Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modular Homes for Under $50k

boxabl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 343 posts

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#251

Post by nraf »

chrisseaton wrote: post #239
organsnyder wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it that way at all. Perhaps I've been too immersed in this terminology (I built an ADU a couple of years ago), but it makes sense given typical property descriptions: it's a dwelling unit (i.e. a place where people live) that's secondary ("accessory") to the primary dwelling. Or is the depressing part the fact that it assumes single family residences?

'Dwelling' sounds deeply depressing to me - to 'dwell' somewhere sounds like to simply exist in a space rather than actually living and thriving there. To 'dwell' on a problem means to sit and think quietly. And 'unit' to me sounds cookie-cutter and impersonal. This is your unit, just like everyone else's. Sit in your assigned unit and dwell in silence, human. I guess 'dwelling' and 'unit' don't have all those connot…

It's a legal/regulatory term so I guess the coldness is to be expected: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accessory-dwelling-unit...

Guess it comes down to your target audience. If you're market primarily consists of landlords looking to make rental income, ADU seems to fit the bill.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#252

Post by hogFeast »

toss1 wrote: post #228
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 first idea that strikes me (aside form the obvious in-law apt addition) is to use this approach for the homeless. It's been shown that the best solution for many (non-mentally-ill) homeless is to literally provide a home. E.g., merely the fact of falling on enough hardships to lose a home and having no fixed address is a major impediment to getting a new job and becoming a homed, taxpaying resident. Yet I've read…

In London, they used shipping container homes to house homeless people on unused local government-owned land. Pretty much instantly stories were in the media about how the conditions were "inhuman" (bizarrely, from people who had chosen to illegally immigrate to the UK from France, and complained that they had a nice house in Sudan or wherever).

So I think the reality of these schemes is often...difficult because they are a non-ideal solution to a non-ideal problem (and unf, the alternative in the UK is sheltered housing with huge levels of crime, B&B which cost taxpayers £150-200/day, or council housing that is worth £500k-1m...again, there are no real solutions here).

EDIT: btw, I should add...I have actually lived in a shipping container, I went to a boarding school and part of the school was being re-developed so a small number of proportion of the group had to spend a term in converted containers...no issue. It was totally fine. These kind of housing solutions are used pretty extensively in mining/oil and gas, and they are quite comfortable.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#253

Post by debacle »

nine_k wrote: post #250
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…

> 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.

This is only true if you are building 1 home. If you are building 25 or 100 homes, on-site construction is the way to go.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#254

Post by vlucas »

ryanar wrote: post #134
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?

If you think new home construction is $150 / sq ft. (in the US), you haven't been keeping up with the times. It was $220 / sq ft. before COVID, now its $300+ for stick built. Modulars are $200-$250. When material prices tripled, the cost got offloaded to the customer, and given the demand hasn't changed.. it probably isn't going to regress to the mean anytime soon.

You can't just generalize like this. There is no standard price, as it is highly dependent on your geographic location.

Before COVID I just built a fully custom house in the OKC area for $142/sq. ft. including all my upgrades (base was $135 including land in a subdivision). Prices have definitely gone up due to lumber and are now in the $155-165/sq. ft. range base including land.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#255

Post by nine_k »

spothedog1 wrote: post #236
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.

It's literally the opposite. Old people are way richer and have the time and money to go through the bureaucracy. Also old people are much better connected to local politicians. Yuppies are who they're trying to repel, that's why they make it so hard. Its much more like a college student or yuppie would move into the ADU.

Not all of them are rich, unless you count the value of their 80-years old home. They may have a high net worth but be cash-strapped.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#256

Post by nine_k »

debacle wrote: post #253
nine_k wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is only true if you are building 1 home. If you are building 25 or 100 homes, on-site construction is the way to go.

My idea is that you cannot have a huge machine that produces a whole wall in one go on a construction site of a single-family home, but you can have it on a factory. And the machine can work like 10x as fast as human builders.

Of course, to be economic, that machine should produce these walls day in day out without much interruption, hence the economy of scale.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#257

Post by harmmonica »

uncensoredjrk wrote: post #247
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.

Not sure if you have in-depth knowledge about this so I can avoid doing a deep dive on the linked site, but what's the cost of something like this? If you were going to do a 20x20 footprint, what would those 4 walls cost if you assume 3 penetrations for a window on each wall and a door on the 4th wall?

Totally get it if you say "go to the website" but if you're involved with one of these companies maybe you could answer that more readily than I can figure it out.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#258

Post by duxup »

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?

A lot of the modular home type solutions seem to encounter the same thing.

Cost savings on the surface but when things come together they're just not there.

A lot of the actual prefabricated style solutions that do save money seem to be small changes within your traditional systems.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#259

Post by harmmonica »

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…

This is exactly what my friend and I have been thinking. People are being priced out of even the cheaper, though still desirable, mountain and other rural communities in the western US. I strongly feel like tiny houses are a good solution for some folks who don't feel like they need 300-400 SF per person in their home. And they can be built to extremely rigorous standards for _relatively_ little cost.

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, we're building one right now (https://imgur.com/gallery/KbPlbPR) and our hope is that this somehow is something we can reproduce, potentially on a cheap parcel of land, where people who can't otherwise afford a conventional house can afford these. We're definitely thinking it's for the not-quite impoverished, though, because when people have zero money/jobs you're relying on government to step in and fund/subsidize.

Of course lots of questions about entitlements for tiny house communities; affordability when financing isn't available; etc., but gotta start somewhere. Seems like there's a path to providing some long-lasting shelter for folks who otherwise would have to opt for single or double-wides or, worse, end up unhoused.

Re: Modular Homes for Under $50k

#260

Post by bumby »

onion2k wrote: post #116
lmm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is exactly why this technology does nothing to solve the problem. The housing shortage in SF isn't because they can't build like Manhattan or Hong Kong there, it's because they choose not to.

Certainly it would be possible to build higher than construction currently goes in SF, but permission is not the only reason why there are fewer skyscrapers. Manhattan and Hong Kong are essentially massive regions of granite that you can build pretty much anything on top of. That sort of geology is not particularly common. You can't just put up skyscrapers everywhere. They'd fall over eventually. https://blog.epa.gov…

Counterpoint: Chicago skyscrapers.

Chicago typically doesn't have well accessible bedrock. I know of one civil engineer who unexpectedly ran into granite and was able to sell it for added profit on a project. Point being, CE's don't typically expect great bedrock yet have developed methods to build skyscrapers in a city that was formerly a swamp.

"He says even though new technology makes it easier to find solid bedrock beneath 100 feet of wet clay, it doesn’t always make sense to drill that deep. Modern engineers still use the same general principle Burnham & Root employed when they floated the foundations of the Monadnock Building on an even flimsier layer of soil known as desiccated crust: They just spread the load."[1]

[1] https://www.wbez.org/stories/building-skyscrapers-on-chicago...

Post reply on HN