Affordable Single-Family Housing at Scale
I saw this and I couldn’t believe it:
Home Depot offering a 1 bed, 1 bath 540sq ft prefab house for 44k.
Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/RGH7czUQQ0
— Thefrugalgay🏘 (@Thefrugalgay11) May 31, 2023
Then, in the comments, I saw this and I couldn’t believe it either:
How do you envision Boxabl fitting into your lifestyle or #community?
We want to provide the highest quality home for the lowest price possible. In the future, stack and connect to build nearly anything. pic.twitter.com/DVCQvmG6Yq
— BOXABL (@BOXABL) May 24, 2023
It’s modular. It costs a little bit more:
Boxabl folding house is 40 square meters—about the size of a studio apartment—and they’re calling it the Casita. It costs $49,500 and can be set up in a day once it’s delivered
[read more: https://t.co/zHiO23lk9u]pic.twitter.com/i8Riqa9nyy
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 15, 2023
40 square meters is about 430sq ft so… Home Depot’s house is about $81.50 per square foot. Boxabl’s is about $115.12 per square foot.
The land will cost more, of course. That’s mostly what you’d be paying for. But you’d have a bedroom and kitchen and a bathroom.
(Featured image is “Paisley in shoebox” by Kent Wang and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
.)
According to the links i scanned but didn’t really bother to read the avg price per sq ft in the US is 222. So these are cheaper ( YAY) and very cool (YAY). Start cranking them out. I hope people do not use the mobile home park model where home owners didn’t own their own land. That doesn’t work out well.Report
My main questions involve longevity.
We recently replaced our 20-year roof with a 25-year roof. There are reasonable scenarios where I replace the 25-year roof with a different 25-year roof.
I don’t know that either of these has a 20-year roof.
That said, $1,827 is a lower mortgage payment than that held by several people I know and look at the term!Report
These homes would likely be for young singles or old retirees. Long term maintenance prob isn’t the biggest thing for them but i agree about the issue of how long these things last. But a “disposable” house that lasts for 20 years is actually fine as long as everybody knows what they are getting.Report
It’s all well and good but it’s not construction costs or even, arguably, land costs that are stymying housing; it’s regulatory and I am pretty confident these little houses likely wouldn’t pass muster in most NIMBY burbs and, even if they did, they wouldn’t help with the necessary density. Maybe if they were selling instant 4-plexes.Report
This probably wouldn’t work in Downtown SF, true (but these are still cheaper than the homeless structures they set up).
Would they work in Toledo? Richmond? Austin?Report
It seems like a decent way to set up a rental property or a mother-in-law suite if you have the land. Zoning and HOAs of course may not allow it in a lot of places.Report
Dumb question: How tough is it to set up sewer and water and electricity? Let’s assume that you’re less than a block from someone who has it already.Report
Usually a “simple” permitting process with the local dept of health and water… have to dig the trenches and pay hook-up fees. Assuming existing property connection, I’d budget $15k-$20k and adjust based on local reqs.
Also need to do site-prep and foundation. Assuming no basement, I’d budget another $20k for around here.Report
So double the price if you’re going from a lot with wildflowers to the finished product. And you still haven’t bought said lot yet.Report
Not axiomatically double; the town hookups are somewhat fixed and not related to the cost of the house. Which, unfortunately in this case puts *upwards* pressure on the investment value of the property. $400k house with same infrastructure costs included vs. $40k house with $20-$40k infrastructure on top. Changes optics/value prop, not exactly the costs.
And that’s a financial hurdle that needs serious ‘mathing’ for any sort of development project – not to mention the minimum lot sizes and set-backs already on the books. I was surprised to learn how much towns hate ‘Cluster’ or ‘High-Density’ developments that look to use the land differently than, say, 1/4 acre lots as far as the eye can see.
Plus, true wildflowers-to-home *outside* of existing and easy access to town hook-up? Potentially more expensive: $15k for well, $15k for septic and $15k(?) for electric depending how far the wildflowers are from the last existing poll. Or you’re going off-grid solar… which would be more like $30k minimum. All that said, you might hit water at 40 ft, might only need conventional septic with easy perk and electric grid might just be a quarter mile at the main road… so could be less… but could be more.
As InMD said above, these are great for ‘cost-sharing’ and expanding the total number of units in desirable areas that are already built with access to existing infrastructure. Trickledown housing, if you will.
The main issue becomes standard Zoning/Permitting issues as people in the desirable areas will have issues with randos who can’t afford to live in the desirable areas… the cycle never ends.
We’ve looked at several modular and even Tiny options as a possible Rental or Mother-in-law and even future retirement cottage once we move out of the main house. Building things is expensive at the baseline infrastructure. Enclosing air (i.e. size) is the cheapest part.Report
“high-density” development is disliked because it increases traffic far more than single-family homes, and that’s something the town has to pay money to fix rather than the housing developer (and sometimes it can’t be fixed at all.)
Like, down the street from us is an empty farmers’ field that could be used for a 500-unit apartment buildings, but then you’ve got 500 apartments’ worth of people driving down a non-striped two-lane backroad with nothing but a stop sign at the end…Report
Yes, that’s definitely part of it.
What really surprised me though, was that there’s *also* a really big bias against clustering… that is the typical 100 acres going to 350 x 1/4 acre houses can not be built on 50 acres with 50 acres greenspace or 50-acres of commercial or recreational space (let’s say).
The usual ‘haggling’ over profers and the town/county demanding fees for Road/Infrastructure upgrades is different from what I was getting at.
But, to your point… building, let’s say, 800 small houses on micro-lots for ‘only $100k’ doesn’t make economic sense vs. 400 houses for $400k – especially when you add-in the costs of the proffers and the town/county/state costs.
In my limited (but real) experience… there are massive hurdles around doing anything other than the ‘approved’ way of doing things.Report
So, maybe reclaiming sections of Detroit?Report
The one in the video – is that a Start button and a cd drive?Report
Modular is the BIG thing in my world now, for a lot of very good reasons.
The Home Depot thing is a good innovation, but of course mobile homes have been around forever.
What is spurring the modular world forward right now is not single family, but multifamily. There are now modular factories able to crank out wood or metal framed apartment modules which can be stacked up in days, thereby cutting months off a development timeline.Report
I’m all for this.Report
You can build dense neighborhoods around a central shopping street and a light rail connection to other neighborhoods. This type of housing would be great for cities that need/want more housing but are still in the singular family home obsession. Governments and Home Deport plus others can team up to create new affordable neighborhoods.Report
What infrastructure do they need? How do they get water? Electricity? Where does waste go?Report
Same infrastructure as stick-frame houses, I imagine.Report
So if you’re dropping it on an undeveloped parcel, that is going to cost you something. If you drop it on a developed parcel, you probably only have to worry about lining everything up.
More options is good and as this adds options, this is good. I’m just not sure it is the panacea that proponents may argue it is. As with most niche options, those inside the niche often fail to understand why they are inside of one and the needs of those outside it. Empathy is hard.Report
I suppose that that’s a reason to prefer stick-frame mcmansions. If you’re going to be doing a hookup, might as well hook up a 6 bedroom, 3 1/2 bath.Report
Everyone will have different preferences and this will likely meet certain folks’ preferences so it is a good thing that this has entered the market. I hope zoning and regs makes it a realistic option for such folks. I was just curious what the likely all-in costs were.Report
Champagne preferences with a beer budget might get you the champagne of beers.
These little modular houses are the champagne of beers.Report
I enjoyed many a High Life. It’d a good choice to have.Report
It’s not glamorous and I hear your concern about how durable it is (or isn’t.) And there’s no doubt at all that “dirt costs more than sticks.” The only thing we see here are the sticks. I echo Greg’s concern above that the mobile home park model, where you own the dwelling but rent the land it sits on, doesn’t seem to be a real great way to go. Buy it or rent it.
All the same, this is a good thing. Is it a mobile home? Yeah, at least it looks a lot like that. Is it for everyone? No, but it’s better than what a lot of people have and it probably can be a good thing for a city or a county to buy maybe 80-100 of these things, set them up as first-step-off-the-streets housing for people, and help work on housing the unhoused.
Which makes me ask: is it modular enough to stack them one on top of the other? Could you build a superstructure and plug these into one? If not, it’s not hard to imagine some similar housing unit that could be done that way.
Alternatively, they might also be used as starter homes, or as ADUs. It’s certainly a piece of the puzzle for combating the housing shortage which is one of the great shames of this wealthy nation of ours.Report
My research into Boxabl says that they appear to be stackable. Looks like you can go three high:
So, structure. Not superstructure.Report
It’s very common to find apartment complexes of three-story buildings, 12 units total, each about this size. These would be cheaper to put up I’m sure. But most people who would buy into a condo are considering resale value, and a 12-pack of these isn’t particularly aesthetic.Report
Yeah, but A decent designer aided by a structural engineer could surely come up with some way to modify these and make them visually pleasing. Or if not these, then something similar.
Add in some decent landscaping…? It would be fine. Re-sellable, at least. Not the Taj Mahal, but it doesn’t need to be. It needs to be, as you say, aesthetic.Report
Or just do a 5+1 stick, which everybody knows how to build pretty well already.Report
An example:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/virtual-construction-advisors_modularconstruction-multifamilyhousing-modulardesign-activity-7070458512778153985-5koj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktopReport
Yes. If the idea here is to create something that’s resellable, they could make them more beautiful for a little more money. I’d guess that some of what they’re going for is functionality-as-status-symbol, the thing that Prius pulled off. The current design would attract people who want to make a statement, or people who own land in the seriously middle of nowhere who really don’t care what it looks like. If they’ve got prime quality insulation, these could sell in Montana and north.
Maybe they could make pretty ones for $50k, or prettier 12-packs for $40k per residence.Report
This product is probably illegal in most places that care about low income housing. The zoning regs are going to say “x sq feet for x” and result in only much larger houses.
This is fixing the wrong problem.Report
Laws are malleable, if there is the political will to change them.Report
Maybe? The question is what happens when each side has equal sizes and the answer appears to be gridlock that favors the status quo. The other issue is whether the political structure is systematically designed to favor countermajortarian views or enable veto points that impede the political will. Yes, that horrible and depressing point on structural problems that everyone wants to deny existing because admitting they exist leads to massive depression and we can’t have that.
I am as YIMBY as they come and we have been having a bit more success but as I pointed out in a previous thread, the NIMBYs still have enough power and influence to block and troll.
From the Wikipedia bio of one of the current members of the SF Board of Supervisors:
“In 2008, he ran for the District 11 seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors against John Avalos, losing by a close margin. Safaí ran again in 2016, successfully, replacing Avalos who was termed out of office. During the 2016 race, he ran against Kimberly Alvarenga; Safaí was endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle.
He worked with Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin to delay the construction of thousands of units in the Hub so that TODCO, a low-income housing non-profit in San Francisco, could perform a race and equity study on the project within six months. More than two years later, TODCO had not begun the study and the group said it had no intent to do so.”
TODOCO might have been a noble non-profit when it began, now it is basically a corrupt slumlord disguising itself as a non-profit and the entire statement here is so dispiriting it makes me want to punch a wall in frustration. This is basically NIMBY today, NIMBY tomorrow, NIMBY foreverReport
The fact that you basically have factions of equal size means that there is no political will to change the law. There is only a relatively large group of people that do and an equal or even bigger group of people that do not. Dealing with NIMBYism will require impositions at state level and laws written hard enough to prevent clever workarounds for continued NIMBYism.Report
Change the laws and we won’t have a problem.
This has happened basically no where in the USA.Report
“Hunger is a very big problem for the world today. That’s why we’re introducing the Quick-Cleaning Table with the EZ-Strip feature. After you finish a meal, just peel up the corners and fold the table cover into a bag, then put the whole thing in the trash. Saves time, saves water, avoids polluting the environment with harmful cleaning chemicals! ConHugeCo projects this will save almost a million billion dollars of house-labor effort over the next ten years. …where do they get the food to put on it? Well, the grocery store, of course!”Report