I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?
Prefabs, of which there are many modern counterparts.
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A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
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Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#12The whole of Chicago is just Sears houses every direction you face. Whole streets filled with them for miles at a time on the South Side especially. I love seeing all the small variations and modifications people have made, either when they were building them or later owners.
I grew up on the South Side and I had zero awareness of this. I can appreciate that they want to protect people's privacy, but now I'm so curious!
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#13I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?
It's not so much that they were replaced but that the logistics of delivering an entire house's BOM to a single location didn't make sense. What made it work at the time was the railroads. The lumber would be dropped off at a freight yard to be picked up by a local contractor. (Although the homeowner could have done it themselves if they wanted the actual work was typically hired out to tradesmen.) But as the country shifted to highways, houses were being built in places that weren't accessible by train.
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#14I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?
Builders pumping out 100 identical, low quality, garbage houses in a development. See: d.r. Horton
As opposed to a catalog company pumping out identical houses...?
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#15Love the original catalog index of homes. http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm You can click on the pictures to see the original home ads in the Sears catalog, with prices (e.g. http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/images/1908-1914/1911_011... ) $1062 for the parts to a beautiful American Craftsman style bungalow ($34,394.38 adjusted for inflation)! Some assembly required :) On a tangential note: Sears kill…
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Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Builders pumping out 100 identical, low quality, garbage houses in a development. See: d.r. Horton
As opposed to a catalog company pumping out identical houses...?
Right. The end result is arguably similar, but the builder is typically putting up a whole development including streets, water and sewer connections, etc., sometimes including concessions required by the municipality, like new parks or schools. They're also typically taking on a lot of the risk.
It just typically makes more sense in 2023 for a home buyer not looking for a custom build to get a piece of land with a house on it where they can walk in and turn on the lights and faucets than to buy a parcel of land, order a container full of lumber, and start individually dealing with permits, construction financing, grid interconnections, contractors, etc.
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Builders pumping out 100 identical, low quality, garbage houses in a development. See: d.r. Horton
As opposed to a catalog company pumping out identical houses...?
There was a lot of variety in the catalog, so lots of duplicates nearby would probably be the owner's choice rather than one developer doing the whole neighborhood.
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#18I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?
Postwar planning laws and building codes made them a lot less viable. You're now always going to have to hire an architect and a licensed electrician and a plumber and so on - to the point that you probably have to hire a building crew rather than project managing it yourself - and at that point they have their suppliers and can handle that at a B2B level rather than it making sense for you to get one house's worth of everything in a package.
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#19I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?
It's not so much that they were replaced but that the logistics of delivering an entire house's BOM to a single location didn't make sense. What made it work at the time was the railroads. The lumber would be dropped off at a freight yard to be picked up by a local contractor. (Although the homeowner could have done it themselves if they wanted the actual work was typically hired out to tradesmen.) But as the country…
What's your source on that? Freight yards are plentiful.
Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses
#20I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.