I'm someone who's currently living in a yurt he built himself. The biggest problem with building from scratch is that there aren't many really great designs online or in books for exactly how to build the complex parts, like the doorway. If you make a mistake, especially building something hard to fix after it's erected like the platform, it can be very difficult to fix if you've already moved in. I would say that it's worth getting a reputable pre-fab for at least the Hard Parts if you want to move in at any point in the next 6-12 months. I'm not knocking the adventure of building your own in any way, obviously it's what I've chosen to do. Another great way to handle it is to buy a prefab yurt the same size as the one you want, then live in that while you build your own. Yurts hold their value pretty well, and you would have a reputable model to copy and improve upon. You could then sell your purchased yurt once you were sure yours was livable. And the more people you how your fabulous yurt to, the more buyers you'll have when you're ready to switch.
My long-term goal is to have an Open Source Yurt design that's being improved from all over the world in the same way that Open Source software is. I don't think it would take long for that design to become as good as most of the commercial ones, especially if they were willing to contribute to it. And I think they would be in the long term, because for every sale they loose because someone built their own yurt, they'd get at least two from people who loved the idea but don't have time to make their own. And since the plan would be free to anyone, they'd be able to adopt improvements into their own designs as they were proven in the field.
Until that happens, I recommend either buying a kit, *or* a set of plans that are well known to have survived well in a climate similar to yours. I can't make recommendations myself, but I'm sure others on this list can.
Scott
