It’s not the markets that are broken, it’s the transport links. I’d rather have a 500 sq foot apartment and a 20 minute commute than a 2000 square foot place with a 2 hour commute.
It's a false dichotomy. You can have a 2000 square foot place and a 20 minute commute. The markets really are being distorted.
San Francisco downtown real estate sells for $1000 per square foot. Shouldn't that problem sell itself? It is incredibly lucrative to build housing in San Francisco, yet it (somehow!) isn't happening to an adequate degree.
I keep looking at these things to find one that is actually affordable and can survive a winter. Every "tiny home" or "micro-?" is much more than a trailer. Its really disappointing that with all the advancements there is really no innovation in cheap housing.
Isn't a shipping container + insulation on both sides + plywood on the outside + siding pretty cheap and easily able to survive a winter as long as its placed on a concrete slab?
Despite the hype, shipping containers are a bit of a problem because of some of the nasty stuff they coat those things with to get them across the ocean. I haven't seen a commercial vendor who offers a safe one that can deal with a northern winter. I would love to be wrong on that.
Why not just skip the shipping container and throw up a simple wood frame? All the rest of the ingredients of a common American house are already there; the container doesn’t seem to add anything.
But why start with a heavy windowless box that needs to have its toxic coatings removed? Something like an Earthship[1] is made out of free trash (like bottles and used tires) and dirt... (which may not even need to be trucked in to the build site).
Replace the shipping container with some wood beams and you have a standard American house. There's no real reason to prefer a shipping container over simple timber framing that I know of.
I find it more insane that people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on what amounts to be bad trailer homes.
Trailer parks exist for a reason. They're the size of shipping containers and therefore are shipped and constructed very efficiently. They're standardized and manufactured on a mass scale.
The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them.
There's clearly a marketing problem at hand here. Some of the larger Modular Homes (built out of multiple "rooms") aren't bad.
The main issue is that the US Society as a whole uses cost-of-living as a differentiator. Those who own $500,000 single family homes want to ensure that everyone around them also is paying ~$500,000ish for their homes, because money is a crude estimator for crime levels and educational opportunity.
If you live in an area filled with $20k trailer homes, the assumption is that these areas are filled with criminals and drug lords.
With that said: cost-of-living is a differentiator in reality, because taxes are ultimately collected from the area. Richer areas can afford better schools, while poorer areas with lower land values won't have the same infrastructure. And unfortunately, building "mixed income neighborhoods" always causes a mess because of NIMBY.
The issue is one of societal expectations. Regardless, the question of "how to build cheap, dignified, affordable housing" is well solved in America. Trailer-park homes have power and running water.
The main issue IMO, is marketing and figuring out how to build "mixed income" developments without without making rich people feel like they're living next to poor people. As silly as it sounds, if this problem can be solved we'd solve a lot of issues...
Its more the trailer park than the trailer that is hated. Anything that has observably lower income people will make other home owners mad. I've seen some really nice trailer parks (heck, better than the HUD housing areas I grew up in), but the NIMBY is pretty strong.
The economics of living in a trailer park are much more complicated than that.
Prefabs and trailers are two different things, but for the sake of argument, you seem to think that for $20k you can buy a trailer and plop it down in a park. Someone owns that park. They expect rent, on top of the mortgage payment you're making for the trailer.
Trailers are cheaply built and depreciate rapidly. Repairs are not always straightforward and often require specialized parts. Things you take for granted as being standard in size often aren't, which forces you to buy overpriced replacements from a dealer instead of just grabbing one at Home Depot. (Prefabs, not so much.)
You own the house, not the land. If you stop paying rent, you get evicted. But you get to keep the trailer, right? Even if you still have enough money to move it, you don't own any land to put it on. You can't just park it at Wal-Mart while you figure out what to do. So you're forced to liquidate it for pennies (probably to the same landlord, who in turn rents it out) and now you're homeless and $20k poorer.
Trailer parks are not the answer to lack of homeownership. They are a more complicated form of renting that net you all of the responsibilities of homeownership and none of the equity. The sorts of people who choose to live there do so for a reason; if it were truly cheap or affordable every trailer park would be packed with hipsters. You can't market such an abysmal deal to any working individual with a brain.
The right answer would be to forget the trailer park idea and go buy a plot of land on the side of a mountain in Montana. You'd need to install septic, dig a well, buy a gas tank, etc. before it's truly livable, which raises the upfront cost by about $75k. But as you develop you build equity.
There is no simple, affordable solution unless you want to live like Eric Rudolph.
> Trailer parks are not the answer to lack of homeownership
Never claimed them to be.
Some trailer parks allow you to rent the trailer, all together without purchasing it. The $20,000 figure was more about the cost of manufacturing these homes on a wide scale.
As you said, rent prices in trailer parks can be large ($500+ / month), which can be as much as actual homes nearby. But that's the nature of real estate: the value is in the location, location, location, and not necessarily in the home itself.
In any case, the raw material cost of a mobile / manufactured home is anywhere from $20k from the low end to $100k to the higher end.
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> You can't market such an abysmal deal to any working individual with a brain.
In my view, its no worse than the deals given on a Condo with $hundreds in HOA fees. Trailer Homes tend to be much cheaper than most Condos packages too.
There are some bad deals out there, there are probably some good deals out there. Its all a matter of expectations, community, and yes, location. Just like any other Real Estate deal.
"The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them." Perhaps I misinterpreted?
> In my view, its no worse than the deals given on a Condo with $hundreds in HOA fees. Trailer Homes tend to be much cheaper than most Condos packages too.
Not saying condos are worth it, but this isn't a fair comparison. Condos make sense in some circumstances-- they do retain some equity so you're not just hemorrhaging rent money, and the community shares the cost of significant repairs. If you can get a decent one and live in it for a few years without getting hit by a special assessment, they're a viable alternative to renting long-term.
Buying into a trailer park only makes sense if you consider all of your income disposable and intend to die there. They're poor investments. There's no such thing as a good or bad deal on something so worthless.
I think if you're looking for sustainable alternative housing that costs about the same or less than a stick built house a dome might be the way to go.
geodesic domes were a big thing in the 1970s/80s and were about the same price of a mobile home/trailer home. They could be easily assembled by a couple of people w/a small group of friends in a weekend, and added onto as needed. The problems came with zoning as anything novel is more difficult for the local inspector to assess, and the internal angled walls made for wasted space, so anything taller than a low desk (dresser, cabinet, or refrigerator) against an outside perimeter must stand out from the wall.
Another option is to just buy an RV and/or a camper + a truck to pull it.
The survivalist crowd has done quite a bit of this -- buying remote rural lots with good water and farm land and setting up a homestead.
It's pretty inexcusable that in this day and age, there's no affordable housing options. Even in most rural areas, regulation makes it impossible to live in a tiny-home/ small off-grid cabin, etc. I know there are reasons for regulation but personally I'm trying to escape the rat race and housing is one of the biggest obstacles to that.
Whoever has been marketing CLT the past couple of years has done a really good job, I'm absolutely fascinated by the stuff. Last week I spent 15 minutes watching a CLT building be erected. It looked so simple I wonder if you even need to be a proper architect to design a simple 3 story house.
My uncle loves CLT, built three houses with it, living in one of them at the moment. He's definitely not an architect (though he has some experience in construction by now)
They are rather simple, in the last one it was literally a case of "get the walls delivered, put in second floor and then a roof on top" and it was done.
Do you know any good sites that show the best practices for CLT and a good vendor? I've been thinking about building a shed out of CLT to try it out rather than a standard stud and plywood frame.
East Asians wash at night in general (we westerners are oddballs who shower in the morning). When I was living in a dorm in Beijing, the shower would be open in the evening every other day. That was 15 years ago, though.
Direct YouTube video link for people who don't want to scroll through the somewhat-onerous website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUZRJqIJ5g
Seems to have all the same photos as well, shown slideshow-style. :)
They use cross lamination for skateboards to limit flexibility and support weight, but what is the benefit of it mounted vertically (presumably the walls)?
To limit flexibility and support weight. Also it's cheaper than regular wood, and can more easily be cut in any shape you like, and it keeps its shape better than regular wood.
How about some interior shots? Like, I saw the 10 or 20 photos of the thing from different angles, can I get a peek in the part that actually matters for someone to live in?
Is this really an "apartment building"? It appears to have only one housing unit. Generally, a building with one housing unit is called a "house". I know this seems nitpicky, but tiny houses have been done to death. A tiny apartment building (e.g. spite house) would be much more impressive (albeit likely much less practical).
55 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadThere is really no reason why everyone can't have 1000+ sq ft. 2000+ sq ft. This is a crap response to a fake scarcity.
San Francisco downtown real estate sells for $1000 per square foot. Shouldn't that problem sell itself? It is incredibly lucrative to build housing in San Francisco, yet it (somehow!) isn't happening to an adequate degree.
3D printed homes https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/3d-printed-houses_...
Hay Bales http://buildingwithawareness.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-straw-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
[1]: http://earthship.org/
Trailer parks exist for a reason. They're the size of shipping containers and therefore are shipped and constructed very efficiently. They're standardized and manufactured on a mass scale.
The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them.
https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/manufacturedhomesdef...
https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/econo_gal.asp
If you have $20k you can buy a home. That's a fact.
The main issue is that the US Society as a whole uses cost-of-living as a differentiator. Those who own $500,000 single family homes want to ensure that everyone around them also is paying ~$500,000ish for their homes, because money is a crude estimator for crime levels and educational opportunity.
If you live in an area filled with $20k trailer homes, the assumption is that these areas are filled with criminals and drug lords.
With that said: cost-of-living is a differentiator in reality, because taxes are ultimately collected from the area. Richer areas can afford better schools, while poorer areas with lower land values won't have the same infrastructure. And unfortunately, building "mixed income neighborhoods" always causes a mess because of NIMBY.
The issue is one of societal expectations. Regardless, the question of "how to build cheap, dignified, affordable housing" is well solved in America. Trailer-park homes have power and running water.
The main issue IMO, is marketing and figuring out how to build "mixed income" developments without without making rich people feel like they're living next to poor people. As silly as it sounds, if this problem can be solved we'd solve a lot of issues...
Prefabs and trailers are two different things, but for the sake of argument, you seem to think that for $20k you can buy a trailer and plop it down in a park. Someone owns that park. They expect rent, on top of the mortgage payment you're making for the trailer.
Trailers are cheaply built and depreciate rapidly. Repairs are not always straightforward and often require specialized parts. Things you take for granted as being standard in size often aren't, which forces you to buy overpriced replacements from a dealer instead of just grabbing one at Home Depot. (Prefabs, not so much.)
You own the house, not the land. If you stop paying rent, you get evicted. But you get to keep the trailer, right? Even if you still have enough money to move it, you don't own any land to put it on. You can't just park it at Wal-Mart while you figure out what to do. So you're forced to liquidate it for pennies (probably to the same landlord, who in turn rents it out) and now you're homeless and $20k poorer.
Trailer parks are not the answer to lack of homeownership. They are a more complicated form of renting that net you all of the responsibilities of homeownership and none of the equity. The sorts of people who choose to live there do so for a reason; if it were truly cheap or affordable every trailer park would be packed with hipsters. You can't market such an abysmal deal to any working individual with a brain.
The right answer would be to forget the trailer park idea and go buy a plot of land on the side of a mountain in Montana. You'd need to install septic, dig a well, buy a gas tank, etc. before it's truly livable, which raises the upfront cost by about $75k. But as you develop you build equity.
There is no simple, affordable solution unless you want to live like Eric Rudolph.
Never claimed them to be.
Some trailer parks allow you to rent the trailer, all together without purchasing it. The $20,000 figure was more about the cost of manufacturing these homes on a wide scale.
As you said, rent prices in trailer parks can be large ($500+ / month), which can be as much as actual homes nearby. But that's the nature of real estate: the value is in the location, location, location, and not necessarily in the home itself.
In any case, the raw material cost of a mobile / manufactured home is anywhere from $20k from the low end to $100k to the higher end.
----------
> You can't market such an abysmal deal to any working individual with a brain.
In my view, its no worse than the deals given on a Condo with $hundreds in HOA fees. Trailer Homes tend to be much cheaper than most Condos packages too.
There are some bad deals out there, there are probably some good deals out there. Its all a matter of expectations, community, and yes, location. Just like any other Real Estate deal.
"The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them." Perhaps I misinterpreted?
> In my view, its no worse than the deals given on a Condo with $hundreds in HOA fees. Trailer Homes tend to be much cheaper than most Condos packages too.
Not saying condos are worth it, but this isn't a fair comparison. Condos make sense in some circumstances-- they do retain some equity so you're not just hemorrhaging rent money, and the community shares the cost of significant repairs. If you can get a decent one and live in it for a few years without getting hit by a special assessment, they're a viable alternative to renting long-term.
Buying into a trailer park only makes sense if you consider all of your income disposable and intend to die there. They're poor investments. There's no such thing as a good or bad deal on something so worthless.
http://www.monolithic.org/homes
Another option is to just buy an RV and/or a camper + a truck to pull it.
The survivalist crowd has done quite a bit of this -- buying remote rural lots with good water and farm land and setting up a homestead.
> Tikku is a safe-house for neo-archaic biourbanism, a contemporary cave for a modern urban nomad.
> Tikku is self-sufficient.… Fresh water is carried in.… Modern man has to die a bit in order to be reborn.
hahaha wow thx but no thx
...That is because it is wood. Please stop talking about thick plywood like it is carbon fiber.
They are rather simple, in the last one it was literally a case of "get the walls delivered, put in second floor and then a roof on top" and it was done.
Also very energy efficient houses.
http://www.1010.or.jp/english/
And, no pictures of the inside? That's probably the most interesting, and most important part.
Yet they've slapped it down right in the middle of a pedestrian area - kind of defeats the message I think.
Stand, yes....until a strong breeze catches it.
"Tikku...can be erected" "Many Tikkus can grow side-by-side like mushrooms" "Where ever a car can go, Tikku can grow."
etc.