It's kind of hard for me to tell whether the house is nicer than mine when there's so little detail in the article on the actual house.
Look, i'm more than supportive of innovative design and doing things cheaply, but for an article that was heavy on "the house is so cheap", and "its built kinda more like a airplane", and "it uses all this innovative stuff", there's a startling dearth of information.
Sqm, plans, insulation, facilities, utilities, safety? Is it a house I'd want to live in or build, or is it a $20,000 shed with furniture? I'm not being snarky, I really want to know!
They left out current building codes. I have a general contractor's licence. To build anything involves so many rules/codes it's rediculious.
Every year the building department in your town/city usually includes the latest codes, and prohibits so many things. It all sounds great until you are paying someone to build something. The various building code manuals take up at least two feet of space on my shelf.
Where I live, I couldn't build a cabin with wood stove. It would need a electric plug every 6'. I couldn't even use logs to build it without approved man made insulation. And forget the wood stove. They are illegial.
Agreed. I don't see anything particularly innovative or unique about this house. Manufactured homes cost roughly the same, and are roughly the same size and quality. There's not a whole lot of info really detailing what is so different or great about this home.
The numbers are seemingly tossed about without all those pieces you need to add it up. It reads more feel good we got an investment to sell you than actual talk from a home builder. The costs completely ignores the costs of land and ongoing taxes as well. Besides issues with neighbors they are likely going to need to get all new zoning as this price point won't support larger lots.
I am all for good priced construction, groups like Habitat for Humanity would benefit too, but to ignore known savings and counter with "jobs" and such without quantifying it all comes across as a late night infomercial
Or what's the difference between this and a manufactured trailer? Those are very cheap and mobile, even.
It seems like just new marketing for old, low-income housing.
I wish someone would address that, at the root, this move to micro-housing is focused always on cost, and lack of available funds for young working people.
It must be mentioned that houses carry a huge location premium, everyone knows this. You can buy a big beautiful home in the middle of nowhere for the cost of a studio in the middle of NY or SF.
Living isn't all that expensive, living close to where jobs are, or close to the 'heart' of a vibrant local culture, that's expensive, and it looks like the actual cost of building isn't the most significant part of that equation. Land is expensive, so you need to go up, and building up and space-efficiently (i.e. reasonably tall buildings with smart, space efficient units) is where a lot of these 'open-source plans for cheap rural houses with materials from Home Depot' completely do not apply.
It's a bit like building your own PC. Yeah you can build a much more powerful machine at a cheaper rate than a Macbook... but you're forgoing all kinds of factors like mobility which are extremely essential to many of today's consumers. Similarly, you can build a cheap rural home and completely forgo on extremely essential factors like proximity to jobs, culture and infrastructure.
The article doesn't mention this explicitly, but it sure seems as though this tiny house project is geared towards Appalachia and the rural South. Appalachia is generally the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina (maybe some parts of Ohio, too). It has its own culture and dialect. It is also the poorest region of the United States; Appalachia is a huge component of why the US is not like other first world countries.
In Appalachia, it is not uncommon for desperately poor families to live in shacks or horribly broken down mobile homes, on land that's been passed down for generations, sometimes predating US independence. So, this house helps to solve the safe, modern, cheap problem for housing in Appalachia. Also note that one of their goals is making it sustainable for contractors to build and providing lots of instructions--that's to help provide jobs. There aren't a lot of jobs in Appalachia.
So, this is why the house is not an apartment building. It's not built for Germany.
My first thought when reading the article and seeing the pictures is that there's no way this design (as depicted) would work in Appalachia without enclosing and insulating around the bottom of the house. Otherwise, your pipes would freeze and the house would be way, way too cold during the winter. I was also disappointed that the article didn't go into the R-value of the house itself as that's going to be extremely important with regards to where the home could be built. I'm assuming it's probably pretty good, given that it's new construction materials, but I would not want to weather out an Appalachian winter in one unless it had been properly designed to withstand a harsh winter.
Appalachia also is what I would call the "center" of traditional American folk culture. It's no mistake that a big portion of the artists featured in the Anthology of American Folk Music come from there. Very fascinating area.
Probably nice for the US, but in much of the rest of the world, it is the price of land which dominate the price. Any system that aims to reduce house prices really need to deal with limited supply of land to build on.
Even on Iceland which has vast amounts of space and tiny population, house prices are high because the areas where people want to live is in high demand.
Now if you could just build your house at any arbitrary location on Iceland then that would not be a problem. But people needs schools for children, hospitals, jobs etc. That limits the options.
The US has fairly cheap land because it is flat, it is easy to build infrastructure and there are a lot of roads everywhere which you can connect to. The city planning also space out things a lot leaving a lot of land for building.
Icelander here, I'm more concerned how well does this house work in icelandic conditions? Does it handle earthquakes well? What about regular storms? Being wet for months end? Constant freezing and thawing? Can you put it in an active volcano? Does if float on magma? There are lot of questions here!
I see this as an opportunity for existing land owners to replace a house.
Every summer, somewhere in Australia, we have whole rural communities razed by bushfire. Rebuilding is costly and time consuming and there's a threat that fire may return within decades.
Constructing something that is quick and cheap and with low insurance premiums in case of natural disaster may benefit communities where the expected lifespan of a dwelling may only be 40 years.
Indeed. My house is 20 minutes away from the centre of one of the financial capitals of the world. You couldn't buy enough land to build one of those houses on for half a million. You wouldn't get planning permission anyway, and I doubt it meets the local building regulations.
> How do you design a home that someone living below the poverty line can afford
Why not rent a flat instead? Wouldn't that be much more economical (no property prices, lower heating costs, less maintenance work, less risk, not built on the cheap)?
I don't understand the fixation on owning a house / living in a single-family house many americans seem to have.
Things are spread out in most cities and towns. When living in the city, one gets value in exchange for giving up the privacy of owning your own home and land. And, it is not realistic for people who are poor, or even middle class, to own a home in a major metropolis, and so they often do live in an apartment or townhome (a mini-house that shares walls with one or more other townhomes...somewhere between a condominium and a real house). I would accept that kind of lifestyle if living in a densely populated city. I wouldn't if living in most mid-sized cities in the US...but, housing is still expensive. A tiny house on a plot of land fits the bill perfectly for me. I don't need more living space than an apartment provides, I just need more space than having neighbors on the other side of the wall provides. I also want a garden.
Americans who grew up in rural areas have an even more extreme view of how much space is the right amount than I do (I grew up in the suburbs, and still hate apartments).
Also, I want to own where I live, by the time I get close to retirement age (which I'm still a few decades away from, but it's part of the usual retirement plans for most Americans, and they start working on it during middle age).
One facet of it is cultural: For a lot of people, someone isn't seen as a "real adult" until he or she owns a residence. (Obligatory "if you have a mortgage you're just renting from the bank and have to fix the water heater yourself" line here.)
Another is financial: There are heavy tax incentives towards ownership, though this is lessened in the era of cheap money. (On the other hand, if a mortgage can be had for cheap, that puts upward pressure on house prices because fewer units of currency go towards borrowing costs.)
Still another is logistical: Most areas of the U.S. have very few renter protections. If your landlord wants you out and you're not under a current lease, you're out (property rights of the owner and all). This goes double for the desirable places to live. For those who can manage it, the stability of "my housing cost is a known quantity that varies only a little bit outside of my control" (obligatory "did you save for a new hot water heater?" goes here) outweighs the relative immobility of property ownership. Plus, a somewhat high price is put on the ability to paint one's own walls, have a pet, and do minor renovations without asking for permission. Witness the plethora of "home remodeling" shows and TV channels. In many rental units, doing this is not just frowned upon, it is actively forbidden by the lease.
As always, to stave off the inevitable replies of "but my rental experience has never been like that," your miles may vary. I lived in one apartment in Texas that let me do everything short of bulldozing my unit. I lived in another in Seattle that charged me $300 because I got a drop of orange drink on the carpet in a bedroom.
Rent does not build wealth. Rent is the act of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. Rent is, essentially, theft from society itself, it leaves everyone poorer when most people rent.
Rent in America today is identical to the serfs of old.
The post-WW2 thing the Government did with getting everyone mortgages so they would be home owners that caused the eventual economic collapse 10 years ago? They had the right idea, but the wrong execution.
Instead of making everyone homeowners, make everyone fiscally responsible so that getting a mortgage wouldn't be hard for them in the first place.
I don't entirely blame them though: building Freddy and Fannie was magnitudes easier than fixing the broken parts of American society and (lack of) education.
This is one of the large reasons why I'm supporting Bernie, he actually has spoken in depth about how to fix the underlying bullshit that keeps so many Americans renters instead of being homeowners and building their personal wealth.
It has been proven in at least one study that financial stress causes a measurable drop in IQ: literally, being poor makes you stupid. We need less stupid people, to put it frankly.
Edit: Don't downvote. Reply with your counter-viewpoint. HN isn't Reddit.
When a section of society is forced to rent off a richer section of society, then you have a self perpetuating financial inequality - a poverty trap.
For people in poverty, house ownership isn't a financial option. Giving poorer people the option to own or rent, gives people empowerment over their future.
Judging from the name, I'd guess they're targeting rural areas. Rural land is dirt cheap, and it's not uncommon for even very poor families to have a decent plot that's been in the family for generations; but if there's a house on it at all, it's decrepit and crumbling.
This is the same group that Habitat for Humanity serves, for example. My mother helped build a Habitat house in Belize a while back; the land was a tiny scrap of muddy landfill in the middle of a slum, but the family owned it free and clear.
(These areas don't generally have apartments available at all. The economics don't support it.)
As an Australian who has rented all his life, you live knowing that the rug can be pulled from under you at any point. I think in my state that the notification period to 'get out!' is 90 days, but it may be shorter. Owning your own home also means you can do what you like with it, have what pets you like, so on and so forth. The equation is more than comparing dollars out.
My experience is that owning is cheaper than renting in the long run. It makes sense in the broad context because when you rent you still have to cover all of the costs, but they just get hidden in your monthly rent, and additionally you need to pay the landlord--an expense you don't have with ownership. There is a modest benefit in spreading out the risk as well, if you have a major maintenance expense you won't be responsible for the cost up front, however homeowners can purchase insurance that does the same thing (but are usually a pretty bad deal IMHO).
There are some efficiencies to renting. The maintenance can be done by dedicated staff at negotiated rates instead of having to hire outside work. But the efficiencies don't really appear until you're living in a massive complex with lots of other customers to spread the cost around.
When I bought my first house my $1700/month rent for a 800 square foot apartment became a $1000/month mortgage for a 1400 square foot townhouse in a better part of town. And unlike renting I would eventually run out of mortgage after 30 years and have a big asset in my name, one that is likely to appreciate in value over the long term.
In the long term renting is a pretty bad deal for everybody but the landlord.
Flats usually suck because you have noise from neighbors. Of course, you can build flats with better sound insulation, but that obviously costs more, although I'm not sure how much more.
A lot of the poor, rural, families these low-cost homes are targeted at are living on land owned by the family for generations. They often do small-scale farming or large-scale gardening (depending on your definition) and hunting/gathering on the property for food.
In many cases, there will be multiple generations of the family living in separate houses on the same property. At least, these things were all true when I lived in family property in West Virginia in the 80's. We had four houses on about 200 acres in a valley, nearly an acre of garden, and other relatives would regularly stop by from nearby valleys on hunting trips, sharing what they managed to catch for what we managed to grow.
They say it's nicer than my house, but apart from the price I don't see anything nice about it. Honestly it looks really bad.
$20,000 is impressively cheap, but like with the iphone making smartphones popular or the Tesla making electric cars popular, I think smartly built houses aren't gonna take off until their design and specs are top notch.
This house is not for you. This house is for poor people who live in rural or urban decaying homes. Their roofs leak and collapse, their insulation in non-existent, their plumbing doesn't work. This is a big issue, and having worked with a number of situations like this, being able to get someone a new house for $20K that functions would be huge.
$20K (or even $30K) for a functional, well-designed, "tornado-resistant" house would be a big help to many in the rural and urban south.
This house is not for you. This house is for poor people
Not everybody who earns a good income is required to spend it on pointless status-signaling. Some of us enjoy inexpensive, low-footprint, low-consumption living.
Roof looks good to me. If its the same delta rib panels I installed, I had a choice of a 83 year warranty or a 100 year warranty. Snow load angle looks good also. They are off the ground and the roof extends out a bit so that the water stays off the side. I think they are built fine.
I love things like this, but also saddened that in the UK the land to put it on would cost at least ten times that amount. The planning system here is a disgrace.
UK housebuilding companies are sitting on (by various estimates) 400,000-600,000 plots of land which have planning permission, but they haven't built on. That's about 3 years' worth of new houses. The reason is to hold up prices, and because (with "ever-rising" prices) if they build in the future they will make more profit.
There are problems in the planning system, certainly, but at the moment we need an undeveloped land tax to stop this behaviour.
Building a 60 m2 wooden shack have always been cheap compared to a proper house.
Much of the cost of a house lies in the cost of land and the cost of connecting it to water and electricity.
These costs are high because of scarcity and the policies of cities. Policies that ensures that values of houses do not fall and people do not go under water in debt, that areas are filled with proper gentry, that there are nice open spaces, nature, farmland etc.
Even if you could build a house for 0 dollars many places would still have an affordability issue.
I think the idea of approaching things like this from first principles is a great way to create change.
Everything we take for granted could potentially be made in a much better way for a lower price. It will be interesting to see applications of this thinking in other areas.
There was a company in Poland that was building houses like that - they went bust. The main problem is cultural. People look at it and see a shed and they want a "proper" house. "Can I retire here?" "Is it an investment?". What is more, there is a segway syndrome (you like a dork). You will be that weird guy that lives in this weird house. And there is a liquidity problem.
It doesn't look very sturdy, which seems to be a wrong assumption on my part [1], but 20k for a decent house is nice...assuming you own the land already.
For comparison, how much do the Amish-houses cost (materials) and how long do they take to build them? I only know them from movies but they seem like low-cost/quickbuild type houses, too.
Edit: Building instructions for this could be a good application for a VR-based tutorial :)
[1]: "They're built more like airplanes than houses, which allows us to have them far exceed structural requirements. ... We're using material much more efficiently. But the problem is your local code official doesn't understand that. They look at the documents, and the house is immediately denied a permit simply because the code officials didn't understand it."
> And $20,000 is still an aspiration. These two cottages and the deck between them cost $135,000 to build. Smith is hoping that if a contractor understands process, he can bring it in more cheaply. Smith will be able to test that hypothesis: Nygren is invested in the collaboration and the concept. He intends to build more cottages and will be raising funds to do so. He says,
This title is misleading. It is $67,500 / house and the costs are on par with new construction for a similar structure. :/
People have been building homes cheaper than that for a long time now. What makes this different?
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm in southern Kentucky. I didn't realize it, but it was rural poverty. He didn't have electricity or running water (this was the early 1970s). But at least it was a wood house, with glass windows and doors and a decent fireplace and a coal-burning stove.
Back in the far back of the same property, up a dirt trail in the woods, an old black man lived alone in a shack. One room, walls made out of tar paper and corrugated steel. That's a house that can survive in that kind of terrain, and it cost a lot less than $20k. (Interestingly, my father treated that old man with great respect and deference. My father didn't respect anyone, so it boggled me, even as a small child.)
Around the world, entire neighborhoods of "shantytowns" arise around cities, made from the discarded junk of richer people. Shelter is shelter. People build it because they can't make a living wage and pay someone else to build a house for them...
[+] [-] ACow_Adonis|10 years ago|reply
Look, i'm more than supportive of innovative design and doing things cheaply, but for an article that was heavy on "the house is so cheap", and "its built kinda more like a airplane", and "it uses all this innovative stuff", there's a startling dearth of information.
Sqm, plans, insulation, facilities, utilities, safety? Is it a house I'd want to live in or build, or is it a $20,000 shed with furniture? I'm not being snarky, I really want to know!
[+] [-] marincounty|10 years ago|reply
Every year the building department in your town/city usually includes the latest codes, and prohibits so many things. It all sounds great until you are paying someone to build something. The various building code manuals take up at least two feet of space on my shelf.
Where I live, I couldn't build a cabin with wood stove. It would need a electric plug every 6'. I couldn't even use logs to build it without approved man made insulation. And forget the wood stove. They are illegial.
[+] [-] rubidium|10 years ago|reply
It's a really cool program. Each year they come up with a house design and BUILD it for <$20K.
http://www.ruralstudio.org/projects/20k-v8-daves-house
search the projects tab to see all of them back to 2005
[+] [-] bsbechtel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathgladiator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jleahy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
I am all for good priced construction, groups like Habitat for Humanity would benefit too, but to ignore known savings and counter with "jobs" and such without quantifying it all comes across as a late night infomercial
[+] [-] Loughla|10 years ago|reply
It seems like just new marketing for old, low-income housing.
I wish someone would address that, at the root, this move to micro-housing is focused always on cost, and lack of available funds for young working people.
[+] [-] IkmoIkmo|10 years ago|reply
http://www.artsatl.com/2016/01/serenbe-rural-studio-artist-r...
It must be mentioned that houses carry a huge location premium, everyone knows this. You can buy a big beautiful home in the middle of nowhere for the cost of a studio in the middle of NY or SF.
Living isn't all that expensive, living close to where jobs are, or close to the 'heart' of a vibrant local culture, that's expensive, and it looks like the actual cost of building isn't the most significant part of that equation. Land is expensive, so you need to go up, and building up and space-efficiently (i.e. reasonably tall buildings with smart, space efficient units) is where a lot of these 'open-source plans for cheap rural houses with materials from Home Depot' completely do not apply.
It's a bit like building your own PC. Yeah you can build a much more powerful machine at a cheaper rate than a Macbook... but you're forgoing all kinds of factors like mobility which are extremely essential to many of today's consumers. Similarly, you can build a cheap rural home and completely forgo on extremely essential factors like proximity to jobs, culture and infrastructure.
It's great for some people, but not for most.
[+] [-] tejohnso|10 years ago|reply
yet
"Smith says they have priced materials for these homes, each under 550 square feet, at Home Depot, at about $13,000."
So it would be nice if they had detailed the real costs. As indicated, the material cost is relatively insignificant.
[+] [-] jonstewart|10 years ago|reply
In Appalachia, it is not uncommon for desperately poor families to live in shacks or horribly broken down mobile homes, on land that's been passed down for generations, sometimes predating US independence. So, this house helps to solve the safe, modern, cheap problem for housing in Appalachia. Also note that one of their goals is making it sustainable for contractors to build and providing lots of instructions--that's to help provide jobs. There aren't a lot of jobs in Appalachia.
So, this is why the house is not an apartment building. It's not built for Germany.
[+] [-] sageabilly|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sotojuan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonstewart|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jernfrost|10 years ago|reply
Even on Iceland which has vast amounts of space and tiny population, house prices are high because the areas where people want to live is in high demand.
Now if you could just build your house at any arbitrary location on Iceland then that would not be a problem. But people needs schools for children, hospitals, jobs etc. That limits the options.
The US has fairly cheap land because it is flat, it is easy to build infrastructure and there are a lot of roads everywhere which you can connect to. The city planning also space out things a lot leaving a lot of land for building.
[+] [-] raggiskula|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petecox|10 years ago|reply
Every summer, somewhere in Australia, we have whole rural communities razed by bushfire. Rebuilding is costly and time consuming and there's a threat that fire may return within decades.
Constructing something that is quick and cheap and with low insurance premiums in case of natural disaster may benefit communities where the expected lifespan of a dwelling may only be 40 years.
[+] [-] efaref|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reustle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ao7bei3s|10 years ago|reply
Why not rent a flat instead? Wouldn't that be much more economical (no property prices, lower heating costs, less maintenance work, less risk, not built on the cheap)?
I don't understand the fixation on owning a house / living in a single-family house many americans seem to have.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|10 years ago|reply
Things are spread out in most cities and towns. When living in the city, one gets value in exchange for giving up the privacy of owning your own home and land. And, it is not realistic for people who are poor, or even middle class, to own a home in a major metropolis, and so they often do live in an apartment or townhome (a mini-house that shares walls with one or more other townhomes...somewhere between a condominium and a real house). I would accept that kind of lifestyle if living in a densely populated city. I wouldn't if living in most mid-sized cities in the US...but, housing is still expensive. A tiny house on a plot of land fits the bill perfectly for me. I don't need more living space than an apartment provides, I just need more space than having neighbors on the other side of the wall provides. I also want a garden.
Americans who grew up in rural areas have an even more extreme view of how much space is the right amount than I do (I grew up in the suburbs, and still hate apartments).
Also, I want to own where I live, by the time I get close to retirement age (which I'm still a few decades away from, but it's part of the usual retirement plans for most Americans, and they start working on it during middle age).
[+] [-] techsupporter|10 years ago|reply
Another is financial: There are heavy tax incentives towards ownership, though this is lessened in the era of cheap money. (On the other hand, if a mortgage can be had for cheap, that puts upward pressure on house prices because fewer units of currency go towards borrowing costs.)
Still another is logistical: Most areas of the U.S. have very few renter protections. If your landlord wants you out and you're not under a current lease, you're out (property rights of the owner and all). This goes double for the desirable places to live. For those who can manage it, the stability of "my housing cost is a known quantity that varies only a little bit outside of my control" (obligatory "did you save for a new hot water heater?" goes here) outweighs the relative immobility of property ownership. Plus, a somewhat high price is put on the ability to paint one's own walls, have a pet, and do minor renovations without asking for permission. Witness the plethora of "home remodeling" shows and TV channels. In many rental units, doing this is not just frowned upon, it is actively forbidden by the lease.
As always, to stave off the inevitable replies of "but my rental experience has never been like that," your miles may vary. I lived in one apartment in Texas that let me do everything short of bulldozing my unit. I lived in another in Seattle that charged me $300 because I got a drop of orange drink on the carpet in a bedroom.
[+] [-] DiabloD3|10 years ago|reply
Rent in America today is identical to the serfs of old.
The post-WW2 thing the Government did with getting everyone mortgages so they would be home owners that caused the eventual economic collapse 10 years ago? They had the right idea, but the wrong execution.
Instead of making everyone homeowners, make everyone fiscally responsible so that getting a mortgage wouldn't be hard for them in the first place.
I don't entirely blame them though: building Freddy and Fannie was magnitudes easier than fixing the broken parts of American society and (lack of) education.
This is one of the large reasons why I'm supporting Bernie, he actually has spoken in depth about how to fix the underlying bullshit that keeps so many Americans renters instead of being homeowners and building their personal wealth.
It has been proven in at least one study that financial stress causes a measurable drop in IQ: literally, being poor makes you stupid. We need less stupid people, to put it frankly.
Edit: Don't downvote. Reply with your counter-viewpoint. HN isn't Reddit.
Edit 2: Bernie said it better than me: http://imgur.com/gallery/DaHIv
[+] [-] okc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|10 years ago|reply
This is the same group that Habitat for Humanity serves, for example. My mother helped build a Habitat house in Belize a while back; the land was a tiny scrap of muddy landfill in the middle of a slum, but the family owned it free and clear.
(These areas don't generally have apartments available at all. The economics don't support it.)
[+] [-] vacri|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrese|10 years ago|reply
There are some efficiencies to renting. The maintenance can be done by dedicated staff at negotiated rates instead of having to hire outside work. But the efficiencies don't really appear until you're living in a massive complex with lots of other customers to spread the cost around.
When I bought my first house my $1700/month rent for a 800 square foot apartment became a $1000/month mortgage for a 1400 square foot townhouse in a better part of town. And unlike renting I would eventually run out of mortgage after 30 years and have a big asset in my name, one that is likely to appreciate in value over the long term.
In the long term renting is a pretty bad deal for everybody but the landlord.
[+] [-] jensen123|10 years ago|reply
Flats usually suck because you have noise from neighbors. Of course, you can build flats with better sound insulation, but that obviously costs more, although I'm not sure how much more.
[+] [-] drone|10 years ago|reply
In many cases, there will be multiple generations of the family living in separate houses on the same property. At least, these things were all true when I lived in family property in West Virginia in the 80's. We had four houses on about 200 acres in a valley, nearly an acre of garden, and other relatives would regularly stop by from nearby valleys on hunting trips, sharing what they managed to catch for what we managed to grow.
[+] [-] flexie|10 years ago|reply
$20,000 is impressively cheap, but like with the iphone making smartphones popular or the Tesla making electric cars popular, I think smartly built houses aren't gonna take off until their design and specs are top notch.
[+] [-] rubidium|10 years ago|reply
$20K (or even $30K) for a functional, well-designed, "tornado-resistant" house would be a big help to many in the rural and urban south.
[+] [-] vox_mollis|10 years ago|reply
Not everybody who earns a good income is required to spend it on pointless status-signaling. Some of us enjoy inexpensive, low-footprint, low-consumption living.
[+] [-] delbel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|10 years ago|reply
structural interior walls that act similar to the bulkheads of a ship) to prevent the structure from deforming and folding over/apart
[+] [-] ascorbic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|10 years ago|reply
There are problems in the planning system, certainly, but at the moment we need an undeveloped land tax to stop this behaviour.
Sources: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/30/revealed-hous... http://www.local.gov.uk/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/...
[+] [-] jdc|10 years ago|reply
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Rural%20Studio%27s%202...
http://www.prweb.com/releases/ruralstudiosept15/artfarmseren...
[+] [-] chvid|10 years ago|reply
Building a 60 m2 wooden shack have always been cheap compared to a proper house.
Much of the cost of a house lies in the cost of land and the cost of connecting it to water and electricity.
These costs are high because of scarcity and the policies of cities. Policies that ensures that values of houses do not fall and people do not go under water in debt, that areas are filled with proper gentry, that there are nice open spaces, nature, farmland etc.
Even if you could build a house for 0 dollars many places would still have an affordability issue.
[+] [-] jensen123|10 years ago|reply
The article mentions zoning laws and size requirements, which I found odd. Do many places not allow houses below a certain size to be built?
[+] [-] NoGravitas|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yusufp|10 years ago|reply
Everything we take for granted could potentially be made in a much better way for a lower price. It will be interesting to see applications of this thinking in other areas.
[+] [-] huuu|10 years ago|reply
But you also need a place to build it. In The Netherlands ground prices range from $100 - $500 per m².
Then you need sewage, electricity, gas, labor, and so on. I don't think you could make those much cheaper.
[+] [-] lukasm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesz|10 years ago|reply
$8000 for 3 room house with small pool, which is so fun that it looks like toy.
[+] [-] kriro|10 years ago|reply
Edit: Building instructions for this could be a good application for a VR-based tutorial :)
[1]: "They're built more like airplanes than houses, which allows us to have them far exceed structural requirements. ... We're using material much more efficiently. But the problem is your local code official doesn't understand that. They look at the documents, and the house is immediately denied a permit simply because the code officials didn't understand it."
[+] [-] fweespeech|10 years ago|reply
> And $20,000 is still an aspiration. These two cottages and the deck between them cost $135,000 to build. Smith is hoping that if a contractor understands process, he can bring it in more cheaply. Smith will be able to test that hypothesis: Nygren is invested in the collaboration and the concept. He intends to build more cottages and will be raising funds to do so. He says,
This title is misleading. It is $67,500 / house and the costs are on par with new construction for a similar structure. :/
[+] [-] noja|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beat|10 years ago|reply
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm in southern Kentucky. I didn't realize it, but it was rural poverty. He didn't have electricity or running water (this was the early 1970s). But at least it was a wood house, with glass windows and doors and a decent fireplace and a coal-burning stove.
Back in the far back of the same property, up a dirt trail in the woods, an old black man lived alone in a shack. One room, walls made out of tar paper and corrugated steel. That's a house that can survive in that kind of terrain, and it cost a lot less than $20k. (Interestingly, my father treated that old man with great respect and deference. My father didn't respect anyone, so it boggled me, even as a small child.)
Around the world, entire neighborhoods of "shantytowns" arise around cities, made from the discarded junk of richer people. Shelter is shelter. People build it because they can't make a living wage and pay someone else to build a house for them...
[+] [-] avelis|10 years ago|reply
I am also curious to see how the mortgage and realtor industry responds to this type of demand in the future.