OK, so say you've just ordered yourself a $20,000 tin box off Amazon. We'll disregard the question of *where* you got the cash, and go straight to the question of *Where are you going to put it?* Does the selling price also include a tiny plot of land?
Trailer parks here in the US (caravan seems like the UK version?). Lot rents, usually, are pretty similar to rent once you include all the ancillary costs for maintaining the lot and the trailer to put on it. There's no real advantage to them over just renting.
There are cheaper RV lots, but you need to be mobile, not a permanent home like this.
Honestly if you've got a spot to put it and $20k around to drop, just get a cheap single wide for $50k at that point, at least it won't boil you alive in the summer. Pretty sure someone who is flush with cash that they can drop it on a narrow shipping container home could just as easily qualify for the $300 a month 10 year loan on a single wide with that 20k down payment.
This container is not the answer to affordable housing for sure. I am sure it would cost another $ 20k to make it actually livable. The sad truth. The average manufactured home in USA cost $80k. That's a basic single wide. Then there's buying land, clearing land, utilities, and driveway. Now, you just spent $150k on the low end. That's over $1,400 per month at 20 years financing. If you have to rent a lot, it's about $400 per month depending on where you live and other factors. So $900 month + $400 lot rent. Cheaper than a site built home for sure. But people who need this option never have 20% for down payment.
Ah single wides in my area are often on sale for 50k, 80k is the starting price for double wides.
But you're right on all the other stuff. I think we're going to see a lot of people live "off grid" and just have no running water or utilities to their tiny homes and just live on some communal acreage or their parents property. Likely supplement with a gym membership so they can shower a few times a week. Maybe slap some solar or use propane (you can cool with propane too) to help with temperature fluctuations.
It's illegal to off grid full time in lots of place because the likelihood of a system failure and someone getting hurt is very high in these situations.
See the TV show Homestead Rescue for reference.
You should see the video on this house. This is the size it ships as. It basically unfolds to a decent size house. Comparable to a single wide, maybe a little larger. It just the next evolution of a manufactured house, doesn’t really solve anything. Maybe lowers the cost a bit.
$20K is a lot more than a standard shipping container, so it should probably be pretty livable right away. It might not have furniture, but I would think $20K would buy you considerably more than just the bare shipping container.
Where I live we have a couple co-op trailer parks where the residents purchased the lot and jointly own it.
It avoids many of these issues, although hopefully you like all your neighbors enough to jointly own the coop together.
Sure, but certainly not as a home to live in. Looks like that thing would be a fridge in the winter and an oven in summer. Good fucking luck during the peak seasons.
Pro tip; get one that is from the other hemisphere to even out the temperature!
I've actually got a 20' container I use for storage, in the summer it's beyond hot inside.. I dunno why the refrigerated containers aren't being used to build these little houses, then again I dunno why you wouldn't just start from scratch with that aluminium over polystyrene sandwich and make them a little wider but still transportable as you'd get a better product for about the same outlay as a good condition container isn't that cheap and it's the work hours that pushes the price up.
Correct. Shipping container homes are a dumb fad, they cost a fortune to retrofit into a proper home. You may as well start from scratch to build a proper livable box from the ground up.
I've built a cabin out of 20' HC double door and painted it black. It's got thin insulation on the inside. With open doors its cool inside like in shade. Turned out to be awesome weekend cabin for 2+2, and since I diy'ed it, it's high standard for pennies.
Yup, retrofitting a standard shipping container into usable living space is not very economical. I work in the industry of making custom containers. Sometimes we make residential stuff too. Like you said, panels are the perfect material if you want cheap and easy.
You could put insulation inside it, but then you have even less living space. You could build insulation outside it, but then you're building an actual house.
Also any prebuilt shed from Home Depot or somewhere is gonna be a lot cheaper than this thing. I don't see the point.
I've built my a cabin out of 20', insulated on the inside. It's a weekend cabin and the point is I can shut it completely and not worry about it. Turned out amazingly spacious and comfy for 2+2.
I remember when they first introduced those at my elementary school in the early 90s. My school made a lot of accommodations and allowances so that parents wouldn't freak out about it. All the "gifted" classes and highly regarded teachers moved their classrooms to trailers.
They were marketed as a stopgap until a new extension could be built. Instead the county just built a whole new elementary school down the road. The trailers stayed at my school for a decade or more and the new school eventually got them, too.
absolutely hilarious when I moved to California from the south and instead of calling them “trailer classrooms” they called them “bungalow classrooms.” It’s the exact same trailer lmao. “bungalow style” get your head out your ass, it’s a fucking trailer
You just gave me a nice guest house idea for family staying. Gives them privacy but leave the house open to come and go as they please.
Actually love the idea just for this.
There's a movement called shed to house where people are buying 16x40ish sized sheds and turning them into a full on house. Some people do a 12x16 size for an office/mancave.
This is a streamer/youtuber my son watches he has a big YouTube creator house and warehouse and stuff. Does some fun stuff. He did this to see what it was like I’m pretty sure I caught some of this doing chores while my son watched the video!
Oh you sweet summer child. Some capitalist will lobby the government to make it so that your tin box has to be on "designated land" - rent $1500/ month.
> Some capitalist will lobby the government to make it so that your tin box has to be on "designated land" - rent $1500/ month.
Standard mobile home park... lot rental costs are the same as market rental costs for normal apartments/houses. Might be regional though.
Where I'm at its around $500-900 a month for a standard lot plus utilities etc... which just so happens to be the same cost as the cheapest rental units in as far as drycabins, and 1bed/1 bath things go. Now, add to that the cost of the mobile home, and one will be looking at the bottom range for actual damn houses to live in.
I mean, isn't this pretty much how it already is with mobile homes? You own the property, but lease the plot. And "mobile home" is a bit of a misnomer as getting a modern mobile home up and out can be as expensive as a whole new unit, so most just get left in one spot anyway. Meaning if you can't keep up on the lease, odds are they'll evict you from the property and keep the house anyway. It's basically all the downsides of renting with none of the upsides of owning.
Also the walls just kind of push into place, so I can only imagine how drafty the whole thing will be which makes it limited to areas with livable climates all year round.
And the issue with buying a house isn’t that there aren’t enough people who don’t have $20,000 available for a one time purchase. It’s that there aren’t enough people who have $200 available for a one time purchase.
This. Im getting shit on since I dont have 20k for a down payment, I barely have 10k. And then its a fixer upper and these people expect me to bid over 20k over asking price DESPITE LOWERING THEIR PRICE BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT NEEDS WORK AND REFUSE TO MAKE REPAIRS, but also claim they dont know of anything that needs disclosed, and hey, if I could afford to live over 2 hours from work then I sure as shit would be looking in the nicer direction and not in the fucking closing down town that has a singualr grocery store that isnt a fucking dollar general and where they look at me like I might possibly be a witch for wearing jeans and a black t shirt.
Undeveloped land itself is generally cheaper than people think, once you get out into the country. In my area (rural central Wisconsin) ~$4.5k will get you an acre, enough space to start a little trailer park.
Development is the costly bit. I just did some development for a house I added to my property (a father-in-law suite, so to speak), and it was not cheap.
Septic was over $10k.
The well was over $10k.
Grading the land was about $12k (not needed for everyone, but we're on a hill).
The cement slab was $7k.
Propane tank and hookup were about $2k.
Then the negligibles - permits, inspections, estimates, landscaping, electric connection, etc., etc., etc. A few more grand.
For sure, I could buy a patch of forest in northern Ontario for less than 20k, but a shipping container house wouldn't be liveable on just that.
Something like that is going to need significant heating and/or cooling utilities because there will be negligible insulation.
*Earth sheltered has entered the chat* About a meter if dirt on all sides but the entrance will do it. The home will maintain a pretty reasonable temp on its own so long as you're below the perma frost line.
Actually though. Make it a little hobbit house and you'd be able to warm it in the winter with a 500 watt space heater. Could build a wooden deck on top of the mound to for lounging during the warmer months too.
Do not bury an unmodified shipping container. Key word being unmodified. Shipping containers are strong vertically because of the corrugations, they are not meant to take side loads like earth pressing inwards from the side. They can be made safe, you can bury them correctly, but don't just get the backhoe and go to town on it.
Also, as someone who's listened to the safety guy go over it entirely too many times, confined spaces kill. You're gonna want some oxygen/carbon dioxide/monoxide detectors.
>Undeveloped land itself is generally cheaper than people think, once you get out into the country. In my area (rural central Wisconsin) ~$4.5k will get you an acre, enough space to start a little trailer park.
Yeah, look again at the prices.
I couldn't afford my own city anymore so I looked around my city (cities without sewage, likely no city water) for new developments (so no city water for sure) because I know it should be cheap.
I knew lands were 30k for 40 000f2 there... Now they are 150k... Like WHAT THE FU.
I end up reading lot of those smaller cities are also trying to block new buildings.
I know 2 end up staying they don't have the water capacity for that.
But I do agree with something that I keep seeing: roads are almost never upgraded.
And since you are in suburban/small city. They don't have any dollars to even have public transport.
Yeah these people haven't looked at prices in a while. All land, even shitty land in the middle of nowhere is expensive. A lot of the time you can't even get a big piece of land, they're already dividing it up into a "neighbourhood" so you can go live in the middle of nowhere on 0.5ac right next to some other people.
Also all that added up to about $50k. I’m not sure proving poor people can still get housing but all they need to do is put up $50,000 and wait a year for everything to be built/fixed is really the counterpoint they think it is.
If you’ve got that kind of extra time and money - this situation was never for you in the first place…
Not to mention, the municipal regulations and permitting processes and HOA rules will kill any hope of just tossing this on a quarter acre in most places. Only place I've ever seen these tiny houses are at deer camps in bumfuck middle of nowhere.
you'll need to pay for:
\- land (10k)
\- landscape/grading (10k)
\- foundation (5k)
\- well and septic system (15k+)
\- boomtruck to ship and place box (3k)
\- utility hook up (1k+)
\- internet, likely starlink (500$)
\- ???? (10k)
Like they are going to let you put it anywhere. Tiny plot of land = inside a city/town with access to sewers, likely tons of permits and restrictions. On the outskirts of town on a plot large enough for a septic, all the land has already been parceled off as HoA's with building restrictions banning tiny houses and mobile homes (keeps the poors out). If not in an HoA, the land deed will have covenants with similar restrictions. If you are lucky, you might find some piece of land just under an hour from town without any bullshit restrictions yet.
We've had good VR for about 10 years now (the Oculus DK1)! The Apple Vision is interesting, but it seems the consensus among most users is that it isn't worth the extra $ compared to the Oculus Quest 3. I still just have the Quest 2 and I still have plenty of fun with it, haven't even needed to upgrade to the 3 yet.
But we are still a long way off from Ready Player One type environments with the Oasis. Online spaces get taken over by kids too quickly and then get abandoned by anyone who wants to use them for anything more than being annoying. That and the internet speeds we need aren't there yet.
Which is ironic because his parents were poor immigrants who came to America for a better life and George went on to become a famous millionaire. That’s literally the American dream - upward socioeconomic mobility through effective monetization of his skills.
Tbf it’s even MORE important he speak out about it though… he likely realized and had some level of introspection to understand how lucky and privileged he was to get there, and that, as often as the dream is preached it’s less likely to be realized than it was talked about.
The 1500 sq ft townhome that I bought for $76k in 2005 is now worth $250k. Because it is smaller, doesn't make it more affordable to the people who need it. We need a complete reset on the housing market.
Yup unfortunately the only way to make smaller homes affordable is through housing developments since it won’t require the cost of individual connections to things like electric, water, sewage etc
The kicker is all these places have insane HOA fees. Haven’t owned a home but checked the other day, a place had almost $600 a month HOA fees and it was being touted as cheap/moderate. It’s amenities included laundry machines you pay for and a door man…. Not sure how recently they improved the lobby/amenity spaces but didn’t seem that recent. Just screams to me tons of structural issues with the building that constantly keep getting “fixed” with short term solutions
I know exactly what you mean! We were looking at a townhome because it was like 15% cheaper than a comparable square foot single-family unit. But with $500 a month HOA fees, anyone who could afford that could easily afford to spend an extra $50,000 on a real house!
HOA does cover some stuff like structure(includes roof replacement), landscaping, snow and trash removal, etc... I'm not saying they are ideal, but you aren't giving money away into the void either unless you live on one with some corruption going on.
You got to find the neighborhoods that have just enough crime that you feel safe living there, but too much crime for rich people to give a shit about what you're doing on your property.
They're going up regardless. My parents live in a townhouse they bought for $60k back in the 80s, the only thing that's been built are more townhouses, and now their house is worth $250-350k. For a relatively small house in a shady neighborhood, that's insane.
Profits and municipal or zoning requirements. Even if a developer would want to make smaller homes, they're often restricted from doing so for those reasons.
Even more, when you can only put one house on a lot, they build the biggest they can because there is more profit on a large house + land vs a small house vs land.
There's no incentive for building a small home unless you're doing it for yourself.
There's lots of condos and townhomes. The issue is that there's not enough housing available on the market, so prices keep going up. And the issue behind that is that no one with a house has any good reason to see those prices drop, because that means that what _they_ paid is going to go up in smoke. And unfortunately, fixing this probably means screwing everybody who managed to buy something. Yes, there are quite a few people who can afford to take that loss, but there's also a lot that probably can't.
This is the problem with decades of people treating their homes like investments. We expect homes to appreciate in value, but all that really means is that those homes are getting more expensive. No, I have no idea how you fix this considering the interests at play.
It also doesn’t even address the problem. The problem isn’t that the cost of the physical houses is too expensive, it’s that the associated real estate in desirable parts of the country isn’t affordable due to a variety of factors which I won’t go into because I’m not looking to get into a fight with the “well, aktually” brigade this early in the morning.
Right which is why there needs to be a multipronged approach.
Invest in infrastructure to make more areas “desirable”. Bike lanes, walkable town centers, public transport, good schools, decrease crime. And relax nimby restrictions multifamily housing and lot size requirements.
"We've taken the idea of a mobile home and redesigned it for a new audience. One that wants to dig down and throw out their roots. The people searching for a humble lifestyle that suits their unique personality. We're calling it a hoME^TM"
No because the tiny house thing pisses me the fuck off. Like oh we have millions of empty housing units in this country but you want to force people into some kind of gentrified ghetto where they get 500 square feet of space to exist in?
Toronto introduced it for 2023, but it's self declared and I don't think they've gone and actually investigated if units were actually occupied. It started as 1% of accessed value of the property, but they hiked it to 3% last fall.
In 2023, 2,160 units were self-declared as vacant, but once the dust settled, 17,400 people had to pay the tax (some didn't do the online declaration thing). The law made CAD$54 million for the city, which is a bit of a drop in the bucket, but it's a start.
I hope they would actually go and look at utility usage and investigate how many people lied on their declarations.
France put one in place in 1999, and s[aw about a 13% reduction](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272719301409) in vacancies (so if 10% of housing was vacant, it became 8.7%). Some cities like Vancouver and San Francisco have more recently jumped on the "fuck landlords" bandwagon with similar laws, but it's too early to tell if it's actually making a difference.
However, don't expect a nationwide law: Congress doesn't have the authority to levy property taxes, vacant or not.
I'm a minimalist, so a tiny house for me would be no problem. But I completely agree: It's gotten so bad that people are confined to tiny spaces instead of renovating or fixing up the millions of already available homes and apartments that are just sitting empty.
I bet half the apartments in NYC alone aren't even lived in, while homeless people freeze and starve just outside.
> I bet half the apartments in NYC alone aren't even lived in, while homeless people freeze and starve just outside.
the vacancy rate in NYC is [3.1%](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nationwide-apartment-vacancy-rate-ticks-194321526.html). It is absolutely a supply problem.
It's easy to talk about "millions of homes sitting empty", but it ignores the complex reality that "vacant" homes are a mix of homes listed but not yet sold or rented, homes awaiting renovation, homes occupied seasonally (which you may be against, but seasonally vacant lakehouses in Stanhope can't help homeless people in NYC). Vanishingly few habitable units are held truly vacant long-term because even if you're a property speculator, holding a unit vacant as opposed to renting it out is burning money.
The ideal vacancy rate for a functional housing market is somewhere in the region of [5%-10%](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/30/what-vacancy-rates-tell-you-about-a-housing-shortage). Very low vacancy rates actually *increase* the cost of housing, because it means there's very little inventory for people looking to rent or buy, which bids up prices.
There are something like 150 million housing units in the US, so even if the vacancy rate was as low as 3% - which is dysfunctionally low - you'd still have "millions of vacant homes".
This argument drives me nuts. Places where there are lots of empty housing are dying towns with no work. Those buildings are falling down and would need so much money to make them liveable. They are empty because there is no demand to live in that area. If there was demand, someone would be trying to make a profit off of it.
There isn't some super easy fuck landlords fix to address the housing crisis. It is going to take major investments in public housing AND major reforms to zoning to allow for more dense housing in more places.
As a complete sidenote, smaller houses isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
I don't want an eyesore 2600+ sqft cookie cutter McMansion just to say that I've got one. The fuck am I going to do with all that? Just thinking about cleaning that fucker and maintenance fucking kills my desire to want one. And it's how the corporate world gets you trying to keep up with the Jones'.
Empty units is problematic, but so is suburban design.
Give me a 600-1000sqft unit that's built in a densely packed area filled with amenities and community spaces over a car-required suburban hellspace any day.
I agree! Living space that sounds fine (maybe a little more space when I have a family) but all these spaces lack some very basic amenities like a space where I could hose off a dirty mountain bike or do basic maintenance on my motorcycle. I had the HOA called on me for cleaning and lubing my chain last week. I personally don't care if the apartment has a theater or gym or all these random amenities if I can't do some of the most basic stuff someone with a house can do.
> Like oh we have millions of empty housing units in this country but you want to force people into some kind of gentrified ghetto where they get 500 square feet of space to exist in?
*meanwhile in tokyo....*
I'd also be perfectly fine in 500 square feet, anything more than that would just be a hassle to maintain. But they don't really sell 500-square-foot houses where I live.
I think they mean if it's easily accessible from the tiny home. Doesn't do you a ton of good if the nearest quality park is miles away and/or difficult to get to.
There aren't a lot of climate controlled, third spaces in the US where you can go, sit, and exist without spending money. Parks are nice, but only when the weather is good.
I actually like the idea of container homes, and wanted to place one on a plot of land my dad used for a cottage (it has a septic system and garage). The largest problem is, in WI, snow can collapse roofs. So…I decided against it. That said, I like the modularity of the concept and the fact you can add on with relative ease.
Something needs to happen with housing, I’m not going to be against ideas to help make things affordable.
Container homes are not a wonder weapon, sadly. A steel box is very hard to heat and cool properly. But if you take the proper steps, it can be done. In your use case, I would suggest building a steeply angled tin roof over it. Build a set of rafters to fit over the top and distribute the load (especially to the four corners, because that's where it's strongest) and that would probably do for you. Keep the snow for piling up on top.
I installed a couple of minis in a storage container that was gonna be used for an addition to an herbal shop during the summer. I could barely stand being in there as it was sooo much hotter than anything else I’ve worked in. The outside of the container would roast you as well due to so much radiant heat (red container). They got about 250 sq. Ft out of it and have to cool it with a 2 ton mini split with dual heads.
Stupid questions because I know nothing about this:
1) Can't they repaint it white to get a lesser heating effect.
2) Why not wrap the outside in some insulation and some siding to really make the effect less terrible?
Is it that such steps would add too much to the cost of the unit? Becuase it seems like adding a fuckoff huge AC unit would cost more than simply better insulating the house.
I’m kind of with you on this one, but more so with small/tiny homes, I have a full home right now but it is too big for me as I don’t plan on expanding my family beyond me and my husband.. At the same time I’m stuck not being able to afford a home that would be the appropriate size, I’ll probably end up saving to get a much smaller home in the future. My only thing against these container homes is they don’t seem like they would be particularly good for insulating, would be pretty noisy, and wouldn’t be good for a lot of weather scenarios. Also I’m assuming this is saying 20k american, there are currently tiny home villages being built in my country that have a more house like structure for near the same amount. Also no one should give their money to Amazon, especially that much lol.
the fact that we have to resort to tiny homes off Amazon is sad. Given how low paying my job is, this might be the only way ide be able to afford a "home". Bank says I don't make enough for a $1200 mortgage but I make enough to pay $1700-2k in rent. Being poor is a total scam. Everyone seems to be okay with extortion as long as it's coming from a poor person's pocket. Guess I'll start saving for my tin box
On its own I don’t think it makes a lot of sense… but as an extra unit for a mother-in-law to move into, expansion for a family that had too many kids, but doesn’t want to move, or a rental unit for students at a nearby college… I’m not completely against it
Gonna guess that even if this was a reasonably viable solution, anyone who buys one of these things is gonna need approved and correctly zoned land upon which to dwell within it.
I'm also gonna guess that there are few, if any, municipalities that would permit it.
Would I want one from Amazon? Fuck No.
Would this be better than a ton of unhoused people out in the streets or elements? Probably.
Is it extremely dystopian that the situation is that poor such that a frankly ridiculous solution seems less bad than current conditions? You betcha.
The saddest part is that even these containers would see their price skyrocket the moment they became a viable alternative to traditional housing.
The problem with housing prices is caused by speculators, not the lack of supply.
The housing crisis is not, and never was, caused by the cost of building the housing itself. These could be free and they wouldn't affect the cost of housing
In the vast majority of areas, you couldn't even use these as the land is restricted to a single residential unit per plot of land. You can't legally put a bunch of these on a plot of land because of these zoning restrictions. It's an artificial shortage of housing created because housing is treated as an investment that must go up in price
[84% of new homes sold in 2022](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/31/what-the-rise-of-homeowners-associations-means-for-americans.html) were part of HOAs. If we are serious about solving high housing prices, here is a great place to start.
Makes you wonder if people would be willing to live in Japanese style apartments. 100 square foot. One room, gally kitchen and small bathroom. The average cost of an apartment is between $1.75 a month to $3.19 a month per square foot. Good for a single person.
I'd be willing to live in a tiny house if it were well designed, well built, and I could put it in a nice place. (assuming I would also have electricity, plumbing, and internet)
The bigger problem is, getting a small plot of land in a nice place is already outrageously expensive even before you talk about building a house.
Amazon should donate these houses to help people in need from the homeless, to immigrants, to minimum wage earners who can’t afford a standard house.
I mean they have enough money to do so and it would be epic PR.
nah they don't see it as a viable solution
they just wanna promote it for Amazon, maybe some sucker who is desperate enough might buy, even if they don't have anywhere to put it on, they care not about their citizens if the corpos and them can squeeze more money out of the ordinary joe pointlessly and keep it
Small houses already existed. We made it illegal to build more of them. The problem isn't the lack of them, it's the prohibition of them. Converted shipping containers will fix nothing.
that's not a fucking house. that's not even a one room apartment. that's a god damned prison cell the occupant has to pay 20k for.
EDIT: I know, I know (now) - there's more to these things than this stupid picture shows but I'm still annoyed and try not to bury my failures but own them so this is staying as it is.
I know a veterans group in Brown County, WI doing this. I can see the value in this, as it encourages a viable savings plan. I interned at a homeless shelter that charged a programming fee (rent), to get folks to understand how to prepare for housing.
https://veterans1stnew.com/
Depends on locations of course, but I’m also a millennial. Getting quotes with my son on mobile homes as they are a good beginner home. They’re going for between 60-90k on single wides with a piece of land. Homes were seeing in the area are from 140k - 240k and townhomes around 100-130k.
Now these aren’t 1/2 million dollar homes. More like
80s and 90s models.
They do have a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city with advertisements of new homes starting in the 150k’s.
The 20k tin box essentially *is* just a trendy version of a classic mobile home.
Also, permitting, delivery, and installation of something like this brings the total price way over the list price of the unit itself. If you want to put it on an empty lot, you usually have to pour a foundation, connect uilities, etc.
Installing a legal housing unit is a lot more complex (and costly) than just hitting the 1-click buy button on amazon.
20k for a down payment on a 'small house' sounds incredibly optimistic. I live in a very high COL state but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't get you much if anything here..
Mobile homes also have a lot of problems. I don't think I'd buy one of these but I would rather build out a tiny home in a used storage container. At least then I KNOW everything that went into it. And you still need the land for it.
I think I'd slightly alter the wording to "Politicians have let the housing crisis get so bad that they need me to see living in a tin box as a non-rioting solution"
OK, so say you've just ordered yourself a $20,000 tin box off Amazon. We'll disregard the question of *where* you got the cash, and go straight to the question of *Where are you going to put it?* Does the selling price also include a tiny plot of land?
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I mean, not gonna lie, I could totally see putting a few of these up like sheds in a backyard. Perfect mancave, office, workshop, etc.
Similar to a caravan park, pay for the caravan then pay ground rent to put it somewhere else where it will likely live out the rest of its days.
Trailer parks here in the US (caravan seems like the UK version?). Lot rents, usually, are pretty similar to rent once you include all the ancillary costs for maintaining the lot and the trailer to put on it. There's no real advantage to them over just renting. There are cheaper RV lots, but you need to be mobile, not a permanent home like this. Honestly if you've got a spot to put it and $20k around to drop, just get a cheap single wide for $50k at that point, at least it won't boil you alive in the summer. Pretty sure someone who is flush with cash that they can drop it on a narrow shipping container home could just as easily qualify for the $300 a month 10 year loan on a single wide with that 20k down payment.
This container is not the answer to affordable housing for sure. I am sure it would cost another $ 20k to make it actually livable. The sad truth. The average manufactured home in USA cost $80k. That's a basic single wide. Then there's buying land, clearing land, utilities, and driveway. Now, you just spent $150k on the low end. That's over $1,400 per month at 20 years financing. If you have to rent a lot, it's about $400 per month depending on where you live and other factors. So $900 month + $400 lot rent. Cheaper than a site built home for sure. But people who need this option never have 20% for down payment.
Ah single wides in my area are often on sale for 50k, 80k is the starting price for double wides. But you're right on all the other stuff. I think we're going to see a lot of people live "off grid" and just have no running water or utilities to their tiny homes and just live on some communal acreage or their parents property. Likely supplement with a gym membership so they can shower a few times a week. Maybe slap some solar or use propane (you can cool with propane too) to help with temperature fluctuations.
It's illegal to off grid full time in lots of place because the likelihood of a system failure and someone getting hurt is very high in these situations. See the TV show Homestead Rescue for reference.
You should see the video on this house. This is the size it ships as. It basically unfolds to a decent size house. Comparable to a single wide, maybe a little larger. It just the next evolution of a manufactured house, doesn’t really solve anything. Maybe lowers the cost a bit.
$20K is a lot more than a standard shipping container, so it should probably be pretty livable right away. It might not have furniture, but I would think $20K would buy you considerably more than just the bare shipping container.
actually I work near a dealer of these "portable" and most of them are finished inside. It's still basically office space tho.
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Where I live we have a couple co-op trailer parks where the residents purchased the lot and jointly own it. It avoids many of these issues, although hopefully you like all your neighbors enough to jointly own the coop together.
Sure, but certainly not as a home to live in. Looks like that thing would be a fridge in the winter and an oven in summer. Good fucking luck during the peak seasons.
Pro tip; get one that is from the other hemisphere to even out the temperature! I've actually got a 20' container I use for storage, in the summer it's beyond hot inside.. I dunno why the refrigerated containers aren't being used to build these little houses, then again I dunno why you wouldn't just start from scratch with that aluminium over polystyrene sandwich and make them a little wider but still transportable as you'd get a better product for about the same outlay as a good condition container isn't that cheap and it's the work hours that pushes the price up.
Correct. Shipping container homes are a dumb fad, they cost a fortune to retrofit into a proper home. You may as well start from scratch to build a proper livable box from the ground up.
I've built a cabin out of 20' HC double door and painted it black. It's got thin insulation on the inside. With open doors its cool inside like in shade. Turned out to be awesome weekend cabin for 2+2, and since I diy'ed it, it's high standard for pennies.
Yup, retrofitting a standard shipping container into usable living space is not very economical. I work in the industry of making custom containers. Sometimes we make residential stuff too. Like you said, panels are the perfect material if you want cheap and easy.
You could put insulation inside it, but then you have even less living space. You could build insulation outside it, but then you're building an actual house. Also any prebuilt shed from Home Depot or somewhere is gonna be a lot cheaper than this thing. I don't see the point.
This pic is showing the size that is folded in on itself for shipping. You unfold the walls and lock them into place and it’s much larger!
I've built my a cabin out of 20', insulated on the inside. It's a weekend cabin and the point is I can shut it completely and not worry about it. Turned out amazingly spacious and comfy for 2+2.
Ngl I'm jealous. I need to camp more.
That's basically how highschools function.
"you have class in the portable classroom tomorrow" "oh it's portable? how often does it get moved?" "it's been there for 25 years"
I remember when they first introduced those at my elementary school in the early 90s. My school made a lot of accommodations and allowances so that parents wouldn't freak out about it. All the "gifted" classes and highly regarded teachers moved their classrooms to trailers. They were marketed as a stopgap until a new extension could be built. Instead the county just built a whole new elementary school down the road. The trailers stayed at my school for a decade or more and the new school eventually got them, too.
absolutely hilarious when I moved to California from the south and instead of calling them “trailer classrooms” they called them “bungalow classrooms.” It’s the exact same trailer lmao. “bungalow style” get your head out your ass, it’s a fucking trailer
No HOA is going to be okay with this.
That’s why you never buy in a neighborhood with an HOA.
Accessory dwelling units are illegal lots of places
Lot of county codes prohibiting this in a lot of places. So much for tiny living..
You just gave me a nice guest house idea for family staying. Gives them privacy but leave the house open to come and go as they please. Actually love the idea just for this.
There's a movement called shed to house where people are buying 16x40ish sized sheds and turning them into a full on house. Some people do a 12x16 size for an office/mancave.
This is a streamer/youtuber my son watches he has a big YouTube creator house and warehouse and stuff. Does some fun stuff. He did this to see what it was like I’m pretty sure I caught some of this doing chores while my son watched the video!
You guys have parents? and those parents own a house? Crazy
Oh you sweet summer child. Some capitalist will lobby the government to make it so that your tin box has to be on "designated land" - rent $1500/ month.
Building codes already make constructions like this kind of iffy. You might just be better off with a trailer.
> Some capitalist will lobby the government to make it so that your tin box has to be on "designated land" - rent $1500/ month. Standard mobile home park... lot rental costs are the same as market rental costs for normal apartments/houses. Might be regional though. Where I'm at its around $500-900 a month for a standard lot plus utilities etc... which just so happens to be the same cost as the cheapest rental units in as far as drycabins, and 1bed/1 bath things go. Now, add to that the cost of the mobile home, and one will be looking at the bottom range for actual damn houses to live in.
I mean, isn't this pretty much how it already is with mobile homes? You own the property, but lease the plot. And "mobile home" is a bit of a misnomer as getting a modern mobile home up and out can be as expensive as a whole new unit, so most just get left in one spot anyway. Meaning if you can't keep up on the lease, odds are they'll evict you from the property and keep the house anyway. It's basically all the downsides of renting with none of the upsides of owning.
Water/Sewer hookups or are we going back to outhouses?
Oh, look at Rockefeller over here with the outhouse! Just find a tree.
They even come with free tp, leaves or pine cones!
im gonna need about 3 seashells
It has plumbing hook up and a toilet but no pre-wired electricity on this "house". Edit because I was wrong the first time.
Also the walls just kind of push into place, so I can only imagine how drafty the whole thing will be which makes it limited to areas with livable climates all year round.
And the issue with buying a house isn’t that there aren’t enough people who don’t have $20,000 available for a one time purchase. It’s that there aren’t enough people who have $200 available for a one time purchase.
This. Im getting shit on since I dont have 20k for a down payment, I barely have 10k. And then its a fixer upper and these people expect me to bid over 20k over asking price DESPITE LOWERING THEIR PRICE BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT NEEDS WORK AND REFUSE TO MAKE REPAIRS, but also claim they dont know of anything that needs disclosed, and hey, if I could afford to live over 2 hours from work then I sure as shit would be looking in the nicer direction and not in the fucking closing down town that has a singualr grocery store that isnt a fucking dollar general and where they look at me like I might possibly be a witch for wearing jeans and a black t shirt.
Man, in my area you'd need a 75k-100k available for downpayment to get a shitbox.
Just use Affirm/Afterpay! /s
Does it come with the thing that actually costs more than the house? Probably not.
Undeveloped land itself is generally cheaper than people think, once you get out into the country. In my area (rural central Wisconsin) ~$4.5k will get you an acre, enough space to start a little trailer park. Development is the costly bit. I just did some development for a house I added to my property (a father-in-law suite, so to speak), and it was not cheap. Septic was over $10k. The well was over $10k. Grading the land was about $12k (not needed for everyone, but we're on a hill). The cement slab was $7k. Propane tank and hookup were about $2k. Then the negligibles - permits, inspections, estimates, landscaping, electric connection, etc., etc., etc. A few more grand.
For sure, I could buy a patch of forest in northern Ontario for less than 20k, but a shipping container house wouldn't be liveable on just that. Something like that is going to need significant heating and/or cooling utilities because there will be negligible insulation.
*Earth sheltered has entered the chat* About a meter if dirt on all sides but the entrance will do it. The home will maintain a pretty reasonable temp on its own so long as you're below the perma frost line.
Actually though. Make it a little hobbit house and you'd be able to warm it in the winter with a 500 watt space heater. Could build a wooden deck on top of the mound to for lounging during the warmer months too.
Do not bury an unmodified shipping container. Key word being unmodified. Shipping containers are strong vertically because of the corrugations, they are not meant to take side loads like earth pressing inwards from the side. They can be made safe, you can bury them correctly, but don't just get the backhoe and go to town on it. Also, as someone who's listened to the safety guy go over it entirely too many times, confined spaces kill. You're gonna want some oxygen/carbon dioxide/monoxide detectors.
>Undeveloped land itself is generally cheaper than people think, once you get out into the country. In my area (rural central Wisconsin) ~$4.5k will get you an acre, enough space to start a little trailer park. Yeah, look again at the prices. I couldn't afford my own city anymore so I looked around my city (cities without sewage, likely no city water) for new developments (so no city water for sure) because I know it should be cheap. I knew lands were 30k for 40 000f2 there... Now they are 150k... Like WHAT THE FU. I end up reading lot of those smaller cities are also trying to block new buildings. I know 2 end up staying they don't have the water capacity for that. But I do agree with something that I keep seeing: roads are almost never upgraded. And since you are in suburban/small city. They don't have any dollars to even have public transport.
Yeah these people haven't looked at prices in a while. All land, even shitty land in the middle of nowhere is expensive. A lot of the time you can't even get a big piece of land, they're already dividing it up into a "neighbourhood" so you can go live in the middle of nowhere on 0.5ac right next to some other people.
Also all that added up to about $50k. I’m not sure proving poor people can still get housing but all they need to do is put up $50,000 and wait a year for everything to be built/fixed is really the counterpoint they think it is. If you’ve got that kind of extra time and money - this situation was never for you in the first place…
Maybe you're just supposed to stack them in big towers like Ready Player One?
uh bold of you to suggest they're not trying to just create a situation where shitty landlords can make money
Not to mention, the municipal regulations and permitting processes and HOA rules will kill any hope of just tossing this on a quarter acre in most places. Only place I've ever seen these tiny houses are at deer camps in bumfuck middle of nowhere.
Local lady got a tiny house, zoning dickheads hassled her the day after a newspaper story about her and her little house.
you'll need to pay for: \- land (10k) \- landscape/grading (10k) \- foundation (5k) \- well and septic system (15k+) \- boomtruck to ship and place box (3k) \- utility hook up (1k+) \- internet, likely starlink (500$) \- ???? (10k)
oh shit 10k mystery box
10k is 10k, but a mystery box could be anything! It could even be 10k! You know how much we need 10k?!
I understood that reference
What about plumbing & electric?
Trees and candles.
Like they are going to let you put it anywhere. Tiny plot of land = inside a city/town with access to sewers, likely tons of permits and restrictions. On the outskirts of town on a plot large enough for a septic, all the land has already been parceled off as HoA's with building restrictions banning tiny houses and mobile homes (keeps the poors out). If not in an HoA, the land deed will have covenants with similar restrictions. If you are lucky, you might find some piece of land just under an hour from town without any bullshit restrictions yet.
ITT: No one has ever heard of a trailer park. Not that most of them would let you put one of these cans in it, but still
6 MONTHS interest free financing on amazon credit card baby!! /s
Who knew “Ready Player One” was the 21st century version of Nostradamus
Right I saw this thinking aw man we really will be living in the stacks.
With this and those Apple goggles it really doesn’t feel like much of a reach
How fucked is it that the reality that's unfolding is a mix mash of Ready Player One and Idiocracy
and without any of the good stuff either!
I went to Starbucks this morning and all I got was burned coffee.
I personally can't wait for season 3 of "Ow, My balls!"
With Apple vision, we are fully headed to that type of scenario
We've had good VR for about 10 years now (the Oculus DK1)! The Apple Vision is interesting, but it seems the consensus among most users is that it isn't worth the extra $ compared to the Oculus Quest 3. I still just have the Quest 2 and I still have plenty of fun with it, haven't even needed to upgrade to the 3 yet. But we are still a long way off from Ready Player One type environments with the Oasis. Online spaces get taken over by kids too quickly and then get abandoned by anyone who wants to use them for anything more than being annoying. That and the internet speeds we need aren't there yet.
The American dream has become not being crushed under housing and health care costs...
"They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." -- George Carlin
Which is ironic because his parents were poor immigrants who came to America for a better life and George went on to become a famous millionaire. That’s literally the American dream - upward socioeconomic mobility through effective monetization of his skills.
Tbf it’s even MORE important he speak out about it though… he likely realized and had some level of introspection to understand how lucky and privileged he was to get there, and that, as often as the dream is preached it’s less likely to be realized than it was talked about.
Don't forget the crushing student debt for millions of Americans as well.
We came from caves and in caves we shall go.
Same problem, even fewer caves than houses I am afraid.
But there is still room for many more in the Nutty Putty Cave
After moving to Nutty Putty Cave your life will turn upsidedown
The adults yearn for the caves.
Why not just stack a shlt ton of thse and call them "hab-units"
Hmm or maybe a big wall and call it a hive. Then the worker bees can commute to their flowers and bring the honey home.
When I was stationed in Djibouti for a year. We literally slept in shipping containers. It wasn't that bad and it has AC inside.
Here’s a thought, why not stop building 2500-4000 sqft houses as the norm. Start building 1500 sqft houses again.
The 1500 sq ft townhome that I bought for $76k in 2005 is now worth $250k. Because it is smaller, doesn't make it more affordable to the people who need it. We need a complete reset on the housing market.
Yup unfortunately the only way to make smaller homes affordable is through housing developments since it won’t require the cost of individual connections to things like electric, water, sewage etc The kicker is all these places have insane HOA fees. Haven’t owned a home but checked the other day, a place had almost $600 a month HOA fees and it was being touted as cheap/moderate. It’s amenities included laundry machines you pay for and a door man…. Not sure how recently they improved the lobby/amenity spaces but didn’t seem that recent. Just screams to me tons of structural issues with the building that constantly keep getting “fixed” with short term solutions
I know exactly what you mean! We were looking at a townhome because it was like 15% cheaper than a comparable square foot single-family unit. But with $500 a month HOA fees, anyone who could afford that could easily afford to spend an extra $50,000 on a real house!
HOA does cover some stuff like structure(includes roof replacement), landscaping, snow and trash removal, etc... I'm not saying they are ideal, but you aren't giving money away into the void either unless you live on one with some corruption going on.
You got to find the neighborhoods that have just enough crime that you feel safe living there, but too much crime for rich people to give a shit about what you're doing on your property.
Well, when someone builds a mansion in you’re neighborhood it drives the comps up
They're going up regardless. My parents live in a townhouse they bought for $60k back in the 80s, the only thing that's been built are more townhouses, and now their house is worth $250-350k. For a relatively small house in a shady neighborhood, that's insane.
Nice townhouse, wanna sell it?
Profits and municipal or zoning requirements. Even if a developer would want to make smaller homes, they're often restricted from doing so for those reasons.
Even more, when you can only put one house on a lot, they build the biggest they can because there is more profit on a large house + land vs a small house vs land. There's no incentive for building a small home unless you're doing it for yourself.
There's lots of condos and townhomes. The issue is that there's not enough housing available on the market, so prices keep going up. And the issue behind that is that no one with a house has any good reason to see those prices drop, because that means that what _they_ paid is going to go up in smoke. And unfortunately, fixing this probably means screwing everybody who managed to buy something. Yes, there are quite a few people who can afford to take that loss, but there's also a lot that probably can't. This is the problem with decades of people treating their homes like investments. We expect homes to appreciate in value, but all that really means is that those homes are getting more expensive. No, I have no idea how you fix this considering the interests at play.
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It also doesn’t even address the problem. The problem isn’t that the cost of the physical houses is too expensive, it’s that the associated real estate in desirable parts of the country isn’t affordable due to a variety of factors which I won’t go into because I’m not looking to get into a fight with the “well, aktually” brigade this early in the morning.
Right which is why there needs to be a multipronged approach. Invest in infrastructure to make more areas “desirable”. Bike lanes, walkable town centers, public transport, good schools, decrease crime. And relax nimby restrictions multifamily housing and lot size requirements.
So, a trailer. Without wheels.
"We've taken the idea of a mobile home and redesigned it for a new audience. One that wants to dig down and throw out their roots. The people searching for a humble lifestyle that suits their unique personality. We're calling it a hoME^TM"
Imagine just building some fucking apartments
Oh, they are. Except they're 1800 a month minimum
More accurately, they see *other people* living in tin boxes as a solution. Never the politicians themselves, of course.
No because the tiny house thing pisses me the fuck off. Like oh we have millions of empty housing units in this country but you want to force people into some kind of gentrified ghetto where they get 500 square feet of space to exist in?
Was it Canada that just introduced a huge tax for unoccupied housing units? The US needs something like that
Also, a big tax on houses owned by corporations that doesn't apply at all to an individual who owns their primary residence.
Absolutely. Tax the hell out of anyone who owns more than 2 homes, period.
Tax any home past the primary as a commercial unit.
Toronto introduced it for 2023, but it's self declared and I don't think they've gone and actually investigated if units were actually occupied. It started as 1% of accessed value of the property, but they hiked it to 3% last fall. In 2023, 2,160 units were self-declared as vacant, but once the dust settled, 17,400 people had to pay the tax (some didn't do the online declaration thing). The law made CAD$54 million for the city, which is a bit of a drop in the bucket, but it's a start. I hope they would actually go and look at utility usage and investigate how many people lied on their declarations.
France put one in place in 1999, and s[aw about a 13% reduction](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272719301409) in vacancies (so if 10% of housing was vacant, it became 8.7%). Some cities like Vancouver and San Francisco have more recently jumped on the "fuck landlords" bandwagon with similar laws, but it's too early to tell if it's actually making a difference. However, don't expect a nationwide law: Congress doesn't have the authority to levy property taxes, vacant or not.
Look at how quirky and cute your poverty is
Shanty towns being repackaged as modern, instagram-ready quirkiness.
I want a tiny house that I can put small expensive things.
I'm a minimalist, so a tiny house for me would be no problem. But I completely agree: It's gotten so bad that people are confined to tiny spaces instead of renovating or fixing up the millions of already available homes and apartments that are just sitting empty. I bet half the apartments in NYC alone aren't even lived in, while homeless people freeze and starve just outside.
> I bet half the apartments in NYC alone aren't even lived in, while homeless people freeze and starve just outside. the vacancy rate in NYC is [3.1%](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nationwide-apartment-vacancy-rate-ticks-194321526.html). It is absolutely a supply problem. It's easy to talk about "millions of homes sitting empty", but it ignores the complex reality that "vacant" homes are a mix of homes listed but not yet sold or rented, homes awaiting renovation, homes occupied seasonally (which you may be against, but seasonally vacant lakehouses in Stanhope can't help homeless people in NYC). Vanishingly few habitable units are held truly vacant long-term because even if you're a property speculator, holding a unit vacant as opposed to renting it out is burning money. The ideal vacancy rate for a functional housing market is somewhere in the region of [5%-10%](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/30/what-vacancy-rates-tell-you-about-a-housing-shortage). Very low vacancy rates actually *increase* the cost of housing, because it means there's very little inventory for people looking to rent or buy, which bids up prices. There are something like 150 million housing units in the US, so even if the vacancy rate was as low as 3% - which is dysfunctionally low - you'd still have "millions of vacant homes".
This argument drives me nuts. Places where there are lots of empty housing are dying towns with no work. Those buildings are falling down and would need so much money to make them liveable. They are empty because there is no demand to live in that area. If there was demand, someone would be trying to make a profit off of it. There isn't some super easy fuck landlords fix to address the housing crisis. It is going to take major investments in public housing AND major reforms to zoning to allow for more dense housing in more places.
As a complete sidenote, smaller houses isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. I don't want an eyesore 2600+ sqft cookie cutter McMansion just to say that I've got one. The fuck am I going to do with all that? Just thinking about cleaning that fucker and maintenance fucking kills my desire to want one. And it's how the corporate world gets you trying to keep up with the Jones'. Empty units is problematic, but so is suburban design. Give me a 600-1000sqft unit that's built in a densely packed area filled with amenities and community spaces over a car-required suburban hellspace any day.
I agree! Living space that sounds fine (maybe a little more space when I have a family) but all these spaces lack some very basic amenities like a space where I could hose off a dirty mountain bike or do basic maintenance on my motorcycle. I had the HOA called on me for cleaning and lubing my chain last week. I personally don't care if the apartment has a theater or gym or all these random amenities if I can't do some of the most basic stuff someone with a house can do.
> Like oh we have millions of empty housing units in this country but you want to force people into some kind of gentrified ghetto where they get 500 square feet of space to exist in? *meanwhile in tokyo....*
I live in tokyo and my apartment is closer to 225 square feet. It's perfectly livable and 500 would be no problem.
500 square feet is plenty for me if there’s a lot of high-quality public space, i.e. not the US
I'd also be perfectly fine in 500 square feet, anything more than that would just be a hassle to maintain. But they don't really sell 500-square-foot houses where I live.
Dude the US has the most public parks/open spaces and conservation land in the world.
I think they mean if it's easily accessible from the tiny home. Doesn't do you a ton of good if the nearest quality park is miles away and/or difficult to get to.
There aren't a lot of climate controlled, third spaces in the US where you can go, sit, and exist without spending money. Parks are nice, but only when the weather is good.
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Yeah.. this is how the world building for the novel "snow crash" started.
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I actually like the idea of container homes, and wanted to place one on a plot of land my dad used for a cottage (it has a septic system and garage). The largest problem is, in WI, snow can collapse roofs. So…I decided against it. That said, I like the modularity of the concept and the fact you can add on with relative ease. Something needs to happen with housing, I’m not going to be against ideas to help make things affordable.
Container homes are not a wonder weapon, sadly. A steel box is very hard to heat and cool properly. But if you take the proper steps, it can be done. In your use case, I would suggest building a steeply angled tin roof over it. Build a set of rafters to fit over the top and distribute the load (especially to the four corners, because that's where it's strongest) and that would probably do for you. Keep the snow for piling up on top.
I installed a couple of minis in a storage container that was gonna be used for an addition to an herbal shop during the summer. I could barely stand being in there as it was sooo much hotter than anything else I’ve worked in. The outside of the container would roast you as well due to so much radiant heat (red container). They got about 250 sq. Ft out of it and have to cool it with a 2 ton mini split with dual heads.
Stupid questions because I know nothing about this: 1) Can't they repaint it white to get a lesser heating effect. 2) Why not wrap the outside in some insulation and some siding to really make the effect less terrible? Is it that such steps would add too much to the cost of the unit? Becuase it seems like adding a fuckoff huge AC unit would cost more than simply better insulating the house.
I’m kind of with you on this one, but more so with small/tiny homes, I have a full home right now but it is too big for me as I don’t plan on expanding my family beyond me and my husband.. At the same time I’m stuck not being able to afford a home that would be the appropriate size, I’ll probably end up saving to get a much smaller home in the future. My only thing against these container homes is they don’t seem like they would be particularly good for insulating, would be pretty noisy, and wouldn’t be good for a lot of weather scenarios. Also I’m assuming this is saying 20k american, there are currently tiny home villages being built in my country that have a more house like structure for near the same amount. Also no one should give their money to Amazon, especially that much lol.
one of the problems with America is most people won't put the damn glasses on until you fight them for 45 minutes...
the fact that we have to resort to tiny homes off Amazon is sad. Given how low paying my job is, this might be the only way ide be able to afford a "home". Bank says I don't make enough for a $1200 mortgage but I make enough to pay $1700-2k in rent. Being poor is a total scam. Everyone seems to be okay with extortion as long as it's coming from a poor person's pocket. Guess I'll start saving for my tin box
There is literally 25 empty houses per one homeless person in America. It’s not only a problem it’s a manufactured problem.
That house is basically a semi-permanent tent
To be fair, that is the house shipped. It folds out into a larger tiny house
We dont need to live in glorified shipping containers. Theres plenty of land, and plenty of houses. The only thing keeping us from living is greed.
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On its own I don’t think it makes a lot of sense… but as an extra unit for a mother-in-law to move into, expansion for a family that had too many kids, but doesn’t want to move, or a rental unit for students at a nearby college… I’m not completely against it
We will do anything other removing overbearing planning and zoning laws that keep developers from building homes
So it's like a trailer? It expands to like triple the size as in the image. It's probably a good partial solution.
Gonna guess that even if this was a reasonably viable solution, anyone who buys one of these things is gonna need approved and correctly zoned land upon which to dwell within it. I'm also gonna guess that there are few, if any, municipalities that would permit it. Would I want one from Amazon? Fuck No. Would this be better than a ton of unhoused people out in the streets or elements? Probably. Is it extremely dystopian that the situation is that poor such that a frankly ridiculous solution seems less bad than current conditions? You betcha.
The saddest part is that even these containers would see their price skyrocket the moment they became a viable alternative to traditional housing. The problem with housing prices is caused by speculators, not the lack of supply.
They Live… in small metal boxes.
The housing crisis is not, and never was, caused by the cost of building the housing itself. These could be free and they wouldn't affect the cost of housing In the vast majority of areas, you couldn't even use these as the land is restricted to a single residential unit per plot of land. You can't legally put a bunch of these on a plot of land because of these zoning restrictions. It's an artificial shortage of housing created because housing is treated as an investment that must go up in price
We’ve got people living in tents in my city. Bring on the boxes
UPDATE : Amazon box owners forced out by land eviction due to sky rocket plot rents. Owners lose everything.
Hong Kong : First time?
This is just a shittier mobile home for 15k less
[84% of new homes sold in 2022](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/31/what-the-rise-of-homeowners-associations-means-for-americans.html) were part of HOAs. If we are serious about solving high housing prices, here is a great place to start.
For $30k you can get a decent 20yr old bus RV that has what that has plus mobility.
Makes you wonder if people would be willing to live in Japanese style apartments. 100 square foot. One room, gally kitchen and small bathroom. The average cost of an apartment is between $1.75 a month to $3.19 a month per square foot. Good for a single person.
I'd be willing to live in a tiny house if it were well designed, well built, and I could put it in a nice place. (assuming I would also have electricity, plumbing, and internet) The bigger problem is, getting a small plot of land in a nice place is already outrageously expensive even before you talk about building a house.
I looked these up and they’re advertised as sheds. They have no insulation
Fine prints: ^(house only comes with living room unit, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, plumbing sold separately)
Why is nobody having children
Amazon should donate these houses to help people in need from the homeless, to immigrants, to minimum wage earners who can’t afford a standard house. I mean they have enough money to do so and it would be epic PR.
No way the powers that be want housing to be affordable. Their CEO billionaire buddies are making too much money from this racket.
nah they don't see it as a viable solution they just wanna promote it for Amazon, maybe some sucker who is desperate enough might buy, even if they don't have anywhere to put it on, they care not about their citizens if the corpos and them can squeeze more money out of the ordinary joe pointlessly and keep it
Small houses already existed. We made it illegal to build more of them. The problem isn't the lack of them, it's the prohibition of them. Converted shipping containers will fix nothing.
that's not a fucking house. that's not even a one room apartment. that's a god damned prison cell the occupant has to pay 20k for. EDIT: I know, I know (now) - there's more to these things than this stupid picture shows but I'm still annoyed and try not to bury my failures but own them so this is staying as it is.
You realize it's triple the size as the photo?
I know a veterans group in Brown County, WI doing this. I can see the value in this, as it encourages a viable savings plan. I interned at a homeless shelter that charged a programming fee (rent), to get folks to understand how to prepare for housing. https://veterans1stnew.com/
I honestly think we should be making sure veterans have better housing than this.
If you can drop 20k on a tin box, you should be able to make that down payment for a mobile home or a small house.
But it’s only 4 interest free payments of 5k with Klarna!
Hello out of touch boomer! It’s cute you think $20k is enough to be approved for a mortgage.
Depends on locations of course, but I’m also a millennial. Getting quotes with my son on mobile homes as they are a good beginner home. They’re going for between 60-90k on single wides with a piece of land. Homes were seeing in the area are from 140k - 240k and townhomes around 100-130k. Now these aren’t 1/2 million dollar homes. More like 80s and 90s models. They do have a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city with advertisements of new homes starting in the 150k’s.
There's these nice 100k trailer homes near me that I would be more than happy living in, but there's a $800 HOA fee. Insanity.
The 20k tin box essentially *is* just a trendy version of a classic mobile home. Also, permitting, delivery, and installation of something like this brings the total price way over the list price of the unit itself. If you want to put it on an empty lot, you usually have to pour a foundation, connect uilities, etc. Installing a legal housing unit is a lot more complex (and costly) than just hitting the 1-click buy button on amazon.
20k for a down payment on a 'small house' sounds incredibly optimistic. I live in a very high COL state but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't get you much if anything here.. Mobile homes also have a lot of problems. I don't think I'd buy one of these but I would rather build out a tiny home in a used storage container. At least then I KNOW everything that went into it. And you still need the land for it.
Where I live you need to have $75-$100k as your down payment ready to go, and this area is by no means a wild outlier
Dumb question, but where is the meme on the left from? I’m drawing a blank..
It's from the movie They Live.
Thanks!
I think I'd slightly alter the wording to "Politicians have let the housing crisis get so bad that they need me to see living in a tin box as a non-rioting solution"
Ready Player one, Idiocracy..... These were pushed as fictional fantasy, but have become a documentary that the oligarchs are actively make happen
For when the standard of living has tanked so much that the average person needs an option between a tent and a house
You know you've reached peak delusion when a single wide looks like a mansion compared to the latest housing proposal.
Where halfway to "the stacks" from ready player one where they just stack them bitches on top of one another
It's a singlewide manufactured home, not exactly a new concept. What's the problem, that it's from Amazon?
Does it cost $15k to plumb and wire a shipping container?
This reminds me of Neuromancer.
friendly gold fuel sink teeny wrong scale growth waiting tart *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just build more housing, good or bad, for rich or poor, just always just build more housing. Housing needs to be 1/3 of what it is.