22 ms·

Dwell House – 540 sq ft prefab home that you can add to your backyard

85 points by jbredeche 4y ago

RegnisGnaw 4y ago
Holy crap! The price of this thing (not including the land) is like $400K "Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment."
- notinfuriated 4y ago
  Yeah, looks like the intended market is explicitly people who are already homeowners, in CA or WA, and have space for an ADU in the backyard, which they could use as supplemental income for renting. This is probably also why they point out the mortgage cost should be lower than rental costs in CA and WA (so you can attract renters). Although I assume 4.5% is actually more generous than you can get now. (Side note, does anyone know if installing an ADU, where you live, qualifies for a primary residence mortgage or not? You won't live in the ADU, but you live on the same land as it.) Otherwise, this is certainly too expensive, so the average person is not the market for this product. If an average person bought this, they're a bit foolish, probably better off buying existing property or trying to DIY a container home somewhere it's legal. Of course, the unit here itself looks quite nice, and I'd love to see them figure out how to lower prices and expand their market to customers who are aspiring homeowners, not people who already own and want some rental income.
  - r00fus 4y ago
    I'd be willing to spend $100k - $200k but $400k is ludicrous. Rather just convert my garage. I don't believe the ADU qualifies for primary residence mortgage unless you have a HELOC.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    I would imagine the main market is people who would take out a HELOC with their equity. But, yes, you shouldn't have problems taking out a construction loan to buy the ADU, and then after completion, refinancing as an investment property.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    I think mortgage rates are like 7% now. If someone wants to loan me money at 4.5% over 30 years, I'm all ears.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    ... the intended market is explicitly people who are already homeowners, in CA or WA, and have space for an ADU in the backyard, which they could use as supplemental income for renting. Are there really many people with the finances to buy a $400k ADU for their backyard who want to rent it? That seems unlikely. More likely these are targeted for home studios/gyms or in-law (or adult child) suites. I have nothing against ADUs, and wish more areas allowed them, but $400k is an absurd price.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Just realized, what if the market is illegal ADUs - you can quietly build a foundation perhaps, and then get this dropped in in a day and that's much less likely to be noticed by nosy passers-by and city officials than a whole construction site for months on end.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  It does seem to be a mostly turnkey price, including a (I'm guessing) slab foundation and running sewer, water, and electrical, and placing the structure, so that price is a lot less crazy. The other thing they have working against them is cost per sq ft goes up with smaller builds since you still need expensive spaces kitchen and bathroom and they can only shrink so far. In most high cost of living places where building ADUs makes the most financial sense I'd be surprised if you could do something like this start to finish for much less than 400k between permits, variances, drawings, groundwork, utilities, construction and finishes. The foundation and utils alone could be 100k+.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    This whole house https://www.newhomesource.com/plan/plan-1-tri-pointe-homes-fallbrook-ca/1903702 https://www.newhomesource.com/plan/plan-1-tri-pointe-homes-f... is only $50k more, and that includes the land I suppose. This price seems out of whack unless they're abusing some loophole (technically it's a trailer so it's DMV) but most of those are pretty tightly closed.
symlinkk 4y ago
Eat the bugs, live in the pod.
- weard_beard 4y ago
  Lizards rule!
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  $400k pods at that!
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    It seems the target of "you'll own nothing" has slipped to "you'll own a tiny, overpriced thing".
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      And carry the huge expensive loan on it...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- hberg5 4y ago
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  I’ve always found this whole line of thought strange, from both sides. I’m a capitalist to the core, but I have no problem with the ideas of renting things that are cheaper to rent than to buy, or with “eating bugs”. Alternative protein sources are pretty interesting to me, actually. Every dollar I can cut from my cost of living is a dollar I can use to buy assets - and to me, an “asset” is something that either produces income or appreciates at a rate above the cost of maintenance. If I were a collectivist, what’s the advantage of trying to force either of those things on people - or even to incentivize it? Why would I care how people feel about their food and property? I’d want to change the structure of society itself to provide more obvious value in public services than the free market provides privately. Angering people by imposing things on them - especially if that imposition is easily assigned to the things I’d want to grow, like the government - would be extremely counter-productive.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Is this a joke? Are these people really so out of touch with reality, or have they really just decided to go all-in on the top 2-3% of the market? $400k for a prefab 1 bedroom house - with the caveat that costs can go up if you don't have the perfect specifications they require. If you were to actually buy the land to fit this tiny home, you'll likely end up with a bill north of $700k-1M+ depending on your location. Either I've become poorer or the world has become far richer to afford $400k sheds.
- AyyWS 4y ago
  I spent half the prefab cost for land and a 3600 sq ft house.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    Do you mind sharing where you got the prefab? I’ve been looking for a reasonable one and it’s always good to have more information.
    - ofcrpls 4y ago
      I think the parent says they spent bought a SFH house with land for that cost
    - AyyWS 4y ago
      I bought a house last year that was originally built in the 90s. Buying and fixing a house is just way cheaper.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- duxup 4y ago
  I saw "premium materials" so I'm guessing that top part of the market is accurate.
superkuh 4y ago
There is nothing here about the foundation (usually the most costly part of a tiny house). I guess that means it is only designed to be used in temperate climates that never experience freezing temperatures and frost heave.
anm89 4y ago
Seems almost exactly like https://mantanorth.com/#choose-projects https://mantanorth.com/#choose-projects There are way better priced similar options already. There are similarly sized mobile trailers that are just a bit less fancy around 120k.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  You can get a scratch-built home to passive house standards at this price point. Aren't small prefab houses supposed to be cheaper than custom site-built houses?
- s17n 4y ago
  Manta's pricing doesn't include the costs of the foundation, electrical, and plumbing. I don't know exactly what that would run you in the HCOL areas they are targeting but I'm sure it's shockingly expensive.
codingdave 4y ago
Most homes will cost $150 per square foot to build, give or take $50 either way. This costs over $700 per square foot, and even if you have the land for it, that cost doesn't include the infrastructure to pull electricity and plumbing to the site. Or a foundation.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  It does seem to include pulling the utils and a slab foundation, so that's a lot less out to lunch. Still very high end pricing.
- Terretta 4y ago
  My last home cost its architect roughly $750/sq ft to custom build ... in 1990. There's a lot of variability in how to build. No idea how this is built; just noting.
antisthenes 4y ago
The benefits of prefab housing - cost savings/modularity/flexibility - never seem to materialize and benefit the end consumer in this space. And I've been a prefab following junkie for at least 15 years now. Any cost savings is eaten up by greedy companies through marketing to the affluent and any flexibility and modularity is eaten up by your local bureaucracy, NIMBYs and absolutely draconian building codes. Until the latter points change, I'm afraid prefab benefits will never see the light of day and we'll stick to traditional housing that costs, you know, under $500/sqft (lol)
dougmwne 4y ago
Wow! 389k for a very small trailer/prefab!? The CA housing market must have truly detached from all reality. It really looks like it’s something you would set on a cinder block foundation. A trailer about this size would go for maybe 75k. https://www.thehomesdirect.com/homes/palm-harbor-homes/casa-de-ceilo https://www.thehomesdirect.com/homes/palm-harbor-homes/casa-...
- crooked-v 4y ago
  That one looks pretty nice. Is there a trick to finding manufactured homes that don't obviously look like trailers?
  - blamazon 4y ago
    It seems one way is to post a link to HN of a provocatively expensive glossy model and wait for the links in the comments to roll in.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Start from searching "manufactured homes" and pay attention to the companies that "deliver" them without axles. Double-wides will be better looking in general. Once you find one, you can use that company to find if they're part of a "factory build housing alliance" or similar (eg https://www.factorybuiltwisconsin.com/about-us/ https://www.factorybuiltwisconsin.com/about-us/ ) and spread out from there.
  - drone 4y ago
    The official terms at play here are "modular" and "mobile" home. These are the terms that define the kind of house you're thinking of. "Mobile" homes are constructed to a separate set of parameters, and are not "permanently" mounted on the property. (Regardless of how "permanent" you make the attachment for a "mobile" home, it is still titled separately from the land.) Modular is the term of art for a factory-built home that is installed on the land and becomes titled as "real property" with the land its self, search for "modular home builders." Nearly every modular builder also builds mobile homes, so when you go to their site, look for "available as modular" or "modular" as a category or search term. FWIW, "modular" and "mobile" are actually built to two different manufacturing requirements and specification, and why "mobile" homes are often disallowed in towns and cities, amongst other reasons, is that HUD controls the specs for "mobile" while "modular" must meet local building codes.
somenameforme 4y ago
I don't think I'll ever understand upmarket stuff. A quick search yields mobile homes range from 784 to 1440 square feet, with an average retail price of $76,400 [1]. This is 540 square feet for $400k. For those unaware, mobile homes are not just the tin can on wheels stereotype. Some look no less gorgeous than this does. Except they're 2-3 times as large, and go for a fraction of the cost. [1] - https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a-mobile-home https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/how-much-...
- davidw 4y ago
  It's not legal to utilize one of those on a long term basis in most cities.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It's not about value for money, it's a Veblen good for signaling to other wealthy people. Same thing with most audiophile stuff; beautiful design and luxury materials are part of the equation, but it's more about the aesthetics of expense. Nobody needs (or really, even believes) in $1000 oxygen-free copper cables to carry audio signals from record player to amplifier to speakers, but if you've put down $25k on fancy hi-fi components, connecting them up with $50 cables feels poor.
SMAAART 4y ago
Dark patterns: No clear price, just the monthly payment, how much one (supposedly) can rent it for, and the expected profit. I find this a turn-off and a clear sign of the company's practices. Unfortunately I am the minority, I know.
- fishtoaster 4y ago
  If you scroll down a bit on the pricing page, under the section marked "Clear pricing," they do in fact list the total price.
- ebiester 4y ago
  Scrolling down, I saw $389,000. It's there, just not at the top. Does that count?
- amluto 4y ago
  Huh? The all-in price is right there.
mym1990 4y ago
You can get A-frame assembly materials for much, much less. Not exactly sure who this is marketed to, unless they are going for people looking to Airbnb these things out for absurd amounts.
alecfreudenberg 4y ago
This would be cool for like 24,000 assembled.
jakupovic 4y ago
Wow, this is just out of this world. $300K plus for a prefab house and only 540 sq/ft? I was expecting, $50k possibly up to $99k, but this is just wow. Not a customer, most definitely.
drone 4y ago
As someone who recently went through the pre-fab house market for a weekend/cabin build for a property we own, this product suffers from the same problem nearly every other pre-fab "designer" product we saw out there: the cost is substantially more than custom-built and the time to deliver is as long, or longer. I mention "designer" since there is a pre-fab market for non-designer homes, which do come pretty close to the mission of being a better value without being a "mobile home" - think Pratt, etc. Ultimately, we went stick-built on-site and paid roughly 35-50% per sq ft of what a comparable pre-fab designer home would have cost, while allowing us to focus costs on the aspects of the house that mattered most to us, while going budget where it didn't matter as much, and still having full control over the process. FWIW, for less than the price of this unit alone, we had a full custom 1,200 sqft house 3BR/2Bth, metal garage, 800' driveway, well, septic, and 1-acre pond built. I can see if you're willing to pay the premium on the design aesthetics, but designer modular houses have a long way to go to being a more affordable option for most buyers.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  How did you go about finding someone to handle the custom build if I may ask?
  - baldfat 4y ago
    You contact a contractor
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      I’m a bit mystified at the reaction to this comment. Describe what you want to a drafts person, get the regulatory stuff done (via the draft person or architect), hit the Google machine and talk to contractors. It’s painful when you have no idea what you are doing, which is why the all inclusive price is attractive (and high).
  - drone 4y ago
    You need to work with a builder, since we were working in a somewhat "rural" area, we couldn't work with any of our local builders (in the city where we live), without going way out of budget due to travel expenses, etc. As to how we found the builder? Google was of little help, and nearly everyone with a website was saying things like "we start at $250/ft for a barndo" -- basically, insane pricing. What we ultimately did: I went to local stores, talked to neighbors, and started asking them for references for different parts of the process - e.g.: well building, dirt work, etc. I aligned on the most common people they referred, then asked each of them the same two questions: who do you like working with as a GC, and who built your house? Everyone aligned on a single person, so I called him and the rest is history.
walrus01 4y ago
Writing as somebody who grew up around architects and engineers this thing is not worth more than 80k. The price at 400k is an insult to peoples' intelligence. Stick building a 550 sq ft rectangular shaped boxy house with a very boring and standard roof truss design on concrete sonotube piles, screw pilings, footings or a traditional concrete slab foundation is not rocket science. Your various other costs in rural areas will come in with things like code compliant underground electrical trenching to extend service to its breaker panel, septic tank/connection, water lines, etc.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You can build a post frame barn for $50k including usable foundation, so you have $350k left for enhancements to that. Now some of that stuff listed can be quite pricy, septic systems can run upwards of $50k but this thing is designed to be stuck in a backyard.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I saw a video of a similar tiny home built by a company called Boxabl that apparently Elon Musk uses. That thing is like $50k.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    the boxabl is not that much different from some of the Turkish built container based housing that's been developed for use at US military bases in the middle east and central asia. And used for things like "man camp" mining and oil/gas camps in northern canada. If you were to go to the US base in Qatar you'd see housing not radically different from it. Designed to ship by standard 20/40 ft ocean cargo container. https://www.boxabl.com/ https://www.boxabl.com/ I am skeptical that it costs 50k however, the thing as shown in the front page website promo that occupies an approximate 20'x20 area surely costs more than that.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The thing is that the military housing is designed to be moved multiple times, for a house there's really no need to make it fancy and expandable like that; if you can save some money by shipping it in a box that needs some basic assembly you should probably go that way, even though it looks cool to watch it build itself.
whalesalad 4y ago
389k is kind of insane for something this small. My plan is to build something myself but I’m always eager to see what is being put out there by bigger players. This just doesn’t make a lot of financial sense to me.
- bombcar 4y ago
  One way to look at that price is that a skilled craftsman may make $150k a year say (ok let's give him $200k) and that still leaves $189k and a whole damn year to build something that size.
smm11 4y ago
I can buy a nice flip house in Kansas City for under $80K, and it's already connected to electrical and city utilities. No site prep. I can go even cheaper if I could live in 650 square feet, but I guess that's addressed by tiny houses. Wait a second ...
- s17n 4y ago
  - smm11 4y ago
    I know. I'm not a rich prick with my head up my ass.
cosmodisk 4y ago
Am I crazy or the prefab with ikea vibes costs more than $300k? What's inside the walls? Gold? Here's a very interesting read on how things were almost a century ago. Surely we can do better than $300K prefab nowadays.. https://thecraftsmanblog.com/the-history-of-sears-kit-homes/ https://thecraftsmanblog.com/the-history-of-sears-kit-homes/
FpUser 4y ago
They're out of their mind with the prices. Dwell House - please GFY.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Any site that wants your email address to find out what price it is is a data harvesting op. I should have guessed from the Dwell name that it would be overpriced aspiration porn for lifestyle tourists.
- float4 4y ago
  Click "cost" in the nav bar.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
The average price of a brand new double-wide mobile home, at its most expensive, was $170K in December 2021 (they usually run about $110K). Throw a bougie wrap around it, gut the interior, and fill it with expensive crap, and you're still at half the price of this small single-wide.
braingenious 4y ago
Nearly $400k for 540 square feet? That’s a LOT. I love ideas like this, but this one isn’t in the same universe as something I would consider for practical purposes.
j3th9n 4y ago
Haha, almost $400k for a tiny house.
preommr 4y ago
When I saw the pictures I thought "This looks expensive, it's probably going to be 50-75k". Get outta here with 400k.
telecuda 4y ago
Would this be classified as a "tiny home" by most jurisdictions? Not at this price-point, but we've been looking for prefab housing related to a transitional housing grant, where many cities in Florida do not allow tiny homes.
- walrus01 4y ago
  many "tiny homes" are actually legally RV trailers and registered as vehicles. They're built on a DOT compliant width trailer platform. this is not a tiny home it's in the market for "ADU".
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Depends on jurisdiction. Some places explicitly allow ADUs, but I don't know what building specs they require. Many pre-fab tiny-homes are just mobile homes with trendy marketing material. This is where a lot of the issues come from with tiny homes - mobile homes are frequently banned in nicer suburban/urban areas. They're built to different codes than build-in-place homes as well (not a bad thing, necessarily, just different code written by a different organization).
ab_testing 4y ago
Seriously 390K for a 540 sq. ft. house and you expect to own the land as well. Wow
jdc0589 4y ago
this is hilarious. What idiot is paying $400,000 for a 540 sqft prefab house.
- googlryas 4y ago
  (I think) Their ideal buyer is someone who owns a home in a high CoL area(purchased when housing was much cheaper), who doesn't have a major other source of income, and who wants to plop an ADU on their property and earn some rental income without inviting roommates into their house. In that sense, they want you to think of the cashflow opportunities, not the overall cost. You're not supposed to think this is $400k, you're supposed to think "I'll earn $1000/mo from renters if I buy this".
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    You just described a retiree in CA. Except, they don't have income and are probably cash-strapped. And they're old. Unless they have an existing HELOC, they aren't going to be able to finance a $400k+ ADU ($400k for the prefab unit, unclear if that exclusive of installation/foundation/etc).
  - Ancapistani 4y ago
    If you’re savvy enough to think in terms of cashflow, you’re savvy enough to realize that you’d be earning $2000/mo if you went with literally the first contractor that called you back.
bigtones 4y ago
For comparison: Bigger prefab house, better looks, more features, half the price @ $210k : https://mantanorth.com/northamerica/project/slope/ https://mantanorth.com/northamerica/project/slope/
jll29 4y ago
And for geeks who don't have $389k or who may just need a peaceful home office in the garden: https://greenhomescout.de/property/office-pod/ https://greenhomescout.de/property/office-pod/ https://platform5architects.com/project/shoffice https://platform5architects.com/project/shoffice https://www.greenretreats.co.uk/garden-pods/ https://www.greenretreats.co.uk/garden-pods/
mchusma 4y ago
I looked at getting a nice small office for my backyard. I looked at prefabs, thinking they should have been the way to go. They were all super expensive, products. I'm a pretty well off guy, but I don't really want to pay >$200k for an office. I ended up buying a 6x9 shed (https://cedarshed.com/products/cedar-studio-shed https://cedarshed.com/products/cedar-studio-shed) for about $5k delivered. I then spent about $9k to have it assembled, outfitted with drywall, filled with noise cancelling insulation, electricity to the unit, lights, plugs, blinds, laminate flooring, and painted. Most of the work was done by 2 handyman for about $5k. Electrical was about $1k. Materials were about $1k. AC including installation was about $1.5k. I helped out, and it was definitely some work on my part, but in the end it turned out great and was all in about $14k. All this was done in the last year. Now this isn't directly comparable to their product (no bathroom/kitchen and it is about 10% the size) but I am tired of all these super luxury prefab homes, and I want to see costs come down for construction.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The usual secret is to disconnect the exterior protection of the building from the interior; hence the resent obsession with "barndominiums" which are just converted pole-barns. If you can throw foundation, walls and roof with insulation for $x, you can take your time on the insides which are now entirely protected.
danans 4y ago
I love the designs that Dwell highlights, but the price ($720/sqft) is eye watering. It's the opposite of the spirit of the pretty nice and low cost furniture they did with Target some years ago: https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/10/modern-by-dwell https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/10/modern-by-dwell For reference, I completed a custom full house rebuild about a year ago in the insanely pricey Bay Area construction market, built to an equivalent high-end design and construction quality as this, and construction costs were still $450/sqft. I brought the $ cost down even a bit further with sweat equity.
- bombcar 4y ago
  To be fair to them, $ per sq ft is not the best comparison unless you factor for square feet - a 560 sf ft house is much more "dense" than a 2,000 sq ft house, and much of the extra sq footage is pretty cheap. For example, expanding a living room ten feet deeper to add 100 sq ft is the cost of additional foundation, roofing, and flooring and a bit of electrical/heat/cooling load; the cost of an additional bathroom might be much more for the same square footage.
  - danans 4y ago
    > a 560 sf ft house is much more "dense" than a 2,000 sq ft house I agree with you totally on the principle behind that, but a very higher end tiny house is still usually only $300/sf. I think that this ADU is priced for someone looking for nearly instant gratification with high-end-design and materials for a second dwelling on land they already own - which is what the marketing photos depict - and not for someone in the market for a primary residence. The customer for this isn't like most of us who seek to value-maximize their housing, but rather someone for whom the cost of this thing is pretty marginal compared to their overall wealth. That is a very niche market, definitely far narrower than Dwell's subscriber base. Furthermore, at what is likely at least 50% profit margin on these, they don't have to sell many to do quite well, as long as they can deliver a very high quality product on time with minimal hassle to their well heeled customers.
    - bombcar 4y ago
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
I understand how marketing works, but it still drives me nuts that everyone knows what the main questions will be, but they hide it anyway. Main page: picture of a pretty house. First question: how much does it cost? Scroll, scroll, scroll, lots of pictures, here's a floor plan, it works as a pool house too, premium materials, click here to reserve one, oh, hey, a link about pricing. Pricing page: it's a great investment! Scroll, scroll...just $1,577 a month! Get out magnifying glass, read fine print. 4.5% interest rate on a 30 year term. Okay, let's get out a calculator, what was the interest rate formula again? Gotta solve for P...about $400,000. Why do we have to play these stupid games? I don't care that it drives up click-through, you need to tell me how much it costs.
- illegalsmile 4y ago
  Right? I wanted the price upfront within the first few seconds of browsing the page. When I didn't see it and had to go to another page I knew it was going to be stupid. The title of the cost page is "A great investment" which it most definitely is not. I can have a local builder do two of these in my backyard for well under that price. I don't live in a HCOL but MCOL? in Colorado but for $225k including permits you can build a 1300sqft livable space (3/2), two story with two car garage. Now it's not using high end fixtures or flooring but working with the local builder you have an allowance for each room and if you want to stay within budget you can or you can go over or under. What's the advantage of this thing? Ease of use and quick delivery? No disruption from construction for a few months? $720/sqft is INSANE. Pay bay area prices anywhere in the US!
pacetherace 4y ago
I have been able to find 2000 sq ft homes for around $500K in Modesto, CA. Even if you assume you are getting land for free, I think it is insane that a 540 sq ft home would cost almost same as a 2000 sq ft home. Even then if you assume a 50% markup due to difference HCOL and better rates big builders would get, I think we are still talking about construction rate of about $375/sqft. So a 550-600 sq ft homes would cost around $225K. But as an anecdote I did an additions project a few years ago and got quotes ranging from $100K to $300K. And surprising to me, the $300K quote guy was very busy. So I guess there are people who sort by "High to Low" and go with the highest bid.
- bombcar 4y ago
  My contractor friend told me that his rule of thumb is keep increasing the price quotes until he has steady work and a moderate backlog. So your $300k guy may have been telling you "I'll do it but don't want to" or he may have been quoting out a higher-end job; there are many, many variables.
konfusinomicon 4y ago
are the appliances and fixtures 24k gold? you gotta wonder what their cost to build one is.
cobrabyte 4y ago
$189,000? Maybe. $389,000? You're out of your minds.
jbm 4y ago
> $389,000 I understand many of the visitors to this fine site are rich software devs in SV, but from my perspective, I paid about this much USD to buy a house in Calgary. I had to replace the roofing for about 10k, and the water tank, but there are houses here that are more than 100 years old. More than 400k CAD for a depreciating asset makes no sense.
jointpdf 4y ago
To echo every other comment here: $400K+ / 540sqft = $740/sqft, which is beyond astronomical. That’s on par with the most expensive neighborhoods in the most expensive cities in the US (e.g. Georgetown, DC). But if you like the design, Den Outdoors sells similar house plans: https://denoutdoors.com/collections/small-modern-farmhouse-plans https://denoutdoors.com/collections/small-modern-farmhouse-p...
Justsignedup 4y ago
If this was along the lines of buying a prefab for 50k, hell yeah, amazing. I'd drop one in a large yard for my kid to have her own apartment, or rent it out for cheap given the area. At 400k... Man that's a lot. Can't justify it for any reason unless I have cash to burn.
numair 4y ago
Based on my experiences with some of the board members of Dwell, I'm not at all surprised that they've ripped off someone else's idea and presented it as their own innovation. But really, I can't believe they're trying to charge people more than double the cost of the MUJI design they've ripped off, which is also double the square footage: https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/ https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/ Glad to see that the commenters here on HN recognize this as a totally obnoxious concept.
Ancapistani 4y ago
Those are ridiculously expensive. > MONTHLY DWELL HOUSE PAYMENT > $1,577 > Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment … my mortgage on 5-bedroom, ~1.8K sq ft home on a half acre lot in a small town in the South is <$825. I understand property values vary widely - that’s why I live where I do - but this is still ridiculous. Consider also that to buy this, you already have to have the land to put it on. The comparison to rentals includes the cost of the property, upkeep, and overhead amortized into it. It’s not a fair comparison. If you already have land suitable for this, why not just build a small house? The average cost per sq ft in the US is around $100-$150 for new construction. This thing is 532 sq ft; to be competitive with traditional construction it would need to be priced at <$80k…
vladsanchez 4y ago
WTF!? $389k is a whopping $720 sf! I wish them D(well). No thanks!
turtlebits 4y ago
Just buy a 16’x34’ Tuff shed for $24k, 6k for a slab, then spend another 30k to finish it.
Danborg 4y ago
The price is absurdly high.
opportune 4y ago
Finally, the underserved market of Atherton/Palo Alto SFH owners looking to add an ADU for their live-in nanny or young adult child have an off the shelf solution, inspired by the LinkedIn Sunnyvale campus.
jdkee 4y ago
$720/sq. ft. on land you already own. What are they thinking?
wink 4y ago
> The Dwell House is a 540-square-foot, one-bedroom ADU that fits in most backyards The only backyard I ever knew was around that size, so that's one way to put it. Even if it takes up 100%, it kinda fits.
SilverBirch 4y ago
I know everyone is going off on the price, but I think what's more interesting is that there is so little cutting edge about this design. The architecture of this design is just... dull. They say they've championed design. Well this looks like 20 years ago they made 1 design and they haven't changed it since. This Scandi minimalism was all the rage... in the 2000s. I remember the first time I walked around Ikea too, but that's not cutting edge design in the 2020s.
kabuks 4y ago
Shameless plug: our modular homes are half the price and we deliver and install within 30 days from payment in California. Also. Not a box. zomes.com
caadubldr 4y ago
I've been a contractor for 30 years and am the largest stick built ADU builder in california. They're pricing is ridiculous.

85 points by jbredeche 4y ago

Holy crap! The price of this thing (not including the land) is like $400K "Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment."

notinfuriated 4y ago
Yeah, looks like the intended market is explicitly people who are already homeowners, in CA or WA, and have space for an ADU in the backyard, which they could use as supplemental income for renting. This is probably also why they point out the mortgage cost should be lower than rental costs in CA and WA (so you can attract renters). Although I assume 4.5% is actually more generous than you can get now. (Side note, does anyone know if installing an ADU, where you live, qualifies for a primary residence mortgage or not? You won't live in the ADU, but you live on the same land as it.) Otherwise, this is certainly too expensive, so the average person is not the market for this product. If an average person bought this, they're a bit foolish, probably better off buying existing property or trying to DIY a container home somewhere it's legal. Of course, the unit here itself looks quite nice, and I'd love to see them figure out how to lower prices and expand their market to customers who are aspiring homeowners, not people who already own and want some rental income.
- r00fus 4y ago
  I'd be willing to spend $100k - $200k but $400k is ludicrous. Rather just convert my garage. I don't believe the ADU qualifies for primary residence mortgage unless you have a HELOC.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  I would imagine the main market is people who would take out a HELOC with their equity. But, yes, you shouldn't have problems taking out a construction loan to buy the ADU, and then after completion, refinancing as an investment property.
- jrockway 4y ago
  I think mortgage rates are like 7% now. If someone wants to loan me money at 4.5% over 30 years, I'm all ears.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  ... the intended market is explicitly people who are already homeowners, in CA or WA, and have space for an ADU in the backyard, which they could use as supplemental income for renting. Are there really many people with the finances to buy a $400k ADU for their backyard who want to rent it? That seems unlikely. More likely these are targeted for home studios/gyms or in-law (or adult child) suites. I have nothing against ADUs, and wish more areas allowed them, but $400k is an absurd price.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Just realized, what if the market is illegal ADUs - you can quietly build a foundation perhaps, and then get this dropped in in a day and that's much less likely to be noticed by nosy passers-by and city officials than a whole construction site for months on end.
theluketaylor 4y ago
It does seem to be a mostly turnkey price, including a (I'm guessing) slab foundation and running sewer, water, and electrical, and placing the structure, so that price is a lot less crazy. The other thing they have working against them is cost per sq ft goes up with smaller builds since you still need expensive spaces kitchen and bathroom and they can only shrink so far. In most high cost of living places where building ADUs makes the most financial sense I'd be surprised if you could do something like this start to finish for much less than 400k between permits, variances, drawings, groundwork, utilities, construction and finishes. The foundation and utils alone could be 100k+.
- bombcar 4y ago
  This whole house https://www.newhomesource.com/plan/plan-1-tri-pointe-homes-fallbrook-ca/1903702 https://www.newhomesource.com/plan/plan-1-tri-pointe-homes-f... is only $50k more, and that includes the land I suppose. This price seems out of whack unless they're abusing some loophole (technically it's a trailer so it's DMV) but most of those are pretty tightly closed.

symlinkk 4y ago

Eat the bugs, live in the pod.

weard_beard 4y ago
Lizards rule!
spaceman_2020 4y ago
$400k pods at that!
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  It seems the target of "you'll own nothing" has slipped to "you'll own a tiny, overpriced thing".
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    And carry the huge expensive loan on it...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hberg5 4y ago
Ancapistani 4y ago
I’ve always found this whole line of thought strange, from both sides. I’m a capitalist to the core, but I have no problem with the ideas of renting things that are cheaper to rent than to buy, or with “eating bugs”. Alternative protein sources are pretty interesting to me, actually. Every dollar I can cut from my cost of living is a dollar I can use to buy assets - and to me, an “asset” is something that either produces income or appreciates at a rate above the cost of maintenance. If I were a collectivist, what’s the advantage of trying to force either of those things on people - or even to incentivize it? Why would I care how people feel about their food and property? I’d want to change the structure of society itself to provide more obvious value in public services than the free market provides privately. Angering people by imposing things on them - especially if that imposition is easily assigned to the things I’d want to grow, like the government - would be extremely counter-productive.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Is this a joke? Are these people really so out of touch with reality, or have they really just decided to go all-in on the top 2-3% of the market? $400k for a prefab 1 bedroom house - with the caveat that costs can go up if you don't have the perfect specifications they require. If you were to actually buy the land to fit this tiny home, you'll likely end up with a bill north of $700k-1M+ depending on your location. Either I've become poorer or the world has become far richer to afford $400k sheds.

AyyWS 4y ago
I spent half the prefab cost for land and a 3600 sq ft house.
- braingenious 4y ago
  Do you mind sharing where you got the prefab? I’ve been looking for a reasonable one and it’s always good to have more information.
  - ofcrpls 4y ago
    I think the parent says they spent bought a SFH house with land for that cost
  - AyyWS 4y ago
    I bought a house last year that was originally built in the 90s. Buying and fixing a house is just way cheaper.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
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duxup 4y ago
I saw "premium materials" so I'm guessing that top part of the market is accurate.

superkuh 4y ago

There is nothing here about the foundation (usually the most costly part of a tiny house). I guess that means it is only designed to be used in temperate climates that never experience freezing temperatures and frost heave.

anm89 4y ago

Seems almost exactly like https://mantanorth.com/#choose-projects https://mantanorth.com/#choose-projects There are way better priced similar options already. There are similarly sized mobile trailers that are just a bit less fancy around 120k.

jeffbee 4y ago
You can get a scratch-built home to passive house standards at this price point. Aren't small prefab houses supposed to be cheaper than custom site-built houses?
s17n 4y ago
Manta's pricing doesn't include the costs of the foundation, electrical, and plumbing. I don't know exactly what that would run you in the HCOL areas they are targeting but I'm sure it's shockingly expensive.

codingdave 4y ago

Most homes will cost $150 per square foot to build, give or take $50 either way. This costs over $700 per square foot, and even if you have the land for it, that cost doesn't include the infrastructure to pull electricity and plumbing to the site. Or a foundation.

theluketaylor 4y ago
It does seem to include pulling the utils and a slab foundation, so that's a lot less out to lunch. Still very high end pricing.
Terretta 4y ago
My last home cost its architect roughly $750/sq ft to custom build ... in 1990. There's a lot of variability in how to build. No idea how this is built; just noting.

antisthenes 4y ago

The benefits of prefab housing - cost savings/modularity/flexibility - never seem to materialize and benefit the end consumer in this space. And I've been a prefab following junkie for at least 15 years now. Any cost savings is eaten up by greedy companies through marketing to the affluent and any flexibility and modularity is eaten up by your local bureaucracy, NIMBYs and absolutely draconian building codes. Until the latter points change, I'm afraid prefab benefits will never see the light of day and we'll stick to traditional housing that costs, you know, under $500/sqft (lol)

dougmwne 4y ago

Wow! 389k for a very small trailer/prefab!? The CA housing market must have truly detached from all reality. It really looks like it’s something you would set on a cinder block foundation. A trailer about this size would go for maybe 75k. https://www.thehomesdirect.com/homes/palm-harbor-homes/casa-de-ceilo https://www.thehomesdirect.com/homes/palm-harbor-homes/casa-...

crooked-v 4y ago
That one looks pretty nice. Is there a trick to finding manufactured homes that don't obviously look like trailers?
- blamazon 4y ago
  It seems one way is to post a link to HN of a provocatively expensive glossy model and wait for the links in the comments to roll in.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Start from searching "manufactured homes" and pay attention to the companies that "deliver" them without axles. Double-wides will be better looking in general. Once you find one, you can use that company to find if they're part of a "factory build housing alliance" or similar (eg https://www.factorybuiltwisconsin.com/about-us/ https://www.factorybuiltwisconsin.com/about-us/ ) and spread out from there.
- drone 4y ago
  The official terms at play here are "modular" and "mobile" home. These are the terms that define the kind of house you're thinking of. "Mobile" homes are constructed to a separate set of parameters, and are not "permanently" mounted on the property. (Regardless of how "permanent" you make the attachment for a "mobile" home, it is still titled separately from the land.) Modular is the term of art for a factory-built home that is installed on the land and becomes titled as "real property" with the land its self, search for "modular home builders." Nearly every modular builder also builds mobile homes, so when you go to their site, look for "available as modular" or "modular" as a category or search term. FWIW, "modular" and "mobile" are actually built to two different manufacturing requirements and specification, and why "mobile" homes are often disallowed in towns and cities, amongst other reasons, is that HUD controls the specs for "mobile" while "modular" must meet local building codes.

somenameforme 4y ago

I don't think I'll ever understand upmarket stuff. A quick search yields mobile homes range from 784 to 1440 square feet, with an average retail price of $76,400 [1]. This is 540 square feet for $400k. For those unaware, mobile homes are not just the tin can on wheels stereotype. Some look no less gorgeous than this does. Except they're 2-3 times as large, and go for a fraction of the cost. [1] - https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a-mobile-home https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/how-much-...

davidw 4y ago
It's not legal to utilize one of those on a long term basis in most cities.
anigbrowl 4y ago
It's not about value for money, it's a Veblen good for signaling to other wealthy people. Same thing with most audiophile stuff; beautiful design and luxury materials are part of the equation, but it's more about the aesthetics of expense. Nobody needs (or really, even believes) in $1000 oxygen-free copper cables to carry audio signals from record player to amplifier to speakers, but if you've put down $25k on fancy hi-fi components, connecting them up with $50 cables feels poor.

SMAAART 4y ago

Dark patterns: No clear price, just the monthly payment, how much one (supposedly) can rent it for, and the expected profit. I find this a turn-off and a clear sign of the company's practices. Unfortunately I am the minority, I know.

fishtoaster 4y ago
If you scroll down a bit on the pricing page, under the section marked "Clear pricing," they do in fact list the total price.
ebiester 4y ago
Scrolling down, I saw $389,000. It's there, just not at the top. Does that count?
amluto 4y ago
Huh? The all-in price is right there.

mym1990 4y ago

You can get A-frame assembly materials for much, much less. Not exactly sure who this is marketed to, unless they are going for people looking to Airbnb these things out for absurd amounts.

alecfreudenberg 4y ago

This would be cool for like 24,000 assembled.

jakupovic 4y ago

Wow, this is just out of this world. $300K plus for a prefab house and only 540 sq/ft? I was expecting, $50k possibly up to $99k, but this is just wow. Not a customer, most definitely.

drone 4y ago

As someone who recently went through the pre-fab house market for a weekend/cabin build for a property we own, this product suffers from the same problem nearly every other pre-fab "designer" product we saw out there: the cost is substantially more than custom-built and the time to deliver is as long, or longer. I mention "designer" since there is a pre-fab market for non-designer homes, which do come pretty close to the mission of being a better value without being a "mobile home" - think Pratt, etc. Ultimately, we went stick-built on-site and paid roughly 35-50% per sq ft of what a comparable pre-fab designer home would have cost, while allowing us to focus costs on the aspects of the house that mattered most to us, while going budget where it didn't matter as much, and still having full control over the process. FWIW, for less than the price of this unit alone, we had a full custom 1,200 sqft house 3BR/2Bth, metal garage, 800' driveway, well, septic, and 1-acre pond built. I can see if you're willing to pay the premium on the design aesthetics, but designer modular houses have a long way to go to being a more affordable option for most buyers.

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
How did you go about finding someone to handle the custom build if I may ask?
- baldfat 4y ago
  You contact a contractor
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    I’m a bit mystified at the reaction to this comment. Describe what you want to a drafts person, get the regulatory stuff done (via the draft person or architect), hit the Google machine and talk to contractors. It’s painful when you have no idea what you are doing, which is why the all inclusive price is attractive (and high).
- drone 4y ago
  You need to work with a builder, since we were working in a somewhat "rural" area, we couldn't work with any of our local builders (in the city where we live), without going way out of budget due to travel expenses, etc. As to how we found the builder? Google was of little help, and nearly everyone with a website was saying things like "we start at $250/ft for a barndo" -- basically, insane pricing. What we ultimately did: I went to local stores, talked to neighbors, and started asking them for references for different parts of the process - e.g.: well building, dirt work, etc. I aligned on the most common people they referred, then asked each of them the same two questions: who do you like working with as a GC, and who built your house? Everyone aligned on a single person, so I called him and the rest is history.

walrus01 4y ago

Writing as somebody who grew up around architects and engineers this thing is not worth more than 80k. The price at 400k is an insult to peoples' intelligence. Stick building a 550 sq ft rectangular shaped boxy house with a very boring and standard roof truss design on concrete sonotube piles, screw pilings, footings or a traditional concrete slab foundation is not rocket science. Your various other costs in rural areas will come in with things like code compliant underground electrical trenching to extend service to its breaker panel, septic tank/connection, water lines, etc.

bombcar 4y ago
You can build a post frame barn for $50k including usable foundation, so you have $350k left for enhancements to that. Now some of that stuff listed can be quite pricy, septic systems can run upwards of $50k but this thing is designed to be stuck in a backyard.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I saw a video of a similar tiny home built by a company called Boxabl that apparently Elon Musk uses. That thing is like $50k.
- walrus01 4y ago
  the boxabl is not that much different from some of the Turkish built container based housing that's been developed for use at US military bases in the middle east and central asia. And used for things like "man camp" mining and oil/gas camps in northern canada. If you were to go to the US base in Qatar you'd see housing not radically different from it. Designed to ship by standard 20/40 ft ocean cargo container. https://www.boxabl.com/ https://www.boxabl.com/ I am skeptical that it costs 50k however, the thing as shown in the front page website promo that occupies an approximate 20'x20 area surely costs more than that.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The thing is that the military housing is designed to be moved multiple times, for a house there's really no need to make it fancy and expandable like that; if you can save some money by shipping it in a box that needs some basic assembly you should probably go that way, even though it looks cool to watch it build itself.

whalesalad 4y ago

389k is kind of insane for something this small. My plan is to build something myself but I’m always eager to see what is being put out there by bigger players. This just doesn’t make a lot of financial sense to me.

bombcar 4y ago
One way to look at that price is that a skilled craftsman may make $150k a year say (ok let's give him $200k) and that still leaves $189k and a whole damn year to build something that size.

smm11 4y ago

I can buy a nice flip house in Kansas City for under $80K, and it's already connected to electrical and city utilities. No site prep. I can go even cheaper if I could live in 650 square feet, but I guess that's addressed by tiny houses. Wait a second ...

s17n 4y ago
- smm11 4y ago
  I know. I'm not a rich prick with my head up my ass.

cosmodisk 4y ago

Am I crazy or the prefab with ikea vibes costs more than $300k? What's inside the walls? Gold? Here's a very interesting read on how things were almost a century ago. Surely we can do better than $300K prefab nowadays.. https://thecraftsmanblog.com/the-history-of-sears-kit-homes/ https://thecraftsmanblog.com/the-history-of-sears-kit-homes/

FpUser 4y ago

They're out of their mind with the prices. Dwell House - please GFY.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Any site that wants your email address to find out what price it is is a data harvesting op. I should have guessed from the Dwell name that it would be overpriced aspiration porn for lifestyle tourists.

float4 4y ago
Click "cost" in the nav bar.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

The average price of a brand new double-wide mobile home, at its most expensive, was $170K in December 2021 (they usually run about $110K). Throw a bougie wrap around it, gut the interior, and fill it with expensive crap, and you're still at half the price of this small single-wide.

braingenious 4y ago

Nearly $400k for 540 square feet? That’s a LOT. I love ideas like this, but this one isn’t in the same universe as something I would consider for practical purposes.

j3th9n 4y ago

Haha, almost $400k for a tiny house.

preommr 4y ago

When I saw the pictures I thought "This looks expensive, it's probably going to be 50-75k". Get outta here with 400k.

telecuda 4y ago

Would this be classified as a "tiny home" by most jurisdictions? Not at this price-point, but we've been looking for prefab housing related to a transitional housing grant, where many cities in Florida do not allow tiny homes.

walrus01 4y ago
many "tiny homes" are actually legally RV trailers and registered as vehicles. They're built on a DOT compliant width trailer platform. this is not a tiny home it's in the market for "ADU".
alistairSH 4y ago
Depends on jurisdiction. Some places explicitly allow ADUs, but I don't know what building specs they require. Many pre-fab tiny-homes are just mobile homes with trendy marketing material. This is where a lot of the issues come from with tiny homes - mobile homes are frequently banned in nicer suburban/urban areas. They're built to different codes than build-in-place homes as well (not a bad thing, necessarily, just different code written by a different organization).

ab_testing 4y ago

Seriously 390K for a 540 sq. ft. house and you expect to own the land as well. Wow

jdc0589 4y ago

this is hilarious. What idiot is paying $400,000 for a 540 sqft prefab house.

googlryas 4y ago
(I think) Their ideal buyer is someone who owns a home in a high CoL area(purchased when housing was much cheaper), who doesn't have a major other source of income, and who wants to plop an ADU on their property and earn some rental income without inviting roommates into their house. In that sense, they want you to think of the cashflow opportunities, not the overall cost. You're not supposed to think this is $400k, you're supposed to think "I'll earn $1000/mo from renters if I buy this".
- alistairSH 4y ago
  You just described a retiree in CA. Except, they don't have income and are probably cash-strapped. And they're old. Unless they have an existing HELOC, they aren't going to be able to finance a $400k+ ADU ($400k for the prefab unit, unclear if that exclusive of installation/foundation/etc).
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  If you’re savvy enough to think in terms of cashflow, you’re savvy enough to realize that you’d be earning $2000/mo if you went with literally the first contractor that called you back.

bigtones 4y ago

For comparison: Bigger prefab house, better looks, more features, half the price @ $210k : https://mantanorth.com/northamerica/project/slope/ https://mantanorth.com/northamerica/project/slope/

jll29 4y ago

And for geeks who don't have $389k or who may just need a peaceful home office in the garden: https://greenhomescout.de/property/office-pod/ https://greenhomescout.de/property/office-pod/ https://platform5architects.com/project/shoffice https://platform5architects.com/project/shoffice https://www.greenretreats.co.uk/garden-pods/ https://www.greenretreats.co.uk/garden-pods/

mchusma 4y ago

I looked at getting a nice small office for my backyard. I looked at prefabs, thinking they should have been the way to go. They were all super expensive, products. I'm a pretty well off guy, but I don't really want to pay >$200k for an office. I ended up buying a 6x9 shed (https://cedarshed.com/products/cedar-studio-shed https://cedarshed.com/products/cedar-studio-shed) for about $5k delivered. I then spent about $9k to have it assembled, outfitted with drywall, filled with noise cancelling insulation, electricity to the unit, lights, plugs, blinds, laminate flooring, and painted. Most of the work was done by 2 handyman for about $5k. Electrical was about $1k. Materials were about $1k. AC including installation was about $1.5k. I helped out, and it was definitely some work on my part, but in the end it turned out great and was all in about $14k. All this was done in the last year. Now this isn't directly comparable to their product (no bathroom/kitchen and it is about 10% the size) but I am tired of all these super luxury prefab homes, and I want to see costs come down for construction.

bombcar 4y ago
The usual secret is to disconnect the exterior protection of the building from the interior; hence the resent obsession with "barndominiums" which are just converted pole-barns. If you can throw foundation, walls and roof with insulation for $x, you can take your time on the insides which are now entirely protected.

danans 4y ago

I love the designs that Dwell highlights, but the price ($720/sqft) is eye watering. It's the opposite of the spirit of the pretty nice and low cost furniture they did with Target some years ago: https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/10/modern-by-dwell https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/10/modern-by-dwell For reference, I completed a custom full house rebuild about a year ago in the insanely pricey Bay Area construction market, built to an equivalent high-end design and construction quality as this, and construction costs were still $450/sqft. I brought the $ cost down even a bit further with sweat equity.

bombcar 4y ago
To be fair to them, $ per sq ft is not the best comparison unless you factor for square feet - a 560 sf ft house is much more "dense" than a 2,000 sq ft house, and much of the extra sq footage is pretty cheap. For example, expanding a living room ten feet deeper to add 100 sq ft is the cost of additional foundation, roofing, and flooring and a bit of electrical/heat/cooling load; the cost of an additional bathroom might be much more for the same square footage.
- danans 4y ago
  > a 560 sf ft house is much more "dense" than a 2,000 sq ft house I agree with you totally on the principle behind that, but a very higher end tiny house is still usually only $300/sf. I think that this ADU is priced for someone looking for nearly instant gratification with high-end-design and materials for a second dwelling on land they already own - which is what the marketing photos depict - and not for someone in the market for a primary residence. The customer for this isn't like most of us who seek to value-maximize their housing, but rather someone for whom the cost of this thing is pretty marginal compared to their overall wealth. That is a very niche market, definitely far narrower than Dwell's subscriber base. Furthermore, at what is likely at least 50% profit margin on these, they don't have to sell many to do quite well, as long as they can deliver a very high quality product on time with minimal hassle to their well heeled customers.
  - bombcar 4y ago

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

I understand how marketing works, but it still drives me nuts that everyone knows what the main questions will be, but they hide it anyway. Main page: picture of a pretty house. First question: how much does it cost? Scroll, scroll, scroll, lots of pictures, here's a floor plan, it works as a pool house too, premium materials, click here to reserve one, oh, hey, a link about pricing. Pricing page: it's a great investment! Scroll, scroll...just $1,577 a month! Get out magnifying glass, read fine print. 4.5% interest rate on a 30 year term. Okay, let's get out a calculator, what was the interest rate formula again? Gotta solve for P...about $400,000. Why do we have to play these stupid games? I don't care that it drives up click-through, you need to tell me how much it costs.

illegalsmile 4y ago
Right? I wanted the price upfront within the first few seconds of browsing the page. When I didn't see it and had to go to another page I knew it was going to be stupid. The title of the cost page is "A great investment" which it most definitely is not. I can have a local builder do two of these in my backyard for well under that price. I don't live in a HCOL but MCOL? in Colorado but for $225k including permits you can build a 1300sqft livable space (3/2), two story with two car garage. Now it's not using high end fixtures or flooring but working with the local builder you have an allowance for each room and if you want to stay within budget you can or you can go over or under. What's the advantage of this thing? Ease of use and quick delivery? No disruption from construction for a few months? $720/sqft is INSANE. Pay bay area prices anywhere in the US!

pacetherace 4y ago

I have been able to find 2000 sq ft homes for around $500K in Modesto, CA. Even if you assume you are getting land for free, I think it is insane that a 540 sq ft home would cost almost same as a 2000 sq ft home. Even then if you assume a 50% markup due to difference HCOL and better rates big builders would get, I think we are still talking about construction rate of about $375/sqft. So a 550-600 sq ft homes would cost around $225K. But as an anecdote I did an additions project a few years ago and got quotes ranging from $100K to $300K. And surprising to me, the $300K quote guy was very busy. So I guess there are people who sort by "High to Low" and go with the highest bid.

bombcar 4y ago
My contractor friend told me that his rule of thumb is keep increasing the price quotes until he has steady work and a moderate backlog. So your $300k guy may have been telling you "I'll do it but don't want to" or he may have been quoting out a higher-end job; there are many, many variables.

konfusinomicon 4y ago

are the appliances and fixtures 24k gold? you gotta wonder what their cost to build one is.

cobrabyte 4y ago

$189,000? Maybe. $389,000? You're out of your minds.

jbm 4y ago

> $389,000 I understand many of the visitors to this fine site are rich software devs in SV, but from my perspective, I paid about this much USD to buy a house in Calgary. I had to replace the roofing for about 10k, and the water tank, but there are houses here that are more than 100 years old. More than 400k CAD for a depreciating asset makes no sense.

jointpdf 4y ago

To echo every other comment here: $400K+ / 540sqft = $740/sqft, which is beyond astronomical. That’s on par with the most expensive neighborhoods in the most expensive cities in the US (e.g. Georgetown, DC). But if you like the design, Den Outdoors sells similar house plans: https://denoutdoors.com/collections/small-modern-farmhouse-plans https://denoutdoors.com/collections/small-modern-farmhouse-p...

Justsignedup 4y ago

If this was along the lines of buying a prefab for 50k, hell yeah, amazing. I'd drop one in a large yard for my kid to have her own apartment, or rent it out for cheap given the area. At 400k... Man that's a lot. Can't justify it for any reason unless I have cash to burn.

numair 4y ago

Based on my experiences with some of the board members of Dwell, I'm not at all surprised that they've ripped off someone else's idea and presented it as their own innovation. But really, I can't believe they're trying to charge people more than double the cost of the MUJI design they've ripped off, which is also double the square footage: https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/ https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/ Glad to see that the commenters here on HN recognize this as a totally obnoxious concept.

Ancapistani 4y ago

Those are ridiculously expensive. > MONTHLY DWELL HOUSE PAYMENT > $1,577 > Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment … my mortgage on 5-bedroom, ~1.8K sq ft home on a half acre lot in a small town in the South is <$825. I understand property values vary widely - that’s why I live where I do - but this is still ridiculous. Consider also that to buy this, you already have to have the land to put it on. The comparison to rentals includes the cost of the property, upkeep, and overhead amortized into it. It’s not a fair comparison. If you already have land suitable for this, why not just build a small house? The average cost per sq ft in the US is around $100-$150 for new construction. This thing is 532 sq ft; to be competitive with traditional construction it would need to be priced at <$80k…

vladsanchez 4y ago

WTF!? $389k is a whopping $720 sf! I wish them D(well). No thanks!

turtlebits 4y ago

Just buy a 16’x34’ Tuff shed for $24k, 6k for a slab, then spend another 30k to finish it.

Danborg 4y ago

The price is absurdly high.

opportune 4y ago

Finally, the underserved market of Atherton/Palo Alto SFH owners looking to add an ADU for their live-in nanny or young adult child have an off the shelf solution, inspired by the LinkedIn Sunnyvale campus.

jdkee 4y ago

$720/sq. ft. on land you already own. What are they thinking?

wink 4y ago

> The Dwell House is a 540-square-foot, one-bedroom ADU that fits in most backyards The only backyard I ever knew was around that size, so that's one way to put it. Even if it takes up 100%, it kinda fits.

SilverBirch 4y ago

I know everyone is going off on the price, but I think what's more interesting is that there is so little cutting edge about this design. The architecture of this design is just... dull. They say they've championed design. Well this looks like 20 years ago they made 1 design and they haven't changed it since. This Scandi minimalism was all the rage... in the 2000s. I remember the first time I walked around Ikea too, but that's not cutting edge design in the 2020s.

kabuks 4y ago

Shameless plug: our modular homes are half the price and we deliver and install within 30 days from payment in California. Also. Not a box. zomes.com

caadubldr 4y ago

I've been a contractor for 30 years and am the largest stick built ADU builder in california. They're pricing is ridiculous.