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.
I tried to build a nice, cheap small house and ran into these exact same regulations. Almost all of the regulations we hit were from the 'International Building Code' which covers a large part of the US. I'd say building a to code house here costs at least $50k - $60k. This is just bare minimum meet the code. To add to your list:
- composting toilets are allowed, but you still need a sewer hookup available, just in case
- heating had to be automatic (thermostat + gas/electric), wood stove/insert only is illegal
- outlets every 6' and even more in the kitchen
- stairs cant be steep, even to lofted areas and so take up more space, more $
- minimum square foot requirements
We had a nice building department that helped us work around some of the codes, but even that took a lot of time (money).
Where we were and what we were trying to do would have cost significantly less if we were allowed to use composting toilets [1] and grey water and avoid sewer. Many states are coming around to grey water laws, but as of now I don't think any allow no sewer/septic, even if you don't have anything draining into them. You have to have them for 'backup'
Except you can't legally park and live in them in many cities. Sure you can relocate if you get caught, but how many times before they catch on and you get in big trouble? Its a more practical way to break the rules, but in most places you are still breaking the rules.
You really have to wonder how necessary some of these codes are.
Houses already last 60 or 70 years, which is plenty, by the time they're at a point where they need rebuilding they're hopelessly outdated.
I was helping my father with building a house over Christmas, some of the regulations are ridiculous, we had to build a massive retaining wall with 200 mm posts going 1.5 m down, just because the earth it was retaining could theoretically have a car drive down it at some point.
You have to seal the concrete ledge that bricks sit on with bitumen. It used to be that you had to seal it 50% of the width, but they've just changed it so that it has to be the full width of the ledge. How much difference does it really make?
You can no longer use nails for fastening down corrugated iron roofs, you have to use special screws. People have been nailing corrugated iron roofs down for literally hundreds of years without issue.
Codes are largely reactionary. Sometime, somewhere, doing a certain thing caused a problem and somebody got injured or killed. Maybe the corrugated roof that got nailed down blew off under certain conditions and the investigation revealed that it wouldn't have happened if they used certain screws instead of nails. Hence, the code gets updated to require those screws.
It's mostly driven by the insurance industry. They don't want to pay out claims, so they write the codes to make the buildings as robust as possible.
It's also hard for me to see a serious problem with this. I mean, it can be annoying, but it seems I often wish decisions could be made by professionals (doctors, engineers, etc.) instead of politics and caprice and the IBC (and it's siblings for plumbing and electrical) is an example of laws that are actually thought out by someone who knows, rather than someone who thinks they know better. I imagine they are not perfect, but it still seems like an achievement.
Similarly, my home is from the early 1800s and my parents house was first built in the 1600s, but most of the current part was built in the early 1700s.
Both of these houses are perfectly functional and warm, and barely use that much more energy than most modern houses (we've insulated them well and use efficient lighting etc). And yes they do have inside toilets ;)
I guess housing stock in the UK is just much older.
Some of that is survivorship bias however. Crappy homes from the 1600s aren't around anymore. The longer an area has been built up the larger percentage of the houses are well built due to the poorly built houses constantly dying out by the well built houses sticking around.
True, I won't disagree with that, but in the small town I live in most of the houses in the middle of town are 100 to 150 years old - and there aren't many 'missing houses' that have been replaced with new ones since they weren't good enough to last (as far as I can see).
Even in London, the terraced house we own is about 150 years old, as are all the houses in the street and pretty much the area - very few of these needed replacing unless they were bombed in the second world war, or some other catastrophic event.
At least in the US, zoning and construction ordinances are incredible barriers to innovation and are part of the reason why the real estate market is out of control. These were systems put in place decades ago, often due to class warfare to keep the "riff-raff" out of desirable neighborhoods, that punish innovation and progress towards sustainable and affordable housing.
I cannot help but feel like a lot of the problems in the over-regulation of construction and real estate is due to public ignorance and apathy. If people cared more about how well built their homes were, we would not have needed tremendous government regulation to force builders to build safe houses. My father works construction and between the UCC being dozens of chapters long and every municipality having its own grandfathered in or exceptional bullshit make breaking ground a minefield of bureaucratic nightmare.
In hindsight, I wish we could have produced third party unaffiliated review boards for new construction so that builders could get their blueprints and finish products certified. We could have had an industry of competitive certification processes directed towards homebuilding, and the most trustworthy and reliable certifications would have gained name recognition builders would desire for well built property. Then we could avoid this entire trainwreck of bureaucracy, but understandably volunteer certification doesn't help the poverty stricken when being offered a "cannot be beat" deal on a derelict unsafe house, which is the root problem in all this. It is just generally a mess and as someone coming from a software background who has a father in construction to hear all the disasters from, wish there were a more obvious solution other than "try deregulating and hope you don't get the poor killed or screwed over in the process".
> due to class warfare to keep the "riff-raff" out of desirable neighborhoods
Actually, the exact opposite is the case: US zoning laws were created by the 1910s/1920s era "progressive" movement as a leftist social improvement project. The goal was to legally require that poor people would thenceforth all live in such conditions as the (mostly bourgeois) progressives deemed correct and "proper" according to middle class mores of the day, by making other conditions illegal.
I wonder if this is a North American thing. I noticed in Sweden and the Netherlands the newly-built houses tend to have a more "solid feel" and sensible arrangements. Though I can't speak for their structural integrity since I'm no expert. They also seems to be less attached to faux-period styles and more readily embrace contemporary designs.
It is probably very American. A lot of zoning regulation emerged from racist white flight ideology where, as the middle class white families fled urban settings, they pushed new suburban townships and urban sprawl they caused to adopt extremely tight building regulations to push the cost of construction so high the "inferior" races couldn't afford to tarnish their beautiful communities.
And this isn't some long ago historical thing. This was the 50s and 60s.
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.
Manufactured homes in the US are typically high quality now because of the national safety standards it must meet for each state, in addition to holding up to things like high winds, heavy rains, tremors.
Indeed, I bought a "handyman's delight" (i.e. money pit) for $43k just outside Atlanta during the recession in 2009, and to get it to roughly the same condition as my neighbor's house, I'd have to spend another $40k. It's mostly cosmetic work that it needs, but there are some structural and functional issues that need to be addressed as well. We're still debating whether we should hold onto it and fix it up (it currently appraises for $80k with the few improvements we've done, mostly due to the location) or just sell it for what we owe and buy a better house.
Might be worth talking to a realtor, or even going to look at a few houses for sale close by. Certain improvements can be literally profitable when you sell the house (e.g. $2K in painting nets you $10K in additional sale price).
If you go look at the comparable homes in the area (similar square footage, no. of bathrooms & bedrooms, etc) and they're nicer but selling for $120K+ than your home can likely be made to turn a huge profit by fixing it up before you sell it.
Just make sure you only fix/improve things which a buyer would care about, and not get bogged down in your own niche requirements.
My father has been in the Atlanta metro real estate market for 2 decades. Is an appraiser, agent, and licensed inspector. I'd be happy to pass his info if you're interested in a professional opinion.
Even from scratch, I considered building my own house. The cheapestimated possibly is to use cargo containers, but that requires a ton of welding and cutting. I'm curious how the designs here save on so much material. Also, having picked up wood working, I can say that wood isn't cheap.
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.
Lifespan of a mobile home is estimated at 30-55 years depending on area and on how much upkeep the owner does. There's also a huge stigma around living in a mobile home, and serious logistics involved in hauling the mobile home to its final destination as it has to be delivered in one or two pieces on a long flatbed trailer.
It's also worth noting that the resale value of a mobile home is next to nothing, due to that stigma. Nobody wants a mobile home if they can avoid it, and even fewer want a used mobile home. One of the main benefits of owning your home is acquiring a valuable asset, but without the hope of resale, it's nothing but a money drain.
I've also seen something years ago where a house is made from components that come from a manufacturing facility -- each one can be hauled in on a flatbed. But when they are all assembled, the result really looks and functions like a regular house.
Those are modular homes. And they can be just as well-built as traditional "stick-built" homes. The base pricing on them is really attractive, but the cost (and value) is in all the options.
Part of what makes them attractive is that the assembly on your lot goes really quickly, so the chance of exposure to damaging weather (and thieves/vandals) goes way down compared to traditional homes.
They are starting to do this with commercial buildings. They pre-fab the apartments off-site and then "place" then in the building shell. Not sure how popular it will be but it is something people are considering.
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!