11 ms·

Sears Kit Homes Changed Housing

109 points by prostoalex 8y ago

clatan 8y ago
There's a recent 99% invisible episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...
- djsumdog 8y ago
  That's where I first heard about this. Excellent podcast episode. It's pretty different to actually see photos though.
asaph 8y ago
> Sears promised that a buyer with only rudimentary skills could assemble a kit home in 90 days. People used to be handier than they are today. I don't know anyone who would dare take on this project.
- dannyw 8y ago
  I mean, it probably was a lot easier too, with less complicated plumbing, fire code regulations, wiring, etc.
  - redshirtrob 8y ago
    I doubt plumbing or electrical are any more complex now than they were 80 years ago. The principles haven't changed. What probably is more complex is dealing with permitting and inspections, which you alluded via fire code regulations.
    - justin66 8y ago
      This is sort of half true. Ancient knob and tube wiring is undeniably much, much simpler than what we have today, and you could teach anyone who ever worked with their hands to install it pretty quickly. It wasn't simple in an inspiring "simplicity is beautiful" way, but rather in an "oh my God we are all about to die in a fire" way. Doing things correctly according to modern wiring safety code is something that requires a lot of knowledge, and a person could curse regulation and so on while learning all of that, but using all the modern tools would require a lot of knowledge regardless. There are dozens of parts in a standard electrical installation that simply didn't exist when it was just knobs and tubes.
- pjmorris 8y ago
  If there are old kits out there, or if the parts could be made from the old kit plans, we could try it out and see how people would do today.
- tcbawo 8y ago
  Now there's a reality TV show!
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    Nah, too real.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  I would, until the neighbors started threatening to sue me in planning meetings and the local authorities demanded $30,000 of architect's drawings and then I was told I had to have two parking spaces for some reason and that my house was too small for any decent individual.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    That's to be expected when you live in a "nice" neighborhood. By being industrious and efficient and building outside the box you violated the norms of the community and they take issue with that.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      Which is the biggest shift from when Sears catalog homes were most sold: most of the were clustered together in neighborhoods where that sort of kit home, or similar DIY projects, were precisely the norm. Most major cities you can sort of tell which ones were the "Sears catalog neighborhoods". (It's funny now how some of those very neighborhoods have grown increasingly conservative in their old age by nature of gentrification and often being closer to urban centers than the exurbs that replaced them in people's minds as "suburbs".)
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        >It's funny now how some of those very neighborhoods have grown increasingly conservative in their old age by nature of gentrification and often being closer to urban centers than the exurbs that replaced them in people's minds as "suburbs". Yeah, no. It's not that simple. In the US the liberals tend to generally be more in favor of government management of what you do on your own property because of how the existing battle lines are drawn with regard to big government/regulation vs small government/deregulation. The situation is flipped in SV where the slightly older and slightly less left leaning/liberal existing property owners want slightly more regulation (specifically zoning) than the slightly more liberal and slightly younger renters. Rights of property owners isn't really a specific part of either party's platform. Desire for government micromanagement of what you do on your own property follows wealth much more closely than any ideology. A bunch of rich conservative jerks in a suburb of NYC will agree with bunch of rich liberal jerks in a suburb of SF when it comes to using regulation to prevent people from building things they don't want to look at.
examancer 8y ago
I didn't know they sold homes. Kind of amazing. It's a surprising footnote in the tragedy of Sears. The popular narrative of an out-of-touch company unable to compete with the likes of Amazon is false. The CEO is a hedge fund manager who pillaged the company, sold off it's best assets (sometimes to himself), loaded up the company with debt, and used it to pay himself millions. http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed-sears http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed... There is no good reason we are losing this company which has been the backbone of American commerce for over a century.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-12/sears-has-complicated-problems https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-12/sears-has... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-18/uber-driver-may-drive-uber-ipo https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-18/uber-driv... > Over the years of propping Sears up, Lampert threw his own money into the effort, and his friends and supporters said this wasn’t only in self interest: He wanted to keep the lights on and people employed. He and ESL were willing to lend at much lower rates than others were demanding. He had Sears pay almost $2 billion into the unfunded pension plan in the past five years. > The traditional story of financial engineering is that smart hedge-fund guys structure complicated transactions that enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers. But it’s at least possible that Sears is the opposite story, the story of a smart hedge-fund guy structuring complicated transactions that blew through his fortune to keep ordinary workers employed through a financial crisis. Of course that’s not mainly a matter of disinterested kindness: If he just wanted to give his money away to workers, he wouldn’t have needed the complicated transactions. It’s mostly just a gamble that didn’t pay off: He expected that the complicated transactions would help Sears to recover and make him even richer, but they didn’t. > I genuinely don’t know what to make of Lampert and Sears. There is a version of the story in which he rapaciously extracted assets from Sears, enriching himself while starving the business, and another version in which he selflessly pumped money into the company to keep it afloat at his own expense. (“Although he has been criticized for selling Sears assets, spending on stock buybacks and collecting interest on loans to Sears, he said it is unlikely he will come out ahead financially on his long-running Sears bet,” notes the Journal.)
rmason 8y ago
There are several Sears kit homes near me. They succeeded because they offered value. I don't know about the coasts but the homes were very popular in the Midwest. So popular that close to eighty years after they were last available it is very common to mention a property is a Sears home in real estate ads. Amazon may have sped up their demise but Sears lost track of offering their customers value decades ago.
- adventured 8y ago
  Amazon had close to zero role in the demise of Sears. Keep in mind, Amazon had a mere $34 billion in total sales as recently as 2010. Sears was realistically already a zombie ten years ago, long before Amazon was taking a consequential bite out of retail. The rise of Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc. serving the Sears customers better - as you mentioned - is entirely what killed Sears. They ultimately lost in every category to those guys, from clothes, to electronics, to home & garden. They kept doing a lot of things, and did nothing well. Any article that claims Amazon played a role in the demise of Sears, is selling click-bait.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Arguably they did a couple of things (e.g. appliances) at least competitively. But the competition in those areas definitely increased from the big box stores, department stores in general have been in significant decline, and Sears as a whole was quite a mish-mash.
    - Finnucane 8y ago
      It used to be that Sears house brands--Kenmore, Craftsman, etc--provided good value to the customer. Not luxury or top-of-the line, but reliable stuff that worked and was worth what you paid for it. But in recent years that hasn't really been true. But then, it's not really true for just about anyone any more. Amazon copied the Sears model--sell everything to everyone--but it has also opened the floodgates of third-party sellers selling cheap crap and counterfeit goods. It's less like the old Sears and more like an old-world medieval bazaar.
rtpg 8y ago
I'd be really interested in what these "kit homes" end up arriving as to the customer. Are you shipped a bunch of wood and materials at a spot and you start building? Is there some prefab stuff going on? Very interested in knowing what the user experience is on this sort of product, so to speak
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  These questions are hilarious because all of us are just a bunch of young "know it alls" and all the old timers would be able to tell you all about these sears homes....too bad no one here is older on this site.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    They ship you a bag of acorns and a coupon for a chainsaw redeemable in 20 years.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    The youngest person to have conscious memory of these things would have to be 82 or 83, and wouldn't be much of a help in building them. The 95 year old adult in 1940 is even rarer still.
- arjunvpaul 8y ago
  They actually came in railway boxcars. Roughly 10,000 to 30,000 numbered pieces (depending on the model) with detailed instructions. You would then haul them on horse wagons or motorized wagons to the lot.
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    Sears homes were common up to the 40's as well. More advanced last-mile transportation existed.
    - arjunvpaul 8y ago
      True. Wagons were the only reference I could find. I had researched this and seriously considered applying to YC with a idea for mailorder-homes that could be move-in ready in 7 days. Not DIY but DI4U (Do it 4 U) and done with mostly aircrete and steel. Its actually quite easy due to the advances in material tech and equipment. Prototyping was engineering heavy and costly and ended up back in India due to Visa issues :-( . Used the money to validate another startup. Turns out it is easier to sell ads than build houses.
wnoise 8y ago
So, does anyone else offer catalog homes? If not, why not? Have building permits gotten too complex?
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Cabelas does log homes
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Not anymore (at least not referenced on their site anymore). They're also at a huge markup compared to other kit log cabins.
- AmVess 8y ago
  The choice for a prefab dwelling is speed of construction and short time to inhabitance, and not really cost savings. Land is not plentiful and cheap like it once was. Then there are utility install and hookup costs which are quite large. Also, bare lots are not easy to find.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Yes, it’s building permits. It’s not that they’re too complex, it’s that they vary not just by state but municipally within states. The modern incarnation of a low end manufactured home is a mobile home. They’re regulated like motor vehicles on a federal level. That’s why mobile home parks are zoned out of existence, to keep the poor out, same as maximum number of unrelated occupants or minimum lot sizes with maximum square footage making building anything but a luxurious single family home illegal.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Sort of. With modern software design and modern manufacturing it doesn't cost anything extra to allow you to change to a different floor plan. So you can get a kit that is easier to put together than the sears home of the past (despite having to meet stronger codes), but it will be a custom home. With standard lumber sizes kit homes don't gain much though. Home Depot sells precut studs (92 5/8) that allow the standard size drywall/plywood to fit.
skookumchuck 8y ago
If you ever watch a house being built, there's a huge pile of waste lumber from cut off ends. Carpenters don't look through the pile looking for an end to reuse, they just pull a fresh board and cut off what they need. With some careful design, and pre-cut pieces, one can nearly eliminate this wastage and cut costs substantially. It's not just the boards, it's the millwork, plumbing, carpet, etc.
- bluGill 8y ago
  When I was in construction all ends longer than a foot (30cm) were saved and most were used. They look like the are to be discarded, because most are created the first day and just sit there. However the very last thing before we leave we look around and verify that there is backing in all the corners to attach the drywall to. This used most of the longer scraps. I don't know about the other steps you name.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    > other steps I recall reading about a spec house builder who would design the houses so that the dimensions of the rooms would fit an even multiple of the widths of carpet rolls. This nearly eliminated carpet waste, and made installation cheaper, too, as there were no seams.
walrus01 8y ago
The person who does the McMansion Hell blog has a guide to historical kit houses: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-american-dream-an-introductory http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-am... Part two: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-american-dream-part-ii-the-hunt-is http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-am...
bluedino 8y ago
You can buy a house kit today from places like Menard’s - my uncle purchased a garage and we assembled it over a couple weekends, I could see doing a house with much more time and skill https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-building-plans/home-plans/shop-all-home-projects/c-9919.htm https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-buildi...
- tomcam 8y ago
  The prices are literally unbelievable to me. What’s missing? These sure look like the spiritual successor to the Sears homes.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    The labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a home.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - wbl 8y ago
      And planning permission.
      - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
        This truly isn't so horrible in some places. Build slightly outside a town of 3000 in the midwest and see where you get. So long as you aren't taking away farmland, you'll usually get your permission.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      Land, labor, and politics. Bare land in cities doesn't exist anymore and isn't cheap. Labor is expensive due to high living standards. And politics can lower the supply of potential developable land even further, raise the cost of labor, as well as drive other differentiating concerns. Your neighbors can sue you (or compel the government or an HOA to step in) if they don't want you to build. And it's probably next to impossible to design a kit home that could meet the developmental codes of all fifty states, let alone all the municipalities. It's why comparisons between say, Hyperloop and CAHSR are so infuriating. The technology is not the reason why traditional high speed rail construction in California is so expensive and slow.
ZachWick 8y ago
The "DIY with basic tools" approach of Sears extended well beyond houses. Sears also sold motorcycles [0] that came with a thick manual that gave instructions on how to do everything from assembling the motorcycle from the shipped pieces in the crate to fully disassembling and rebuilding the engine. I've restored a handful of them before, and they are a lot of fun to work on. They are simple enough that there aren't too many hurdles to get over, and they are always a good conversation starter when you're parked somewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS [1] A build log of one restoration that needs updating https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/ https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/
datavirtue 8y ago
We need these more than ever. I am surprised there are no startups focused on component houses that users can design online and order. Construction of new homes skews towards large, expensive houses because labor costs to build are so high that building small homes is risky or yields less margin. We are in desperate need of affordable homes in America because of this. No one wants a manufactured trailered home either...they are absolute crap quality and very expensive (horrible value proposition).
RickJWagner 8y ago
Those are nice looking houses, I'm surprised. My wife and I are thinking about building a new house. I'm surprised how many new houses are still built from bespoke plans, and how much the plans cost. You'd think house plan 'Open Sourcing' would soon give us better houses at better prices. (I hope so, anyway.)
Insanity 8y ago
First time I heard of 'home building kits'. I don't think they are popular here in Europe (Belgium at least?) but the idea is quite neat. Then again, I don't consider myself handy enough to take on such a project anyway :)
fallingfrog 8y ago
I live in one on these houses! The construction is very solid, the insulation is thinner than you would ideally want but overall it's a nice house. The trim work is beautiful, every piece fits together nice and tight. My only complaint is that I wish they hadn't used lead paint on it.
fallingfrog 8y ago
According to the CPI inflation calculator, The Classic home from 1916 for $918 would cost $22,282 today. That's actually quite a bit less expensive than the same size houses being offered by Menard's today, by about a factor of 2. I don't have any good insight as to why the cost would actually be higher today after 100 years of productivity gains. Productivity has increased by about a factor of 5, so all other things being equal the same house should cost only $4400 today. What gives?
- ip26 8y ago
  Labor costs have increased faster than average, i.e. faster than the index. The houses you can buy today also have more going on behind the walls. Nobody had an R-60 attic in 1918.
- colonelpopcorn 8y ago
  The catalog price of the home is just for the materials, though, isn't it? It's not taking into account real estate, legal, administrative, or labor costs. Those are probably what's driving housing cost more than anything these days. I imagine you could get just the materials necessary to build the Classic home for around that much.
- brixon 8y ago
  Has the main material costs changed (also assuming the material is the same, but it is likely different). Stricter building codes likely change what makes up the building which will likely add costs. Did the early ones have electricity or plumbing?
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Yes.
- greeneggs 8y ago
  I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but the construction industry has long had notoriously slow productivity growth. In the US, labor productivity in construction has stayed essentially flat since 1947, and decreased since its peak in 1968. "Reinventing construction: A route to higher productivity", McKinsey Global Institute (2017) (pdf, see page 23): https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital%20Projects%20and%20Infrastructure/Our%20Insights/Reinventing%20construction%20through%20a%20productivity%20revolution/MGI-Reinventing-construction-A-route-to-higher-productivity-Full-report.ashx https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital...
wj 8y ago
How does being a kit home affect resale value if at all?
- tptacek 8y ago
  I don't think it does. I think it's regarded as charming. There's a whole enthusiast community. Also: they're kit houses, but they're not like, mobile homes or pre-fab; they're just houses, like any other.
- wglb 8y ago
  I suspect that in some cases there may be a mild premium due to rarity.

109 points by prostoalex 8y ago

There's a recent 99% invisible episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...

djsumdog 8y ago
That's where I first heard about this. Excellent podcast episode. It's pretty different to actually see photos though.

asaph 8y ago

> Sears promised that a buyer with only rudimentary skills could assemble a kit home in 90 days. People used to be handier than they are today. I don't know anyone who would dare take on this project.

dannyw 8y ago
I mean, it probably was a lot easier too, with less complicated plumbing, fire code regulations, wiring, etc.
- redshirtrob 8y ago
  I doubt plumbing or electrical are any more complex now than they were 80 years ago. The principles haven't changed. What probably is more complex is dealing with permitting and inspections, which you alluded via fire code regulations.
  - justin66 8y ago
    This is sort of half true. Ancient knob and tube wiring is undeniably much, much simpler than what we have today, and you could teach anyone who ever worked with their hands to install it pretty quickly. It wasn't simple in an inspiring "simplicity is beautiful" way, but rather in an "oh my God we are all about to die in a fire" way. Doing things correctly according to modern wiring safety code is something that requires a lot of knowledge, and a person could curse regulation and so on while learning all of that, but using all the modern tools would require a lot of knowledge regardless. There are dozens of parts in a standard electrical installation that simply didn't exist when it was just knobs and tubes.
pjmorris 8y ago
If there are old kits out there, or if the parts could be made from the old kit plans, we could try it out and see how people would do today.
tcbawo 8y ago
Now there's a reality TV show!
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Nah, too real.
CalRobert 8y ago
I would, until the neighbors started threatening to sue me in planning meetings and the local authorities demanded $30,000 of architect's drawings and then I was told I had to have two parking spaces for some reason and that my house was too small for any decent individual.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  That's to be expected when you live in a "nice" neighborhood. By being industrious and efficient and building outside the box you violated the norms of the community and they take issue with that.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Which is the biggest shift from when Sears catalog homes were most sold: most of the were clustered together in neighborhoods where that sort of kit home, or similar DIY projects, were precisely the norm. Most major cities you can sort of tell which ones were the "Sears catalog neighborhoods". (It's funny now how some of those very neighborhoods have grown increasingly conservative in their old age by nature of gentrification and often being closer to urban centers than the exurbs that replaced them in people's minds as "suburbs".)
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >It's funny now how some of those very neighborhoods have grown increasingly conservative in their old age by nature of gentrification and often being closer to urban centers than the exurbs that replaced them in people's minds as "suburbs". Yeah, no. It's not that simple. In the US the liberals tend to generally be more in favor of government management of what you do on your own property because of how the existing battle lines are drawn with regard to big government/regulation vs small government/deregulation. The situation is flipped in SV where the slightly older and slightly less left leaning/liberal existing property owners want slightly more regulation (specifically zoning) than the slightly more liberal and slightly younger renters. Rights of property owners isn't really a specific part of either party's platform. Desire for government micromanagement of what you do on your own property follows wealth much more closely than any ideology. A bunch of rich conservative jerks in a suburb of NYC will agree with bunch of rich liberal jerks in a suburb of SF when it comes to using regulation to prevent people from building things they don't want to look at.

examancer 8y ago

I didn't know they sold homes. Kind of amazing. It's a surprising footnote in the tragedy of Sears. The popular narrative of an out-of-touch company unable to compete with the likes of Amazon is false. The CEO is a hedge fund manager who pillaged the company, sold off it's best assets (sometimes to himself), loaded up the company with debt, and used it to pay himself millions. http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed-sears http://prospect.org/article/it-was-vulture-capitalism-killed... There is no good reason we are losing this company which has been the backbone of American commerce for over a century.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-12/sears-has-complicated-problems https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-12/sears-has... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-18/uber-driver-may-drive-uber-ipo https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-18/uber-driv... > Over the years of propping Sears up, Lampert threw his own money into the effort, and his friends and supporters said this wasn’t only in self interest: He wanted to keep the lights on and people employed. He and ESL were willing to lend at much lower rates than others were demanding. He had Sears pay almost $2 billion into the unfunded pension plan in the past five years. > The traditional story of financial engineering is that smart hedge-fund guys structure complicated transactions that enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers. But it’s at least possible that Sears is the opposite story, the story of a smart hedge-fund guy structuring complicated transactions that blew through his fortune to keep ordinary workers employed through a financial crisis. Of course that’s not mainly a matter of disinterested kindness: If he just wanted to give his money away to workers, he wouldn’t have needed the complicated transactions. It’s mostly just a gamble that didn’t pay off: He expected that the complicated transactions would help Sears to recover and make him even richer, but they didn’t. > I genuinely don’t know what to make of Lampert and Sears. There is a version of the story in which he rapaciously extracted assets from Sears, enriching himself while starving the business, and another version in which he selflessly pumped money into the company to keep it afloat at his own expense. (“Although he has been criticized for selling Sears assets, spending on stock buybacks and collecting interest on loans to Sears, he said it is unlikely he will come out ahead financially on his long-running Sears bet,” notes the Journal.)

rmason 8y ago

There are several Sears kit homes near me. They succeeded because they offered value. I don't know about the coasts but the homes were very popular in the Midwest. So popular that close to eighty years after they were last available it is very common to mention a property is a Sears home in real estate ads. Amazon may have sped up their demise but Sears lost track of offering their customers value decades ago.

adventured 8y ago
Amazon had close to zero role in the demise of Sears. Keep in mind, Amazon had a mere $34 billion in total sales as recently as 2010. Sears was realistically already a zombie ten years ago, long before Amazon was taking a consequential bite out of retail. The rise of Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc. serving the Sears customers better - as you mentioned - is entirely what killed Sears. They ultimately lost in every category to those guys, from clothes, to electronics, to home & garden. They kept doing a lot of things, and did nothing well. Any article that claims Amazon played a role in the demise of Sears, is selling click-bait.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Arguably they did a couple of things (e.g. appliances) at least competitively. But the competition in those areas definitely increased from the big box stores, department stores in general have been in significant decline, and Sears as a whole was quite a mish-mash.
  - Finnucane 8y ago
    It used to be that Sears house brands--Kenmore, Craftsman, etc--provided good value to the customer. Not luxury or top-of-the line, but reliable stuff that worked and was worth what you paid for it. But in recent years that hasn't really been true. But then, it's not really true for just about anyone any more. Amazon copied the Sears model--sell everything to everyone--but it has also opened the floodgates of third-party sellers selling cheap crap and counterfeit goods. It's less like the old Sears and more like an old-world medieval bazaar.

rtpg 8y ago

I'd be really interested in what these "kit homes" end up arriving as to the customer. Are you shipped a bunch of wood and materials at a spot and you start building? Is there some prefab stuff going on? Very interested in knowing what the user experience is on this sort of product, so to speak

anonymous5133 8y ago
These questions are hilarious because all of us are just a bunch of young "know it alls" and all the old timers would be able to tell you all about these sears homes....too bad no one here is older on this site.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  They ship you a bag of acorns and a coupon for a chainsaw redeemable in 20 years.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  The youngest person to have conscious memory of these things would have to be 82 or 83, and wouldn't be much of a help in building them. The 95 year old adult in 1940 is even rarer still.
arjunvpaul 8y ago
They actually came in railway boxcars. Roughly 10,000 to 30,000 numbered pieces (depending on the model) with detailed instructions. You would then haul them on horse wagons or motorized wagons to the lot.
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Sears homes were common up to the 40's as well. More advanced last-mile transportation existed.
  - arjunvpaul 8y ago
    True. Wagons were the only reference I could find. I had researched this and seriously considered applying to YC with a idea for mailorder-homes that could be move-in ready in 7 days. Not DIY but DI4U (Do it 4 U) and done with mostly aircrete and steel. Its actually quite easy due to the advances in material tech and equipment. Prototyping was engineering heavy and costly and ended up back in India due to Visa issues :-( . Used the money to validate another startup. Turns out it is easier to sell ads than build houses.

wnoise 8y ago

So, does anyone else offer catalog homes? If not, why not? Have building permits gotten too complex?

newnewpdro 8y ago
Cabelas does log homes
- busterarm 8y ago
  Not anymore (at least not referenced on their site anymore). They're also at a huge markup compared to other kit log cabins.
AmVess 8y ago
The choice for a prefab dwelling is speed of construction and short time to inhabitance, and not really cost savings. Land is not plentiful and cheap like it once was. Then there are utility install and hookup costs which are quite large. Also, bare lots are not easy to find.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Yes, it’s building permits. It’s not that they’re too complex, it’s that they vary not just by state but municipally within states. The modern incarnation of a low end manufactured home is a mobile home. They’re regulated like motor vehicles on a federal level. That’s why mobile home parks are zoned out of existence, to keep the poor out, same as maximum number of unrelated occupants or minimum lot sizes with maximum square footage making building anything but a luxurious single family home illegal.
bluGill 8y ago
Sort of. With modern software design and modern manufacturing it doesn't cost anything extra to allow you to change to a different floor plan. So you can get a kit that is easier to put together than the sears home of the past (despite having to meet stronger codes), but it will be a custom home. With standard lumber sizes kit homes don't gain much though. Home Depot sells precut studs (92 5/8) that allow the standard size drywall/plywood to fit.

skookumchuck 8y ago

If you ever watch a house being built, there's a huge pile of waste lumber from cut off ends. Carpenters don't look through the pile looking for an end to reuse, they just pull a fresh board and cut off what they need. With some careful design, and pre-cut pieces, one can nearly eliminate this wastage and cut costs substantially. It's not just the boards, it's the millwork, plumbing, carpet, etc.

bluGill 8y ago
When I was in construction all ends longer than a foot (30cm) were saved and most were used. They look like the are to be discarded, because most are created the first day and just sit there. However the very last thing before we leave we look around and verify that there is backing in all the corners to attach the drywall to. This used most of the longer scraps. I don't know about the other steps you name.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  > other steps I recall reading about a spec house builder who would design the houses so that the dimensions of the rooms would fit an even multiple of the widths of carpet rolls. This nearly eliminated carpet waste, and made installation cheaper, too, as there were no seams.

walrus01 8y ago

The person who does the McMansion Hell blog has a guide to historical kit houses: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-american-dream-an-introductory http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155602312686/the-mail-order-am... Part two: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-american-dream-part-ii-the-hunt-is http://mcmansionhell.com/post/155922980391/the-mail-order-am...

bluedino 8y ago

You can buy a house kit today from places like Menard’s - my uncle purchased a garage and we assembled it over a couple weekends, I could see doing a house with much more time and skill https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-building-plans/home-plans/shop-all-home-projects/c-9919.htm https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-buildi...

tomcam 8y ago
The prices are literally unbelievable to me. What’s missing? These sure look like the spiritual successor to the Sears homes.
- nikanj 8y ago
  The labor and the land. Those are by far the most expensive components of a home.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wbl 8y ago
    And planning permission.
    - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      This truly isn't so horrible in some places. Build slightly outside a town of 3000 in the midwest and see where you get. So long as you aren't taking away farmland, you'll usually get your permission.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Land, labor, and politics. Bare land in cities doesn't exist anymore and isn't cheap. Labor is expensive due to high living standards. And politics can lower the supply of potential developable land even further, raise the cost of labor, as well as drive other differentiating concerns. Your neighbors can sue you (or compel the government or an HOA to step in) if they don't want you to build. And it's probably next to impossible to design a kit home that could meet the developmental codes of all fifty states, let alone all the municipalities. It's why comparisons between say, Hyperloop and CAHSR are so infuriating. The technology is not the reason why traditional high speed rail construction in California is so expensive and slow.

ZachWick 8y ago

The "DIY with basic tools" approach of Sears extended well beyond houses. Sears also sold motorcycles [0] that came with a thick manual that gave instructions on how to do everything from assembling the motorcycle from the shipped pieces in the crate to fully disassembling and rebuilding the engine. I've restored a handful of them before, and they are a lot of fun to work on. They are simple enough that there aren't too many hurdles to get over, and they are always a good conversation starter when you're parked somewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puch_250_SGS [1] A build log of one restoration that needs updating https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/ https://zachwick.com/sears-allstate-project-1-n/

datavirtue 8y ago

We need these more than ever. I am surprised there are no startups focused on component houses that users can design online and order. Construction of new homes skews towards large, expensive houses because labor costs to build are so high that building small homes is risky or yields less margin. We are in desperate need of affordable homes in America because of this. No one wants a manufactured trailered home either...they are absolute crap quality and very expensive (horrible value proposition).

RickJWagner 8y ago

Those are nice looking houses, I'm surprised. My wife and I are thinking about building a new house. I'm surprised how many new houses are still built from bespoke plans, and how much the plans cost. You'd think house plan 'Open Sourcing' would soon give us better houses at better prices. (I hope so, anyway.)

Insanity 8y ago

First time I heard of 'home building kits'. I don't think they are popular here in Europe (Belgium at least?) but the idea is quite neat. Then again, I don't consider myself handy enough to take on such a project anyway :)

fallingfrog 8y ago

I live in one on these houses! The construction is very solid, the insulation is thinner than you would ideally want but overall it's a nice house. The trim work is beautiful, every piece fits together nice and tight. My only complaint is that I wish they hadn't used lead paint on it.

fallingfrog 8y ago

According to the CPI inflation calculator, The Classic home from 1916 for $918 would cost $22,282 today. That's actually quite a bit less expensive than the same size houses being offered by Menard's today, by about a factor of 2. I don't have any good insight as to why the cost would actually be higher today after 100 years of productivity gains. Productivity has increased by about a factor of 5, so all other things being equal the same house should cost only $4400 today. What gives?

ip26 8y ago
Labor costs have increased faster than average, i.e. faster than the index. The houses you can buy today also have more going on behind the walls. Nobody had an R-60 attic in 1918.
colonelpopcorn 8y ago
The catalog price of the home is just for the materials, though, isn't it? It's not taking into account real estate, legal, administrative, or labor costs. Those are probably what's driving housing cost more than anything these days. I imagine you could get just the materials necessary to build the Classic home for around that much.
brixon 8y ago
Has the main material costs changed (also assuming the material is the same, but it is likely different). Stricter building codes likely change what makes up the building which will likely add costs. Did the early ones have electricity or plumbing?
- tptacek 8y ago
  Yes.
greeneggs 8y ago
I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers, but the construction industry has long had notoriously slow productivity growth. In the US, labor productivity in construction has stayed essentially flat since 1947, and decreased since its peak in 1968. "Reinventing construction: A route to higher productivity", McKinsey Global Institute (2017) (pdf, see page 23): https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital%20Projects%20and%20Infrastructure/Our%20Insights/Reinventing%20construction%20through%20a%20productivity%20revolution/MGI-Reinventing-construction-A-route-to-higher-productivity-Full-report.ashx https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Capital...

wj 8y ago

How does being a kit home affect resale value if at all?

tptacek 8y ago
I don't think it does. I think it's regarded as charming. There's a whole enthusiast community. Also: they're kit houses, but they're not like, mobile homes or pre-fab; they're just houses, like any other.
wglb 8y ago
I suspect that in some cases there may be a mild premium due to rarity.