I'm new to the hobby and trying to do a nice layout on the lower budget (don't want to pay $30+ a building ) I'm pretty crafty with paint and glue what are the most affordable buildings, and where is the best place online to uy model railroad stuff? Thanks for the help.
Nick, in your post you don't make any indication as to what sort, or size, buildings you are thinking about, but I'm assuming that you aren't talking about very small, or crude, old-school, buildings. That being said, I'm going to be a little more blunt than previous posters with my response.
There simply are few worthwhile structure kits of any real quality and of any significant size available in the hobby these days that list for under $30. The level of accuracy and complexity of even many of the smaller structures today commands far more money than those available even just a decade ago in the hobby.
If you are interested in some sort of urban-type, multi-story buildings, or perhaps 2-3 story small town stores, then City Classics and Woodland Scenics structure kits are probably your best choices at under $30, plus they are simple to assemble. Beyond those, I really don't see a lot. All of the classic wooden craftsman-type kits, once the standard of the more frugal modeler, are nowadays steadily going out-of-sight in price. Likewise, nearly all of the latest plastic buildings of just about every type demand $50, or more. The latest already built versions of same are pushing $100, or better.
Impressive structures can still be built on the cheap if you are willing to learn how to scratchbuild, something I'm sad to say that fewer and fewer so-called model railroaders wish to do today. However, there are a number of excellent how-to books on the subject offered by companies like Carsten Publications that can teach anyone with at least a little modeling talent to build anything and this is the way I would recommend to go if you like really nice buildings at relatively little cost.
The image below is of a building I scratchbuilt, complete, for about $40 a few years back. The commercial
kit for the exact same building was selling for around $250-$300 at the time, so it shows what can be done with a little personal effort on the modeler's part. Now it is doubtful that your very first effort will come out quite as well, but after a couple of tries your scratchbuilt models will impress all your friends and your buildings won't look just like all the plastic kit clones seen on the other guy's layouts either. Plus, you'll have the pride of saying, "I built that myself!"
NYW&B