For background, I don't have serious experience with this. I've worked with businesses that moved containers, I've talked about getting containers for my own

For background, I don't have serious experience with this. I've worked with businesses that moved containers, I've talked about getting containers for my own stuff, and priced things out from that angle, and found the whole thing too expensive, even if you have places to put the containers where people won't complain. I do, however, think container aesthetics are pleasing and find the idea of a container house (or modular workshops) to be pretty cool. Container houses generally require effort that make them less cheap than things built specifically to be housing, unless you can somehow dodge zoning because you are in a 'container house' If you've ever spent any time in a container during the day, you know that being in an un-insulated steel can when said can is in the sun is not a generally pleasant experience. Building a small structure to reasonable durability standards is actually pretty cheap; I bet you could do a wooden shed of the interior size of a cargo container for less than the market value of said container, most places in the world, assuming the zoning restrictions weren't different for the container vs. the shed. If you need your house to move and you are willing to accept the space limitations, it might make sense to build in a cargo container... but if you are willing to give up the mobility, you can usually get a better or cheaper living structure. Even then, I'd question it. I mean, unquestionably, it would be damn cool, but by the time you made it livable, I don't know if it wouldn't be cheaper to just buy a used camper trailer. My experience trying to get cargo containers moved is that most of the services for doing so are not designed for not-very-often one-off moves; I think getting someone to move your fifth wheel trailer would probably be cheaper than getting a cargo container of similar size moved, assuming you are on the same continent. The exception, of course, is if you live in a place where cargo containers have a very low market value, and where the cargo containers are where they need to be (or the equipment required to move them is cheap) Another issue I ran into when exploring this is that... well, you really want to clean these things out. A cheap, used cargo container needs some serious work just to get the ickies cleared out.