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Modular Homes for Under $50k

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Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#241

Post by kumarvvr »

UncleMeat wrote: post #220
mlindner wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is a lot more involved in day to day operations at SpaceX than a lot of people seem to understand. Shotwell on division of labor with Musk: > The way Elon and I share the load, he focuses on development. He's still very highly engaged in the day-to-day operations, but his focus is on development. He was the lead on Starlink, and I started shifting my focus to Starlink around late spring, early summer of last yea…

Even if SpaceX was his only company, he still is just one person. I'm not talking about Musk specifically, but CEOs generally. In almost no circumstance does it make sense to assign engineering success to a CEO in the way it was done above. CEOs are responsible for hiring executives and setting and enforcing vision and values. That's important but it isn't the whole story.

What I understand is that Musk is very skilled at taking highly technical decisions, that have huge risks and financial implications.

Take the example of the decision to re use rocket engines. Its a highly technical decision that has huge financial repurcussions and essentially the whole basis for the low cost business model of SpaceX.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#242

Post by debacle »

Someone I know is looking into building tiny home communities for the impoverished. He has not been impressed by the available resources.

Overwhelmingly, these tiny/modular homes are hype. If you want to build a tiny home (or really any home), do it with 2x6s and nails. You can get cheaper roughing with rammed earth, CMUs, etc, but finishing is more expensive.

Timber homes at that size can almost compete on price (because most of your members are under 12'), but some of the new energy saving building codes are not timber frame friendly.

You can buy a prefab SIP home, but generally it will always be cheapest to just build the thing in place. Especially if you are planning on building more than one at a time.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#243

Post by wintermutestwin »

xwdv wrote: post #155
thesausageking wrote: post #4

This house is 375 sq ft and uses low end materials, and it doesn't include setup, so it's going to cost ~$100k, or $266 / sq ft. Most new home construction is more like $150 / sq ft. And with this system, you're very limited in what you can build. Who's the target customer for this?

The target customer is people with extra land who would like to put up an ADU on their land to make extra revenue from AirBNB. It could probably pay for itself within a year.

In my CA county, the newest ADU rule states that it can't be used for short term rentals. Of course, you are grandfathered in if you already had an ADU.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#244

Post by wintermutestwin »

Kosirich wrote: post #57
eddy_chan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment deserves to be higher. People just think you can put these anywhere but you need water connection, sewer connection, electrical, telephone line/cable, permits and red tape, by the time you're done it'll be double. And I don't think these solve any of our housing affordability problems, the land in a desirable area will be far more expensive than what's on top.

So my question is, if you had a piece of land, concrete foundation, electrical, water and sewer connection, is it possible to get something better for 50k?

>is it possible to get something better for 50k?

Theoretically, yes. In practice, finding a builder who wants the job is pretty impossible.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#245

Post by thatfrenchguy »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #212
jiggliemon wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into building an adu a few years back, and I can backup most of what you said. At least in California, in an incorporated city. We worked out that it would cost us $30k in fees, and required spending before we could even dig the footers. Things like a soil test, inspections, variance’s etc. You can always build an ADU, but it’s a rich mans game. And not really accessible to most people. We calculated our uni…

>We worked out that it would cost us $30k in fees This is a feature not a bug. They don't want people who can't writing a 30k check doing development. They want the old elderly couple of limited means to move out and make way for some yuppie who will pay big taxes, not slap a bottom dollar ADU up so that they can be cared for by live-in relatives.

Please, in California, that “old elderly couple” pays no property taxes and can spend their life blocking housing for new middle class families (and they do, all the time).

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#246

Post by thatfrenchguy »

dmos62 wrote: post #211
hellbannedguy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can get this contraption on your property (foundation, plumbing hookup, electric, all permit fees.) for under 100k in a desirable area, like the Bay Area, it's a great deal. If I had a flat lot that was accesssble, I would look into this further. In my town, even with the protections Gov. Neusome provided, getting an ADU is still a hassle. In my town, rich people are using ADU's to add square footage to their…

Those sound like good things. I live in a place where non of those demands are considered acceptable (or noone bothers to coordinate) and family-home suburbs look absurd. Every house is from another world, like the neighbors didn't exist. Color, style, fence, roof: everything is as random as you can imagine. It's a continuous spatial conflict.

The thing is, in the Bay Area, suburbs still look absurd because rich people can build anything by greasing the local bureaucracy enough.

It’s obvious if you’ve ever set foot anywhere south of San Francisco: depressing, no common architectural style, really dumb land use, yet somehow you’d need a million permit to change a window on your house.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#247

Post by uncensoredjrk »

debacle wrote: post #242

Someone I know is looking into building tiny home communities for the impoverished. He has not been impressed by the available resources. Overwhelmingly, these tiny/modular homes are hype. If you want to build a tiny home (or really any home), do it with 2x6s and nails. You can get cheaper roughing with rammed earth, CMUs, etc, but finishing is more expensive. Timber homes at that size can almost compete on price (be…

If your friend would like to crank out multiple tiny homes, they should look for a company nearby that has automated Light Gauge Steel Framing machines. An example of a manufacturer of such machines is https://www.framecad.com/

Once your design is done, they can easily spit the parts out in an automated fashion, the parts form the wall and roofing panels. The panels are easily trucked to the site and erected.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#248

Post by throwaway0a5e »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #245
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We worked out that it would cost us $30k in fees This is a feature not a bug. They don't want people who can't writing a 30k check doing development. They want the old elderly couple of limited means to move out and make way for some yuppie who will pay big taxes, not slap a bottom dollar ADU up so that they can be cared for by live-in relatives.

Please, in California, that “old elderly couple” pays no property taxes and can spend their life blocking housing for new middle class families (and they do, all the time).

>Please, in California, that “old elderly couple” pays no property taxes

That's why they want them out. To replace them with someone who pays big $$$$. What's so hard to get about this?

They don't want them moving their caregiver into an ADU. They don't want them renting their ADU to supplement a fixed income. They want them gone. Since they can't tax them out they just prevent them from making money on their land value (via zoning) and let the COL do the rest.

>and can spend their life blocking housing for new middle class families (and they do, all the time).

The elderly sometimes do this but they are mostly scapegoats. The primary culprits are the 30-something on up through middle aged crowd who still need to work and need property values to remain high long enough that they can cash out of the ponzi scheme and retire to elsewhere.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#249

Post by sjg007 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #179
thesausageking wrote: post #4

This house is 375 sq ft and uses low end materials, and it doesn't include setup, so it's going to cost ~$100k, or $266 / sq ft. Most new home construction is more like $150 / sq ft. And with this system, you're very limited in what you can build. Who's the target customer for this?

Looking at this primarily on a cost per square foot basis seems like the famous slashdot mistake of 2 decades ago of dismissing the iPod because it had less memory than a shitty competitor. I mean, it's an ADU, designed to be small, but would basically have the same fixed costs (appliances, plumbing, electrical) of a house twice the size, and I'm sure the manufacturers could make a house twice the size with only a ma…

And it’s modular so there’s probably the option to add on in the future for a lower cost. Adding a second story for example.

I agree with the iPod analogy.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#250

Post by nine_k »

debacle wrote: post #242

Someone I know is looking into building tiny home communities for the impoverished. He has not been impressed by the available resources. Overwhelmingly, these tiny/modular homes are hype. If you want to build a tiny home (or really any home), do it with 2x6s and nails. You can get cheaper roughing with rammed earth, CMUs, etc, but finishing is more expensive. Timber homes at that size can almost compete on price (be…

Timber prices have quadrupled last few months.

There is an economy of scale and efficiency in building large prefab pieces of a house on a factory, as opposed to the ad-hoc local conditions. Machines can do a lot on a factory which they cannot do on a traditional construction site, and human labor is not cheap in the U.S., especially if you want licensed contractors to build a house according to the code.

Also, these homes don't look the cheapest edifices you can produce. A part of their value proposition is deployment speed. IDK if it's an important differentiator for that market segment.

I also suppose that such homes can be rolled back nearly as efficiently as they are deployed, several times, so they can serve as mobile homes for disaster relief, construction in remote parts, etc.

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