People living in NC and TX generally have a lot more disposable income than people in CA at the same gross income level. (In that sense, those other places are more free.)

pay for the house in full. A mortgage was not going to be possible.

It's entirely possible for an LLC to lease property. I also know for a fact that there are people in Chinatown who, for a variety of reasons, can't get a mortgage, but they can get alternative financing to the tune of several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

> 9. Buy a boring car.

Very affordable. I just did this.

> 10. Buy a decoy house to fool the D.M.V.

In the Blues Brothers movie, I think one of the characters had Wrigley Field as their address. If you have friends at an organization like a church, you could use that address.

The subject of the article did it with money. There are other people who do some things like this through their connections.

But with that said you can buy houses for $20k in lots of places in this country, which I suspect the average HN reader could probably swing.