My home is quite small and compact so I dont need the 'wifi is great' talk please.

nobody ever says that.

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And I assume it's better to buy the NVR and a camera or two and add on as desired and funds allow?

you can actually start with the cameras, and stick in a microSD. then add a recorder later.

it's kind of a PITA to get the video from the camera, but it works. you just have to browse to the camera with your laptop and review it that way.

https://www.amazon.com/Reolink-Surveillance-Security-Detection-RLC-410-5MP/dp/B07C5JWK4K/ $50 each x 3

and

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-microSDHC-Memory-3-Pack/dp/B07YXJM282/ $17

and

https://www.amazon.com/YuanLey-Gigabit-1000Mbps-802-3af-Unmanaged/dp/B082KM3PWY/ $37

can get you three cameras up and running, for $204

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if you're willing to order from reolink you can get a whole kit with 4 cameras for $319

https://reolink.com/product/rlk8-410b4/

I have a Reolink and you have 2 options. I use #2

1. Use their app to see what's on the camera live. You don't need to make an account with. I'm not 100% sure how it works though the cloud to watch video though. Reolink doesn't store video on their servers that I know of.
2. Use local software to stream and save video feeds. I have my Reolink connected to my Synology NAS and all video is saved to that for the past 7 days. I then use my Home Assistant to view live video while not at home if I need to. Everything is saved locally so no 3rd party has access to my camera.

For option 2 you can even go further to ensure security such as setting up a VLAN just for your camera and block anything on that VLAN from having access to the Internet. This is more advanced setup though.

All this said, I DO NOT have their doorbell camera, just a standard PoE camera on my front porch. The camera has built-in motion detection but that's all. It can't detect if it's a person, animal or car. From my understanding this takes a LOT of processing power thus why they are mostly cloud based systems.

The Reolink PoE NVR systems look pretty nice. All one system that supports several camera and local storage. Get yourself a doorbell cam, backyard one and a garage. They support like 8+ cameras depending on model.