Home, sweet, home?

Yeah well, the beauty of living in Southern California can be dampened at times by the expense. My husband and I currently live in my bachelorette pad - a 600 sf 1b/1ba apartment on the 2nd floor and pay more than $800 a month in rent. We have one parking space, no elevator (We are up 3 flights of stairs - it's so fun with groceries). There is a tiny, little 'storage space' and coin laundry and no dishwasher. Anyway, sorry to sound negative but we are in this apartment right now so that we can build a house. We are in the process of buying a lot but it's a pain in my behind and now my dad is bringing to light a lot of things we never thought of so it might not happen. And I can't talk JD into a condo because he doesn't want to pay 400,000 for a 2b/2ba apartment. I don't really blame him. Grrrr... If we lived in Iowa (not that I would want to move back) we could buy a gigantic house for 4k...