Hi HN! We're Luke and Heather, founders of boxouse: https://boxouse.com. We build portable, beautiful(ish), affordable smart homes out of used shipping containers in our West Oakland factory. This began out of our frustration with paying high rent for crappy apartments: we started thinking about our monthly rent in terms of how many shipping containers we could buy (2 per month!). We're particularly interested in using containers as a tool to increase density and affordability; among other things, we're going to deploy containers to people's yards for free, sharing the rent revenue with them. We do all the construction ourselves; more than happy to dig into technical details!
Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
1–10 of 156 posts
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#2For other people looking for a link like I was: https://boxouse.com/
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#3For other people looking for a link like I was: https://boxouse.com/
Added. Thanks!
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#4How are you going to deal with zoning? Generally the big problem with tiny houses is that while they're relatively cheap to make they're not allowed by existing zoning.
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#5While on the topic, does anyone else know of other cool things like this? Cool space. e.g. http://www.blokable.com/
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#6What do you think happens to pricing at scale?
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#7What do you think happens to pricing at scale?
Eventually, we'll make tiny homes as affordable as other factory-built products: car prices, if not cheaper.
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#8Isn't it noisy when it rains? (It rains a lot here).
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#9Is there a tiny housing bubble?
Re: Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes
#10How are you going to deal with zoning? Generally the big problem with tiny houses is that while they're relatively cheap to make they're not allowed by existing zoning.
IMHO, zoning is is one of the biggest challenges facing anybody who wants to do something interesting in real estate. CA actually is forcing cities to make it easier to build ADUs: http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/docs/17Jan30-ADU-TA-Me... . Worst case, we put wheels on them and have license plates to avoid having to comply with building regulations;)