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Small World: The Tiny House Trend

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Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#331

Post by ip26 »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #142

I really wish there was more diversity in offerings when it came to manufactured/trailer homes. To clarify, I'm not talking about RVs. I like tiny houses, but really only in the sense that I'm fascinated by unusually small things. Otherwise I think they're actually kind of ridiculous if your motives are to downsize and not pay $300,000+ on a house Trailer homes are pretty incredible when you think about it. They're t…

The reason the stereotypes exist is because of trailer parks, not trailer homes right? I could be wrong, but I was always under the impression the issue was rundown parks and terrible neighbors, rather than a serious flaw of the trailer home itself.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#332

Post by ip26 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #14

There's definitely an appeal to engineers in building your own house from scratch. As an example, I built an 8x12' shed (details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/2kof5x/i_built_an_8x12... ) several years back. All it took was a few months' worth of weekends and a few trips with a borrowed full-size pickup and I had it together. Obviously you'd put more effort than that into making a house (you need insulat…

I keep trying to find an excuse and space on my property to build a little shed. I think it is the engineer in me, indeed. In my case the biggest driver is, the main house will always be imperfect and too cost-prohibitive to fix. A small shed on the other hand, can realize my dreams for the main house.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#333

Post by metildaa »

driverdan wrote: post #327
metildaa wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered Verizon's unlimited jetpack or AT&T's unlimited tablet plan for $30 a month? https://buyasession.att.com/sbd/Common/ShopRatePlans.action

There is no such thing as unlimited. They throttle you after 22GB. I paid extra for the 100GB plan so I would have guaranteed no throttling.

There is such a thing as unlimited, one of the people on our T-Mobile account is at 147GB of tethering with another week to go. People have successfully used both the plans I mentioned for home internet.

If your not in a very congested area, any of these plans should work just fine.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#334

Post by metildaa »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #330
metildaa wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite heavy insulation, quite a bit of heat still migrates upward in new apartments and condos. Your neighbors are also nearly perfect insulation compared to your exterior walls too :P

I’m currently in a top floor apartment actually and we quickly hit outside temperatures in the winter if we don’t run the heater. This is Seattle where heat is mostly electric, radiators would probably be very different.

How new is the building? Are the exterior walls properly insulated and sealed?

My friends in a 3 year old building in Ballard have had to open their windows through the last few weeks, and they're only near the top floor. Another friend of mine had a similar experience in Mill Creek when on the top floor.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#335

Post by MisterTea »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #280
Bjorkbat wrote: post #142

I really wish there was more diversity in offerings when it came to manufactured/trailer homes. To clarify, I'm not talking about RVs. I like tiny houses, but really only in the sense that I'm fascinated by unusually small things. Otherwise I think they're actually kind of ridiculous if your motives are to downsize and not pay $300,000+ on a house Trailer homes are pretty incredible when you think about it. They're t…

People will find ways to diminish others, but a recent manufactured home on a well-kempt lot just looks like a normal house, even if it has a simple roofline and is conspicuously devoid of brick above the floorline. In much of rural America, this kind of house doesn't look out of place, and is worlds apart from the image of cramped disheveledness that people associate with a suburban or edge-of-town trailer park. Wha…

> ...yet higher earners are moving into cookie-cutter subdivisions in distant exurbs of major cities and into homes that are built rapidly with poor materials. And yet there's no such stigma there.

Ever hear of McMansions? That's derogatory. I think people who buy them are shallow and have no taste. They're just happy with the faux status that "muh big house" brings.

I have friends in Mount Airy, Maryland, and I've seen tons of these things tossed up on old farmland covered in styrofoam faux stucco, brick and stone. They are often just plopped down in a field with nothing around them but open air. It looks so hideous when you come upon a large field with a dozen large homes standing in the open with cars in front. And then to add to that, the juxtaposition of barns, silos, cows or corn fields opposite the road. It almost looks like they're growing them.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#336

Post by zdragnar »

stcredzero wrote: post #289
dakna wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modular homes that are not stick-built onsite tend to appreciate a lot less. And if your assessor or appraiser categorizes it as a manufactured home it is even less. Try to sell one to find out how much of a local stigma they have, even though they are perfectly fine and are usually built out of 2x4s too. But I heard people saying they don't shop at Ikea because it is a "cookie cutter" store. Buying a house is often…

Buying a house is often a status issue. If the Tech Worker class wants to do the world some good, then bucking the "stick-built in the dirt" expectations of society would seem to be an area where we could do a lot of good. If we as a buying cohort gave such homes cachet through economic and social power, then the cost of building homes and new housing stock would be reduced through modern manufacturing and economies…

A significant chunk of the cost of modular building is in transportation, and there's only just so much you can do for the overall cost when most of it is in materials anyway (gas and wood are very variable costs).

Back when I was looking at building, the total price outcome really wasn't substantially different for very similar plans.

Part of the problem is that it's labor and materials intensive. Even if modular homes became more popular, the transportation cost alone means that you're not going to be buying from out of state in most cases. Also, keep in mind that houses are around for decades if not centuries. If a house cost $50k and I could swap it out every 10 years for a newer model on the same property, that might be worth it. Sadly, that is not and will likely not ever be the case.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#337

Post by stevenicr »

voltagex_ wrote: post #285

Wonder if anyone's tried to build a tiny home that's wheelchair accessible.

couple years ago I spoke with the gentleman behind these: https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/a37788/granny-pods...

and I think I remember correctly that they were designed to be ADA compliant and such.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#338

Post by seanmcdirmid »

metildaa wrote: post #334
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m currently in a top floor apartment actually and we quickly hit outside temperatures in the winter if we don’t run the heater. This is Seattle where heat is mostly electric, radiators would probably be very different.

How new is the building? Are the exterior walls properly insulated and sealed? My friends in a 3 year old building in Ballard have had to open their windows through the last few weeks, and they're only near the top floor. Another friend of mine had a similar experience in Mill Creek when on the top floor.

2000 something in downtown Bellevue. We also have a very high ceiling, the sealing seems to be good enough that heat from adjacent apartments doesn’t seep into ours.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#339

Post by stcredzero »

zdragnar wrote: post #336
stcredzero wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house is often a status issue. If the Tech Worker class wants to do the world some good, then bucking the "stick-built in the dirt" expectations of society would seem to be an area where we could do a lot of good. If we as a buying cohort gave such homes cachet through economic and social power, then the cost of building homes and new housing stock would be reduced through modern manufacturing and economies…

A significant chunk of the cost of modular building is in transportation, and there's only just so much you can do for the overall cost when most of it is in materials anyway (gas and wood are very variable costs). Back when I was looking at building, the total price outcome really wasn't substantially different for very similar plans. Part of the problem is that it's labor and materials intensive. Even if modular ho…

A significant chunk of the cost of modular building is in transportation

It's a chicken and egg problem. If the market were bigger, there would be more factories, with one locally sited.

there's only just so much you can do for the overall cost when most of it is in materials anyway

A big part of the cost is labor. Economies of scale can fix this by making labor far more efficient and replacing part of it with factory automation, but the market has to be big enough to keep many local factories busy for that to work.

If a house cost $50k and I could swap it out every 10 years for a newer model on the same property, that might be worth it. Sadly, that is not and will likely not ever be the case.

Houses are designed to last only 20 years in Japan.

Re: Small World: The Tiny House Trend

#340

Post by ImprovedSilence »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #242
ams6110 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blu Homes (from their website) are from $200K - $550K. That might sound cheap in some areas but if you're comparing to a traditional "manufactured home" it's close to an order of magnitude higher.

Absolutely. It is "cheap" when the median price of a home is $1.5M it is "expensive" when the median price of a home is $150K. The point though is that it addresses the 'variation in pre-manufactured homes' question. There are people out there building pre-manufactured homes, that mix up the formula with high end amenities. As I see it, there are two vectors on these things, their shapes, and what you can get inside…

With a lot of those $1.5M homes, a large LARGE portion of the value is the land/location, not so much the physical structure too. You gotta price that in for these types of "great deal" homes.
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