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"350-square-foot studio, starting at $115,000" $330/square foot is not cheap. I live in a prefab home that was trailered in and placed on the basement with a
by syedkarim 6y ago
"350-square-foot studio, starting at $115,000"
$330/square foot is not cheap.
I live in a prefab home that was trailered in and placed on the basement with a crane. I visited the factory in Indiana, which was basically a lot of carpenters building homes inside of a warehouse.
https://www.rochesterhomesinc.com/tiptown https://www.rochesterhomesinc.com/tiptown
My house is 1568 square feet and looks almost exactly like the picture on the website. The price from Rochester was $120,000. From the factory, the house was almost completely finished (drywall, bathroom, cabinets, etc). Carpeting/flooring was done after the house was delivered, as well as some customizations and modifications for code (sprinkler system).
$77/square foot.
There are tons of other costs with building a house on vacant land, but those are the same regardless of how the house is constructed.
Mighty Homes has some really interesting technology, but there is definitely a premium to be paid for it. It's really, really hard to beat the economics of stick-built construction. At least right now.
- jamestimmins 6y agoHave you written about the extra costs and challenges of building a house on vacant land? I'd love to read about that experience.
- syedkarim 6y agoI have not, but only because it’s all been written about before. It’s pretty normal stuff: Bringing electricity out, digging a water well, installing a septic system, getting permits, calling the inspector. Some people have general contractors to manage all of this, but it’s perfectly reasonable to manage it all without a GC, who charges 20% on top of whatever is spent. I live on 14 acres of ag-zoned land in a very suburban area not too far from Chicago (30 minutes without traffic). Maintaining ag-status is a pain in the ass and eats up way too much of my time.
- teruakohatu 6y ago> Maintaining ag-status is a pain in the ass and eats up way too much of my time. What does this mean? Do you have to plant some crops to be considered ag?
- syedkarim 6y agoYes, that’s exactly what I do. I have a couple acres of pumpkins. A free pumpkin launch (by trebuchet) is included with each purchase.
- OldHand2018 6y agoDo you have a website or other contact method? I'd love to come visit this fall (assuming you are open). I'd also like to talk about your experience, as I'd like to have a small ag-zoned house+farm not too far from Chicago. Right now we are learning via a garden plot in the city and hope to have the skills in place within a few years.
- syedkarim 6y agoSure, my email address is in my profile. You are welcome to come out anytime, though I’m no expert in any of this.
- mc32 6y agoIs it zoned for airstrips? It could be something useful if it could act as park and fly to midway (who knows maybe this makes no sense for that area).
- syedkarim 6y agoI'm in the northwest suburbs and about 20 minutes away from O'Hare.
- malandrew 6y agoWhat’s the benefiting of maintaining the ag-zoning?
- syedkarim 6y agoI have 14 acres and my property tax bill is about $9000 a year. Virtually all of that tax is for the house and the one acre that it sits on. The rest of the acreage has an annual tax bill of about $100. The property adjacent to me is smaller and is vacant, raw land. They pay $22,000 a year in property taxes.
- basch 6y agoDoes anyone know of companies in the United States making cross laminated timber / cork hybrid prefabs? I thought these were pretty cool. https://www.pslcomp.com/projects-catalog/houses-from-corkbeam https://www.pslcomp.com/projects-catalog/houses-from-corkbea... https://www.pslcomp.com/construction-technology/glued-cork-beam https://www.pslcomp.com/construction-technology/glued-cork-b...
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoGreat point. Right now you can build in the insanely expensive San Francisco Bay Area for something between $400 and $500 per square foot. $330 is certainly not a great improvement.
- walrus01 6y agoOne of the problems I ran into when researching 'manufactured homes' is that it's difficult to distinguish from the marketing materials, the homes which are built from the cheapest possible lumber, particleboard, MDF and chipboard. Such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Homes And those which are built to a higher quality standard, indoors in a factory as you describe, but are not something that will begin falling apart after 5-10 years. Unfortunately in many parts of the US and Canada any 'manufactured home' may be prohibited by zoning laws, because cities don't want more trailer parks. And they can be totally ineligible for the same rates of mortgage as a home built on site.
- syedkarim 6y agoThe term you are looking for is modular home—a house that comes in pieces and is finished on site, though smaller modular homes can be just a single piece. The big difference between the two is modular homes are put on a foundation, whereas manufactured (previously called mobile homes) housing is built on a frame that has temporary axles. If a manufactured house is set on a foundation, it might not be considered a manufactured home anymore. The quality of the build can be good or bad for either type, though cheaper materials tend to get used in manufactured homes since cost is usually the driver on those homes.
- mywittyname 6y ago>There are tons of other costs with building a house on vacant land, but those are the same regardless of how the house is constructed. When I was building, I quickly learned that the first $50-100k I was going to spend went entirely to preparing the lot for construction.
- imtringued 6y agoThis doesn't surprise me. Metal 3d printing is more expensive than conventional manufacturing processes. It's primarily used to create shapes that are otherwise impossible. The gif in the article shows a trivial L shape that could be extruded with a simple die. Granted the die would have to be quite large but a large scale 3D printer like the one shown isn't cheap either.
- madengr 6y agoNot to mention that $115k price almost doubles to $220k once they tack on the additional costs. I wonder how much of that are fees paid to government?
- rbanffy 6y ago> "350-square-foot studio, starting at $115,000" Pricing is not always a function of the cost, but a function of what the market will take. They also need to amortize all the investment they made on R&D.