a stressful time in our relationship. It’s funny people assume now living in the van, being in a small space, is hard on a relationship, but building it was 100 times more strenuous. I’m much more task-oriented and Ian is much more of a finisher. I’d be like, “Let’s just finish this tomorrow,” and he’d be like, “Let’s just finish this one thing.”
Ian: A big milestone was getting the van back from the mechanic. We had done so much work, replacing the whole exhaust system, the brakes, the gears. We spent a little under $10,000 fixing it up, there was really no turning back. Hearing from the mechanic that it passed inspection and was finally street legal was amazing.
Ian: Now, it’s got a sink with a foot pump and fresh water tanks. There’s a propane stove, an oven, a diesel heater, and a 400-watt solar panel on the roof. We have a bookshelf, a booth with two seats, and storage for our clothes, bikes, and ski equipment.
We hit the road for 7 weeks on an unforgettable road trip
Mary Clare: On March 21st, we moved out of our apartment and we hit the road that night. We said bye to some of our friends, slept outside our old building, and then started a 7-week cross-country trip.
Ian: We drove to New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, through the Rockies in Colorado and down into Moab in Utah. We saw Arizona and New Mexico, then turned around to go through Texas, Oklahoma, and then Arkansas to see my grandparents. Then Tennessee to see my sister. And we made a stop in our college town of Bloomington, Indiana before heading home. It was a blast.
Mary Clare: We did, however, break down in Iowa, which was only four days after we left.
Ian: It was the holders for the rear suspension, on both the left and right side. They snapped at the exact same time. So the bus detached from its frame and was scraping on the ground. It was scary. We didn’t know if the van was going to survive.
Ian: But honestly, God bless Iowa. It’s the trucking capital of America, so probably the best place to break down. We found a mechanic who fixed it in two days for $800.
You have to downsize belongings, but it’s nice traveling with your entire house
Ian: The biggest adjustment is you can’t own many things. You have to choose your clothes and belongings wisely.
Mary Clare: The chores are different. You have to fill up the water tank and dump the water. You have to do your dishes right away after you cook, or else it gets cluttered. You have to sweep the floor multiple times a day. If you want to use the internet it takes some extra steps. But you also don’t have to worry about paying rent.
Ian: The best part is being able to take trips to these incredible places and wake up in the middle of the desert with your house. There’s no stress of like, “Did we forget this or that?” Everything we own is with us.
Mary Clare: We went to Vermont for our friend’s birthday and my sister texted me, “Hey could you bring an extra t-shirt?” And I was like, “I’m bringing my whole house.”
We found a house this month, but it’s partially thanks to the van
Ian: The plan was to eventually go back to renting, but we actually last week just got an offer accepted on a house in Montpelier, Vermont. It was on the market last year and we loved it, but it got sold to someone else. But now it’s ours. We’re getting ready to transition from living on the bus to owning a home.
Mary Clare: Living here definitely helped put us in a spot where we were even more prepared to buy a home. We saved around $10,000 living on the bus full time for six months. We’re buying a cheap 1-bedroom house, so that’s basically going to be our down payment.
Mary Clare: The van’s not going anywhere, I’m excited to still use him. We both got Ikon ski passes this year and I’m excited to sleep in ski parking lots this winter.
Ian: I think there are better ways to save money. But I’d say the experiences that we gained from this and the amount of confidence we got from this allowed us to start looking at homes that need a lot of work. Now, we know we can take a lot of things in life into our own hands.
