Pay and pay and pay and pay....

Hennepin county has a great site that lets you look at land values and the property taxes that are paid on each lot. It is very useful for finding tax cheats (Mr. Lake front for $350,000!). It even links to MS Virtual Earth that will show you aerial photographs. Take a look at my block.

The man works at keeping you down...

Most of the time the government does not publish cool guides on how to build houses. Minneapolis has been working hard of late to make sure that people don't build houses there. They must be morally opposed to having large closets and attached garages (They are for the weak! The weak will live in the suburbs!). So I spend a lot of time reading the zoning codes to make sure that my design ideas can actually be implemented.