Austin Startup Sees a Big Future for Little Homes
austininno.streetwise.co
austininno.streetwise.co
A 208 sq-ft. mini-studio for $600/mo (+ the up-front purchase cost, whatever that is). That's $2.88/sq-ft.
By way of example, I found a 538 sq-ft. studio in downtown Austin for $1,387/mo. That's $2.58/sq-ft.
So, by area, the Kasita is more expensive. (This should not be surprising.) The argument then becomes one of absolute dollars: the difference between a 538 sq-ft. studio and a 208 sq-ft. Kasita being fairly moot, so hey, save $600+/mo.
And I laud this: I think there's a great market for micro-housing. (See also: all the "Tiny House" shows on HGTV.) I don't understand why I need to buy a "pod" and then convince developers to put a "rack" on their lots. Just build smaller apartments: the math should work out.
This would make it easier to change employers as you only need to see if a potential employer has open rack space nearby, rather than dealing with possibly selling/buying a house or finding a suitable apartment nearby.
I find the appeal similar to the containerization technologies for computer software that have taken off recently. While having the binaries as part of the container is nice, the important part is that I can put my containers pretty much anywhere with minimal effort on my part and quickly/easily move if the current host tries charging too much. This basically is trying to do the same for housing.
Also you are not locked into the whims of the developers of the racks as much as you are with an apartment. Like making lots of noise at 3AM? Buy a pod with lots of sound insulation, same goes for someone who works night-shift and wants to sleep at 6PM on Saturday when everyone else is having a party.
We just watched one of these on Netflix and looked up some of the follow-on stories you can find on the net from the featured people. The general consensus is that after about three months you realize that the house is way too small.
I suspect the key is an identity and a setting beyond the accommodation itself. If you put a bunch of narrowboats on an industrial estate on dry land, few would go near them. The Kasitas aren't designed to float, of course, but careful attention to neighbourhood, landscape, and nearby amenities could make them just as desirable places to live.
Source: I edited Waterways World magazine for six years, worked for British Waterways for two before that, and know a fair bit about narrowboats.
It's like entering Diagon Alley into an older world:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11451-Lansdowne-St-Detroit...
...looks like a nice neighborhood, and the inside seems we'll maintained. So that's $0.04/sq-ft/month.
The old mantra holds--like any publicly available asset--if it were a great deal--it would already have been sold!
I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm curious what you have to back that statement up. Detroit is rapidly losing population[0] with no end in sight. Typically for prices to rise, there has to be some kind of demand. I guess you could just gut the supply by wholesale tearing everything down and seeing if you can sell what's left.
0. https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&...
I don't think it's unreasonable to hold an asset for that length of time if the projected value makes it worthwhile.
Ghost towns say otherwise. Property usually appreciates, given enough time, but it's never a guarantee; Detroit is dying-globalization killed manufacturing-it's a bad bet to think it'll appreciate when much of the city is already abandoned.
Can Detroit rebounce? Surely. But I don't think a smart investor would make a bet on it, outside of specific neighbourhoods and projects.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/detroit-city-c...
If Detroit ever returns it'll be slowly, organically, and not driven by speculation. Nearby neighborhoods are more attractive and inexpensive than downtown (Dearborn, Livonia, etc). Until higher-end businesses and lifestyles return to central Detroit, (not to mention basic city services), surrounding city property values will never climb.
I wish Dan Gilbert the best, but having grown up in the area, I've heard it all before.
For the former, maybe appeal to disgruntled devs who are getting priced out of the Bay?
I mean absolutely, it's a cheap deal, even all this considered, but not as good as it looks. The final cost is probably a multiple of the listing, and you're still in a neighbourhood that's sketchy. Lots of interesting stuff has been written about Detroit and the various initiatives to buy a fixer upper, things like 'if you call an ambulance or police, they don't come, or they arrive 30 minutes late', feature commonly in such articles.
208sqft sounds terrifying to me after living a year in 333sqft.
By contrast, if you're single and don't have too much stuff (say, a bed, a desk, TV, 2-person table, small couch), 450sqft is pretty easy. I spent three years living in that much space.
i wouldn't go below 400. it's just too small... studios larger than 400 tend to have real bathrooms (sink, tub/shower, and full size toilet) and real kitchens (30" sink, 30" range, 30" fridge) which are requirements for me.
feeling restricted in the kitchen is frustrating/suffering to me because i cook a lot. i think someone who doesn't cook could probably do 350.
This is pretty amusing to me in Japan, where 400 square feet is pretty far above the UPPER limit of a usual apartment for a single person. I guess that shows how culture/environment can change perception. :)
I would go so far as to say that a lot of single people live in apartments that are closer to 200-250 square feet here and that 400+ is seen as extravagant. I live in a 600 square foot apartment and people are always blown away and ask what I do with all the extra space; my apartment is intended for a family with kids.
It's definitely more of a floor sitting culture here and there are stackable floor chairs, cushions, etc. to make it more comfortable. It's also way easier to deal with guests by bringing out more cushions or floor chairs than it is to keep a bunch of actual chairs and a big table on hand.
208... I don't know, it depends on the furniture. My brother lived on 160 as a student, excluding a kitchen which was shared in the hallway, and drycleaning etc which was also centralised in the building, and it was pretty nice for a single person. Essentially a hotel room with a proper desk. It's certainly not a dream gig but it was also far from terrifying. Writing it now makes it sound really shitty but it worked, until you're 30 or so.
The world need the Sears Craftsman house again.
1. http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/house-project/overview/0,... 2. http://connorbuilding.com
* Your buddy's couch
* 8 roommates
* homelessness
* Staying in an abusive relationship because you can't find housing
When you have no extra cash, opportunity costs make some changes impossible.
For a few months last year I was apartment hunting while unemployed, and you'd think I was radioactive. I offered to pay the year's rent up front at one point and that spooked the landlord even more; apparently they thought my income was illicit.
I'm looking at you, Google and Facebook.
"The idea is to have developers purchase racks and individuals purchase Kasitas that fit into them. The developers would make money with homeowner association fees. And homeowners would own their Kasita, paying about $600 a month -- or about half of an equivalent studio in central Austin." [from linked source]
But I'm still even confused by this wording and the $600 tag - is it just cheaper rent in another form and a different ownership model?
From reading a couple articles on this the only consistent thing I've heard is that they are shooting for a price that is well below $1,600.
heres is also a nice counter agrument to Kasita.
[1] https://kasita.com/kasita/ [2] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/micro-modular-apartme...
I disagree. Why would I want to keep my pod, crane it down, put it on a truck and ship it to a new rack? Presumably I'd need to box up all my things that would get shaken around and broken in transit. It'd be easier to just put all those boxes in a truck and then unpack them in my new apartment.
The construction cost isn't the factor driving up rents, it's the market, location and the zoning.
They're very pretty little units, but I'm not sure they do much to solve the underlying affordability problem.
I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the promotion of "micro living" as something chic. I don't like the idea of legitimising inadequate housing. Tiny houses are barely tolerable for young single people and utterly miserable for families.
With a handful of exceptions (Hong Kong, Macao etc) urban areas have no shortage of places to put good-sized homes; What they lack is the political will to allow sufficient construction. Housing is increasingly seen as an investment vehicle rather than a basic human need.
Worse, declining house prices are seen as a political problem.
On a serious note, I am intrigued by the concept of pluggable apartment buildings with varying amenities with varying "berthing" fees. I buy a standard sized apartment model that fits with the layout I like. I cannot see it for families, but it would be an interesting idea for single / couples.
1) considering my Parent's trailer was a lot better built than the HUD house I grew up in there is some sarcasm in that sentence.
How much of the messy stuff like plumbing, kitchen, toilets, electricity, HVAC is handled by the "rack" vs. the "box"?
The big problems that I'm aware of with it are that moving your unit can be a headache - think "transportable" not "portable," that units tend to depreciate (vs appreciation for permanent structures), and the ever-present concern about tornadoes in much of the country.
And yes, it's called a trailer park. As I understand it, you generally purchase and own your own mobile home, but you're leasing a pad from the park owner along with the costs for utility hookups.
The other problem he had was that because he owned the mobile home, to get out of the whole situation he had to either find someone to buy it (and take over the space or move it) or he had to get it out of the space himself. The residual value of a 20+ year old mobile home is really pretty low if it hasn't been kept up well, but I think he eventually sold it off to someone for a small amount of money just to avoid having to fix it up enough to be moved.
9 X $600 = $5400/month, pretty lucrative for a developer.
One would hope that prices would drop over time due to competition.
Perhaps the "free-market" is not the optimal distribution system for housing. Said another way, perhaps the manner in which we meet our most basic needs of shelter, security, and stability should not be left to the free market.
A corollary then might be, perhaps if social and political frameworks had priority over (but not to the exclusion of) economic frameworks runaway real-estate prices might not so inevitably lead to the unnecessary but unyielding march of the unwilding of our environment (when there are massive tracts of dilapidated real-estate crying out for redevelopment), gentrification of communities and the concomitant loss the cultures of those pushed out into either the diaspora or relocated into projects, and the hand-to-mouth existence that many of us experience, even full-time and well paid persons.
$600 houses are a red-herring to the real issues, not a solution to anything.
Using real estate as a store of wealth, like gold, is incredibly toxic for society, because it basically takes money (and in the case of real estate, land) out of the economy to mitigate fiscal risk.
In the middle of a city? If you have someone sitting on land waiting for the price to go up and you threaten them with "not using it," then odds are they'll put a cheap building on it and sell storage space or something. What would that accomplish?
I saw this in action. I wanted to buy an old firehouse for conversion to owner-occupied loft and workspace. Current owner had purchased it in the early 1980's for a few tens of thousands of dollars from the city and the neighborhood had declined-- only half-joking it was the corner of Crack and Stab just down from Needlestick Park. The owner had moved cross-country and left the property and it's value had declined but it was adjacent to a gentrifying neighborhood and a short walk to a city bus stop. When I tracked them down they never responded to calls or letters, the local attorney they had last used had no contact with them, and they had stopped paying taxes. The city finally declared that they would seize and auction it off not because of the back taxes but because the sidewalk was not being cleared of snow and the exterior was unmaintained. Suddenly the absentee owner paid up half his delinquent taxes and let a local guy who repairs cars park vehicles in the bays, etc. Great improvement, now there are beat up cars and junk and the roof has started to collapse but because the sidewalk is clear, it's good.
Politically, it is not solved.
Taxes are at the heart of politics. Without taxes to raise revenue most governments would have no realistic power source.
Property tax, as already implemented many places in the U.S.A., already accomplish the l.v.t. to a lesser degree. And many people have a HUGE problem with it. The argument goes as thus: The government (in the U.S.A) does not have the right to unlawfully take my property. I paid for my property, so it is mine. Thus, the government can't take my property because I did nothing.
Basically, if you are a property owner you must have the resources to pay property tax or you will not be a property owner for long. If you are not a property owner it is getting progressively more difficult to stay in the city limits if you do not have a lease or rent an apartment, effectively making it illegal to be homeless.
If you are homeless, because of the U.S. Patriot Act, it is nearly impossible to get a bank account or a drivers license unless you register with a recognized homeless shelter. I volunteered at a homeless shelter for a few years; they aren't great places to hang around, even if you're desperate. And, get this, in some states if you own an R.V. and live in it legally and full time, you don't have a "physical" address. So guess what, you're homeless. In these states you actually have to lie on your drivers license application in order to get a drivers license or a bank account stating that your personal mailbox (like a post office box but private) is your "physical address". And when you do this (lie about your physical address) you're committing a felony. We're talking about retired people, full-time political consultants chasing campaigns, and people that just like to travel.
Simply remove onerous restrictions on development and you'd see the free market react appropriately.
By and large, land isn't undeveloped because the owners stubbornly refuse to develop it. It's undeveloped because laws make developing it impossible or prohibitively expensive.
I agree that tiny houses are a feel-good distraction.
In 2010, during the Great Recession, he said: ...After a few years of such imbalances, the country unsurprisingly ended up with far too many houses. There were three ways to cure this overhang: (1) blow up a lot of houses, a tactic similar to the destruction of autos that occurred with the ‘cash-for-clunkers’ program; (2) speed up household formations by, say, encouraging teenagers to cohabitate, a program not likely to suffer from a lack of volunteers or; (3) reduce new housing starts to a number far below the rate of household formations.
So, unless you're arguing that between 2010 and now either we blew up a lot of houses or Buffett doesn't know what he is talking about, then I still don't an argument for tiny houses as compelling.
The macro economic issues (massive capital accumulation by the 1%, stagnant wages for the majority of workers, etc) are more in play than NIMBYism and zoning. I'd be interested whether or not you're active in zoning issues in your community or how it is that you came to the conclusion that zoning boards everywhere are responsible for unfordable housing.
In the desirable places, every terrible house is used and potentially worth millions. Due to NIMBYism, there are restrictions on development.
In contrast, other less-desirable places have made it very easy to build houses (and often even provided tax incentives), leading to over-building. But without corresponding jobs, those houses lie vacant.
You can simultaneously have housing shortages and housing excesses.
> The macro economic issues (massive capital accumulation by the 1%, stagnant wages for the majority of workers, etc) are more in play than NIMBYism and zoning.
To take an example relevent to HN, do you really think the reason that even well-paid developers can't buy houses in the Bay area is "stagnant wages?" Wages have increased massively over the past 5 years, but NIMBYism prevents the addition of new houses to meet the demand.
The problem is more the 5-10% of older people who got lucky with real estate than a conspiracy by the 1%.
> I'd be interested whether or not you're active in zoning issues in your community or how it is that you came to the conclusion that zoning boards everywhere are responsible for unfordable housing.
My mother is on the selectboard of a small Vermont town and she sees this all the time. There's a decent amount of demand for new affordable housing, but the existing power base of voters overwhelmingly demands that there be hard limits on how much new construction there is every year. They're particularly opposed to apartments. The end result is that housing is rather expensive despite there being an abundance of available land and the young families who would like to move to the area are priced out.
+
>Right now, the market wants to build - we should let it. )
vs
( >I would be much, much more apt to lay the blame for the current housing crisis at the feet of misguided zoning and NIMBYism [and I'm going to leave this alone, since it's basically trolling (often dressed up in pseudo-leftist rhetoric)]
&
>If the state wants to step in and build more housing too, great, but first it should get out of the way.) =(?) ( >We need to build more houses, for anyone, as quickly as possible and as much as possible if we want to shift the curve of rental pricing.) & ( >I agree that tiny houses are a feel-good distraction.)
I'm first going to say, my initial response was semi-simplistic/not point-by-point, because your comment doesn't exactly unpack or follow too neatly. But, since you've taking my comment apart seemingly point by painful-point, I simply want to go back to point out that your argument is inconsistent.
Do you think that the "market" is omniscient and will not error? No, it is just a bunch of people and companies doing business within economic, business, and political environments. So before you go writing off government from being able to contribute anything to the solution, remember that all those houses that weren't built where people want to live in them...
>The problem is that there's a massive disconnect between where houses exist and where they're demanded.
...yeah, the market made that cluster fuuuu possible in coordination with our government.
so my mother is a partner at the largest private developer in the state and my dad recently wrapped working as city manager for one of the fastest growing towns in the state. zoning, private vs public land use, eminent domain, affordable housing are conversations i'm familiar with. i was on the board of habitat for humanity in a smallish town during my first years out of college, even.
i'll leave it with this. it's a mess of issues. that's clearly not a "thesis" level argument, i just say it to mean, it's not nimbyism. it's not simply zoning. housing is central to being human. it is where we return and reset daily, and by virtue of that it is intertwined with our personal, professional, and political lives. cheap housing won't fix it. smaller houses won't fix it. more housing won't fix it.
if you ran a race, every day, restarting every day, and every day you lost that race, just in a different way, and then someone said, "sprint faster when you start", you'd probably say something like "eff you, clearly there are other things going on besides my start". because you can fix your start, but three days ago you lost because of your pacing. and a week ago you lost because of endurance. and a month ago you lost because of shin splints... well, maybe, you think, maybe you're running the wrong race. or maybe you're not supposed to race. or, who the eff knows.
that's what i mean. yeah. it's a mess of issues. but that doesn't mean we need to solve each issue. maybe we need to back up and, get some perspective, and re-frame the problem.
In many part of, say the Rust Belt, or many innner cities there are tons of abandoned buildings and houses. If only the repairs and maintenance costs decreased, a lot of people could use them.
A world where most housing becomes disposable (i.e. it is not directly tied to the land it sits on) would be very different from the one we currently live in.
In any case, at least for building straight up, there is scope for improvement even with the land remaining a bottleneck.
The general rule of thumb is $100-200 a square foot for houses so a fairly typical 2,000 square foot house is going to probably cost in the neighborhood of $300K to build. That assumes the land has water, electricity, sewer/septic, etc.
So for fairly typical exurb/suburban locations (i.e. not Bay area, Manhattan, or back of beyond), the house and the land are probably roughly the same value.
So basically the trailer park model?
[edit:] yep, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10303455
Cars primarily because cars today have a lot more "stuff" in them--in many cases, safety related. Although I'm not sure given improved reliability that the $/mile cost isn't less
I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of some fresh food has dropped but it's probably not a lot cheaper across the board. Mechanized farming has been around for a long time.
Home and car repair are largely a function of labor. There's relatively little benefit in either case to improved industrial processes. The process of building a house hasn't changed much and manufactured housing has never really taken off for a variety of reasons.
Just because le Corbusier's brutalist mid-20th-century vision gave urban manufactured housing a multigenerational bad name doesn't mean the whole project is stupid.
I wonder if Habitat for Humanity or some other experienced org with an ethical core could have something to add to this project.
But the US has huge empty countryside, vastly expansive residential areas, AND, for the most part, houses that to European sensibilities seem like made for dolls (thin wood panels for walls, cheap construction, no concrete or real bricks to be seen, etc). And parts are much cheaper than in Europe.
Both of these factors should keep prices very very low. $600 per month micro homes? You can get $600 per month regular, spacious home, in a city like Berlin -- and much lower in other places.
Urbanites & Europeans don't seem to grasp how far it is between the affordable/cheap housing and the "tech centers" in downtown wherever (or how vast the USA is in general). I've got a reasonably good housing price in the 'burbs, but that means a 40+ minute drive in (leaving before 6:00AM, every minute thereafter = a minute longer drive), and 90+ minute drive back (leaving at 4:00PM prompt, again gets worse the later I leave). Sure, there's lots of cheap land not far out, but a major media company isn't going to relocate there, and us contractors aren't going to relocate just to be close to it.
We also average bigger homes, roughly twice the size as in Europe.
Well, I'm probably an exception, as I've travelled all across the US (several coast to coast road trips and such, from Highway 1 to Route 66 and loads more).
But I don't see a 10, 20 or 30 mile commute as a problem. He have those in Europe too, and in much worse highways or congestion in some cases (e.g. inside the city one can spend 30 minutes to get across 5 miles).
>We also average bigger homes, roughly twice the size as in Europe.
True, but also a lot of trailers and projects, which one doesn't see much, if at all, in Europe. The closest will be some small, confined, old buildings in Eastern Europe. (And I think our "projects" equivalent are much better).
On the commute you're assuming that because driving 30 miles down the highway is easy you don't also have to cross through the city once you get there to get to the office. Take that 30 mile commute, say that takes 20-25 minutes to get 25 miles of it down the highway to the city, now you're in the city, so now you add the 30 minutes it takes to get through those last 5 miles now that you're in the city dealing with the same traffic as a city resident. Now you have the reason why the commute is worse. You still have the same commute through the city, unless the office and is on the edge of the city and you live on that end as opposed to the opposite side so you don't have to go through or around.
Access to transit (if you're in the boonies I can't get there without a car)
good coffee shops
Decent bike infrastructure
Ease of physical meetings with clients and other companies, which still matter
etc.
But certain urban centers have become popular living locations for (mostly) people right out of school. They may also be near customers, especially in finance and related industries. (Even when engineering offices were in the suburbs/exurbs, it's always been fairly common for enterprise tech companies to have downtown sales and consulting offices.)
Which is an (invisible) cost created by big lot sizes. Which has many nasty consequences. It creates scarcity of housing, longer commutes, requires more infrastructure (roads, power lines, drainage, internet, etc). It in turns makes the economy as a whole less efficient, and in consequence less competitive. Salaries are insufficient, etc.
I'd argue though good schools in NC is a relative term. (I'm a native, and a product of their schools which I often argue I'm successful in spite of, so I can make that criticism.)
I do know lots of tech workers that live in the middle of no where, work remote, and make 6-figures and live like kings while living on large plots of land paying very little in taxes and have mortgages equivalent of a car payment, but they live 2 hours from anything and I'm not sure what they do for Internet beyond basic DSL. If you have a purely WFH job this is doable. They only have to leave their house once or twice a week maybe for a trip into town on the weekend and end up making up for it by traveling heavily to central offices or customer locations for big projects or F2F situations.
You can ask the same question of companies, I often wonder why SF companies are even based in such an expensive cities when their workers can do their job from almost any physical location. The issue still is proximity, they want their workers to be close to each other and close to a talent pool they can pull from.
Even with highways and fast travel times to the city doesn't stop you from suffering the same issues with traffic and other commuters once you get to the city. I live outside the city I work 30 miles away and 50% of my commute is getting from the city's edge, to the city center, dealing with tons of lights, random traffic jams, finding parking, and walking blocks to my office. I lose 2 hours of my life a day of personal time for cheaper housing, and I've considered many times moving to a more expensive location just to gain almost 8 hours of my week back.
In many cases, not even that. I have coworkers who live in rural areas who only have satellite as an option.
I'd live in the mountains, miles from anyone, and work remote if I thought I could get decent broadband and find a company that was okay with me working 100% remote. Finding the job is the easier of the two, most place I want to live have little more than electricity and telephone services.
Houses out in the country are indeed pretty cheap but if you work in the city, then you pay for it in terms of a long, ugly commute.
If you are a remote tech worker, or your job happens to be in the next town, then you can have a large, inexpensive house on many acres of land with a 10-minute commute. Lots of people happily live like this, but they have no presence on HN. I know people who bought their first houses in their early 20's but they lived in towns you will never hear of.
$64/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/504-1st-St-Rolfe-IA-50581/...
$142/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/288-Gilly-Holw-Cumberland-...
$156/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1522-11th-St-Columbus-NE-6...
$160/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4309-Polly-Ave-Gillette-WY...
$168/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2516-Jefferson-Dr-Bluefiel...
$174/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/716-Main-Ave-Denton-MT-594...
$177/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1418-8th-St-S-Virginia-MN-...
$206/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/415-Routon-St-Paris-TN-382...
$212/mo: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/912-17th-St-Racine-WI-5340...
Even something like Section 8 ends up putting upward pressure on housing prices (it removes some of the bottom end of the market by paying landlords the difference between the market price for rent and what HUD deems the renter can afford). I don't object to the idea of the program, but it is easy to look at it and see that paying landlords the prevailing rental rate is going to dis-incentivize the creation of cheaper housing.
There's also a lot of friction in zoning processes, so incumbents have a fair shot of overriding good sense.
I can't take this solution seriously as long as I pay almost the same price for a loft apartment with exposed brick walls, bamboo flooring, a washer and dryer, and a number of other nice things that I'm too lazy to list. I especially can't take it seriously knowing that there are communities practically begging for people to reverse the trend of the rural exodus.
Granted, the tech community isn't as strong here, but you'll still probably figure out a way to make things work if you've got out-of-state connections and don't mind dealing with our slightly confusing tax policy.
It's simply that desirable land is so incredibly expensive.
Unless these homes can be stacked to the sky in an affordable way, I have my doubts that this will change anything.
In San Diego it's illegal to build a house unless it comes with 2 parking spaces. An apartment requires 1.25 spaces. This is ridiculous, of course, and part of why most US cities that were built after the 40's are dreadful.
Who wants to live in a space the size of your college dorm room past your freshman year?
Also, all it takes is one bad neighbor and your life is hell since you have no space buffer. If not a booming stereo at all hours, then something as simple as slamming doors to wake you up at all hours.
Young men, maybe, could deal with this for a short while. The turnover otherwise would be very high.
I am thoroughly sold on tiny houses. I don't need a McMansion to be happy. Don't want one, in fact.
But, I don't like these and don't find them attractive, at all. They have the negatives of an apartment and none of the benefits of a tiny house, as I see them. The "rack" concept is antithetical to the independence I want from a tiny house...if I hate my landlord (as history indicates I will), or otherwise want to move, I have to relocate my whole house to another compatible rack. That virtually guarantees I can't move to where I want to move (because there's no way this is going to be hugely popular). So, I'm stuck selling the thing. Might as well buy an apartment (also a thing I would never do).
I think they're trying to solve several problems at once, and ending up with a suboptimal solution for all of them. One problem is high rents in downtown Austin (which truly has gotten out of hand, and will only get worse as long as Austin remains the fastest growing city in the US), another problem is home ownership which is out of reach for more people than ever (for a variety of reasons, and it is most pronounced in growing cities), and finally I think the tiny house thing is a backlash against the suburban dream of huge houses. The thing is, though, that this won't be affordable...the small number of available locations to "park" your tiny house will guarantee the landlord is in a position of strength when negotiating rent so this will be more expensive than other tiny homes in general. The issue of wanting to own your own home isn't solved when you don't own the land it sits on, as you're still a renter with the added stress of what to do with the damned thing when you move.
Anyway, I like that tiny houses are becoming more "normal". I don't like that the model for how it's being implemented looks a lot like renting.
I.e. from tech-standpoint it might be feasible.
From consumer standpoint - price they are offering - not sure, we need to see price of the "kasitas". Unless something drastically changed during last few year, it should be possible to find decent "traditional" apartment for +- same amount. And if you account for price of "kasita" - it might actually become on par of fancier appartments.
But most risk is in infrastructure for that project - it might get prohibitively expensive. and $1m does not sound like a lot to make that happen, unless they plan investors building "racks" AND pay for bringing up utilities AND dealing with state/MUD.
What I'm more worried about is insulation, humidity, and other stuff like mold and durability. Also those types of house are not really viable if you can't sit down just outside next to it if there is too much noise or pollution.
So to be honest, it seems to be more a problem of urban planning than anything else, which can be political. A tiny house is interesting if other parameters makes it interesting.
[1] http://sf.curbed.com/2016/4/5/11365144/oakland-rent-eviction...
It's scary at the same time. Humans are getting smaller and smaller and more irrelevant and powerless and less individual. In the future we'll probably all live in little pods under some kind of gigantic government that controls our lives. Maybe we'll be happy, but we'll be shadows of the diverse and complex beings we once were.
Maybe we'll be happy, but we'll be shadows of the
diverse and complex beings we once were
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/04/05/boston-housin...
$2,000/mo for 420sqft
Seaport rents are particularly extreme for reasons that I confess I don't fully understand but you definitely get into diminishing returns as you decrease apartment size.
In very general terms, in the US, Kasita will be a tough sell. In most places land is cheap enough that something like the Rural Studio $20k home designs, which are around 550 sq ft, are going to prove significantly more cost-effective.
AirBnB has a lot of research and data on housing, the market needs and prices all over the world. Finding common grounds with AirBnB (and having them invest) might give them the strategic partnership needed to find their product-market fit.
(And, personally, I'd have no problem living in a mobile home in a trailer court, were it not for the people I'd likely live next to.)
http://www.amazon.com/Shafers-Book-Backyard-Sheds-Houses/dp/...
100 to 120 square feet. And they are (or can be made) transportable.
Now, pick any modern house. You will find almost no innovation compared to a house that is 100 years old. You'll need to bring your own chair, since the house just has empty rooms. Think of all the things you need to do in order to live. Shouldn't the architect of the house take all of these activities into consideration? Le Corbusier uses such examples as -- shouldn't there be a place to store artwork, so that there is always something different on the wall? Shouldn't there be recessed lighting, so there is no dusty chandelier to clean? Shouldn't there be as much natural light as possible, to avoid the need for artificial light in the first place?
Shouldn't the house be a machine for living, just as the car is a machine for driving? Where style is not bolted on, but rather the formal outcome of functionality?
Another phrase he uses that I really like, "the answer to a question well posed," or, "the solution to a problem well posed."
But anyway, I'm rambling. Read "Toward An Architecture." Any book that gets a new translation at almost 100 years old is probably worth a gander.