Hacker News Reader

On one end of the spectrum is Blu Homes (https://www.bluhomes.com/) which builds pre-fabricated homes that aren't quite so boxy as mobile homes. We looked at investing in them when they started up and perhaps getting one of their smaller units for a piece of land up in the Sierra foothills[1].

Shipping container homes are also a sort of niche thing at the moment. Realistically though it isn't the walls that cost the money on a house, its all the stuff that goes in the walls :-) (wiring, pipes, insulation, Etc.)

From an extreme perspective you have the Broad Group in China who was building pre-fab skyscrapers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_(Changsha)) that would house a thousand families.

[1] I ended up doing neither for different reasons but I know a couple who bought one and they really enjoy it.

> Shipping container homes are also a sort of niche thing at the moment.

I spent a lot of time researching these homes. Outside of situations where they're being used as glorified sheds, it's not really cheaper to construct a home with them. Which is a bit disappointing, because there is a certain "green" aspect to them that I find appealing.

You want to be real careful with the paint they use, it’s very far from green or healthy.

Blu Homes (from their website) are from $200K - $550K. That might sound cheap in some areas but if you're comparing to a traditional "manufactured home" it's close to an order of magnitude higher.

Absolutely. It is "cheap" when the median price of a home is $1.5M it is "expensive" when the median price of a home is $150K.

The point though is that it addresses the 'variation in pre-manufactured homes' question. There are people out there building pre-manufactured homes, that mix up the formula with high end amenities.

As I see it, there are two vectors on these things, their shapes, and what you can get inside of them. The traditional mobile home type home is limited to 'single' straight and long and 'double wide' and long. That accommodates and optimizes for the lot shapes that typical mobile home parks allocate for these homes.

The market value and construction cost are two very different things.

That is true, but looking at the whole picture which is you start with a lot, then you add a house, and now you have an improved lot with a house on it. That thing you end up with at the end, has a market value which can be compared with other houses in the area for their market value.

My home insurance covers the cost to rebuild my house in the event it is destroyed, but it protects the market value of my house because even if it is destroyed I can rebuild it to the same size and specification and have a house with possibly added market value because its made of newer material (and I would add more outlets than it currently has :-)

I agree that those two costs are very different things, but their linkage is, for me, inescapable.

With a lot of those $1.5M homes, a large LARGE portion of the value is the land/location, not so much the physical structure too. You gotta price that in for these types of "great deal" homes.

Those bluhomes are really expensive. You could have a bespoke home built in-situ for those prices. What is their strength?

7 days of on site assembly. If you are building a cabin in the Sierras (for example) where the building season is short, and the availability of skilled carpenters, plumbers, electricians, Etc. is challenging, you can transport this pre-built home and erect it.

I think there are a number of companies building modular homes. IKEA has a join venture with a construction company for example [0]. Just that construction isn't generally the problem. We know how to build relatively cheaply.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0dbRKACktA [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgu7ZK894gs

People will find ways to diminish others, but a recent manufactured home on a well-kempt lot just looks like a normal house, even if it has a simple roofline and is conspicuously devoid of brick above the floorline. In much of rural America, this kind of house doesn't look out of place, and is worlds apart from the image of cramped disheveledness that people associate with a suburban or edge-of-town trailer park.

What's ironic is this kind of home ownership is fairly commonplace among people who aren't high earners, yet higher earners are moving into cookie-cutter subdivisions in distant exurbs of major cities and into homes that are built rapidly with poor materials. And yet there's no such stigma there.

> ...yet higher earners are moving into cookie-cutter subdivisions in distant exurbs of major cities and into homes that are built rapidly with poor materials. And yet there's no such stigma there.

Ever hear of McMansions? That's derogatory. I think people who buy them are shallow and have no taste. They're just happy with the faux status that "muh big house" brings.

I have friends in Mount Airy, Maryland, and I've seen tons of these things tossed up on old farmland covered in styrofoam faux stucco, brick and stone. They are often just plopped down in a field with nothing around them but open air. It looks so hideous when you come upon a large field with a dozen large homes standing in the open with cars in front. And then to add to that, the juxtaposition of barns, silos, cows or corn fields opposite the road. It almost looks like they're growing them.

Trailer homes are pretty incredible when you think about it. They're the closest we've come yet to building houses on an assembly line in a factory.

People are already building house components on an assembly line in a factory. By components, I mean entire rooms and sections of houses.

I wish some brave soul would undertake the task of creating, I don't know, the VW bug of trailer homes. Doesn't have to be a luxury thing, just something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality, just like the millions of others like it.

If "the VW Bug of" means a willingness of the manufacturer to modify the traditional chassis and body layout to better accomplish design goals, then GMC did build something along the lines of what you describe. ("something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality, just like the millions of others like it.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_motorhome

I think he meant an assembly-line manufactured small house with strong personality & branding that people can fall in love with. Just like they fell in love with the Volkswagen Beetle.

That seems like the kind of thing that happens more by accident than deliberate attempt.

In any case the equivalent would be an Airstream trailer.

Edit: I see someone below also mentioned Airstream.

However, it happened on purpose with the GMC motorhome. (The personality part, not the trailer part.)

People are already building house components on an assembly line in a factory. By components, I mean entire rooms and sections of houses.

As in prefabs? Of course. But trailer/manufactured homes take it further. It's one single unit.

If "the VW Bug of" means a willingness of the manufacturer to modify the traditional chassis and body layout to better accomplish design goals, then GMC did build something along the lines of what you describe

Close, but again, no RVs. I'm looking at trailer homes, which at the moment all come kinda country and kinda kitsch. That's all you get. I think it would be incredible if there was something that was contemporary, reasonably cheap, and has personality. Like a VW bug.

EDIT: Forgot that double-wides are typically transported in two, so not one single unit, and they kind of are a trailer home. Yeah, nevermind then.

Modular homes are virtually indistinguishable from ground-up-stick-built homes, and are most definitely not prefabs.

https://www.wausauhomes.com/ and http://www.wisconsinhomesinc.com/ are a pretty good example of what you can do. Either they typically ship in 3-6 sections and are stitched together on-site by your framers, electricians and plumbers, or they ship wall and roof segments that take 2-5 days to stitch together. From that point on, it's the same process as your standard custom home, excepting that the frame was built in an environmentally controlled environment.

Edit: they're definitely not what you are referring to by "cheap" though. You'll probably save a bit of money over totally custom, but not along the lines of a tiny home either.

Modular homes that are not stick-built onsite tend to appreciate a lot less. And if your assessor or appraiser categorizes it as a manufactured home it is even less. Try to sell one to find out how much of a local stigma they have, even though they are perfectly fine and are usually built out of 2x4s too. But I heard people saying they don't shop at Ikea because it is a "cookie cutter" store. Buying a house is often a status issue.

Buying a house is often a status issue.

If the Tech Worker class wants to do the world some good, then bucking the "stick-built in the dirt" expectations of society would seem to be an area where we could do a lot of good. If we as a buying cohort gave such homes cachet through economic and social power, then the cost of building homes and new housing stock would be reduced through modern manufacturing and economies of scale. More people would be able to buy higher quality homes for less, all up and down the socioeconomic ladder.

A significant chunk of the cost of modular building is in transportation, and there's only just so much you can do for the overall cost when most of it is in materials anyway (gas and wood are very variable costs).

Back when I was looking at building, the total price outcome really wasn't substantially different for very similar plans.

Part of the problem is that it's labor and materials intensive. Even if modular homes became more popular, the transportation cost alone means that you're not going to be buying from out of state in most cases. Also, keep in mind that houses are around for decades if not centuries. If a house cost $50k and I could swap it out every 10 years for a newer model on the same property, that might be worth it. Sadly, that is not and will likely not ever be the case.

A significant chunk of the cost of modular building is in transportation

It's a chicken and egg problem. If the market were bigger, there would be more factories, with one locally sited.

there's only just so much you can do for the overall cost when most of it is in materials anyway

A big part of the cost is labor. Economies of scale can fix this by making labor far more efficient and replacing part of it with factory automation, but the market has to be big enough to keep many local factories busy for that to work.

If a house cost $50k and I could swap it out every 10 years for a newer model on the same property, that might be worth it. Sadly, that is not and will likely not ever be the case.

Houses are designed to last only 20 years in Japan.

Here's an architecture student who build his own small trailer home to have a place to live while studying: https://www.tu.no/artikler/na-har-sigurd-19-fatt-smart-strom...

(In Norwegian, but there are pictures and a diagram.)

In short: 130 sq.ft. trailer home, built with structural insulated panels on a boat trailer for around €30k in total. Bathroom, kitchen, sleeping area, room for four people. Google Sketch as design program. "Smart" control unit for electricity, e.g. it turns off the water heater when the electric stove is turned on, so the total power draw never exceeds the current limit where he's plugged in. And remote control from a smartphone app.

He built his own rather than buying a caravan because he wanted e.g. better insulation for winter use and full-size kitchen appliances.

Exactly! That's what I've been saying all along.

The "Tiny Home" trend is "I make way too much but want to show my opulence with virtue signalling of "I'm rich enough to build dinky"

Versus a trailer. I live in a trailer with my wife in Indiana. It is portable. Its a bit smaller than what we want, but we own the trailer out right. Our total utilities (land rental, electricity, internet, water, sewer, trash) is $500/mo. I make $69k as a sysad, and my wife is currently attending Harvard online. No loans, and paid up front.

I've talked with quite a few people who were in between apartments and such, and recommended a trailer. We've either got laughed at, told it was beneath them (knowing we live in one), or gave otherwise derisive comments or gestures showing that 'its just a trailer'.

So yeah, I (clearance'd system admin) and my wife (getting Masters at Harvard Online)... Yep. Trailer trash.

how much did you buy the trailer? What's it like living in a trailer?

It's interesting that your complaint doesn't seem to be against the use of the "trailer trash" stereotype, but your inclusion in it. And in the process, you manage to stereotype other people.

Well, in this thread we have a lot of implicit (and some explicit) derogatory stereotypes of people who live in larger houses, and nobody seems to mind. Plus, trailer trash absolutely exist. But they frequently don't live in trailers.

Nobody is trash.

Not at all. Then you misunderstand the tone and how I write.

What I was trying to show was that even professionals can even live in trailers. It is nothing to be ashamed of. And in some ways, actually provides more mobility than having a house does.

The problem is that many still think that someone who lives in one is trailer trash. Yet, I see many of the same people swooning about tiny houses, and pumping upwards of 150k into one. And those are "ergonomic", "classy", "eco chic" - and they're a fraction of the size of a trailer.

But trailer's are "bad".

> The "Tiny Home" trend is "I make way too much but want to show my opulence with virtue signalling of "I'm rich enough to build dinky"

Or, "Trailer homes are fine but I want something more stylish than a box."

Where in Indiana? $500/mo strikes me as a little on the higher side. In my town in Indiana (Whiting), you could rent an apartment for roughly that price, although I guess it depends on the size. And you can buy a house for <$100k which is less than 2x your salary.

What are the advantages of a trailer vs. a small (not "tiny") home?

Bloomington. We have some of the highest rates for rental properties and apartments in Indiana. Downtown, costs are upwards of $1000/mo, not including all utilities.

Right now, we're saving for a house along with paying for Harvard. We don't want a house here, primarily because we know we're going to ending up on the East coast.

At our local hackerspace, we had someone construct a tiny home. They ended up making so many compromises that it was a lousy not-even-a-house.

In our trailer, we have 2 bedrooms, a full bath, full kitchen, and living room. Its small, but its like a house for the most part. We'd like a study and a craft/hacker room, but thats later.

>something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality

Some people feel that way about Airstream trailers.

Trailer homes are pretty amazing, especially these days. One of my relations lived for a time in one, and it was nicer than any apartment I occupied in college, that's for sure!

I'm a big fan of prefab construction [shout out to Buckminster Fuller] -- the topic always brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from the movie "True Stories" [obviously tongue-in-cheek] :

"Metal buildings are the dream that architects had at the beginning of the 20th century. But they, themselves, don't realize it. That's because it doesn't take an architect to build a metal building. You just order it out of a catalog; it comes with a bunch of guys who put it together in a few days, maybe a week."

Don't forget the tax savings involved in laying some cement down on your vacation property for a trailer instead of building a tiny home there.

Not quite a trailer but living in a decked out Sprinter van makes you a climber or a hipster, but definitely not poor.

I too have been thinking similar to this. Been doing it for years; taking notes, saving pages and stories.

I've got a few ideas how to expand and scale in ways that I think is not really being done, and have been planning a trip to look more into these as a possible base plan: https://www.escapetraveler.net/traveler

I think good looking is important, and then branch into three lines, pine focused on super affordable, another with luxury and multiple uses, and another with expand-ability.

I had initially looked at some spaces in TN that could ramp this kind of production up, but now I see it would need seed money to actually get off the ground.

I think these could solve the problems of several groups with different goals, and that is exciting.

My company builds sheds and garages, but we have a couple of 12x24' designs that look like tiny homes. They have a front porch and two lofts inside. They are not finished inside, mainly just a shell building. We sell a lot of them to farmers (for hired hand housing) and hunters.

Here is a link to our cabin/office list:

https://ksshedbuilder.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cP...

I really dug this trailer-based development project in Palm Springs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4vz5Ms0rE They were able to find a manufacturer who would customize the design, and then they also did some post-hoc renovations after the homes were delivered. Plus some custom decks and carports. Seems like a really nice result for a good price.

I bought a 920sq ft, 30 year old trailer home for $50,000 in a lovely community and I love it. I don't pay land taxes, instead pay about $600/month in rent on the land (equivalent to land taxes in my area - New Jersey). For reference, in my community people are not allowed to sublet/rent to others and houses are spaced apart about 3 car widths. Highly recommend to everyone!

The upscale trailer homes are branded as "manufactured homes" and come in modules that piece together in more appealing ways than a double-wide.

I really wish a company would make modular homes that are actually modular, in that you could start with a 'tiny home' module, then a few years down the line add a 'bedroom and master bath' module and turn the original bedroom into a child's space, and so on. The end result might be at a premium over getting a big house all at once, but in the meantime you'd get the benefit of being able to invest most of your money instead of sinking it into a mortgage.

There'd be a lot of waste with that with pipes and electrical connections leading no where and at best lots of extra framing around the non existing doors that would be cut out to install the new section. There's also the issue of how to deal with the roof and cladding that would have to be sealed completely between the two sections against water and pests. It's doable but there's a lot of unavoidable work that'd have to be done to connect the two bits properly on top of whatever additional site preparation to extend the footprint of the foundation.

That work would be a big portion of the cost of adding on to a house much like additions are made now.

It would probably need to be constructed from standalone modules with something akin to an airlock to get between them. Even then whatever you save by buying piece-at-a-time might still end up more expensive than just building a bigger house and blocking off parts until you need them.

Imagine buying a 1000 square foot home, with a second story locked and available as an in-app purchase!

No. "Manufactured Home" has a specific, legal meaning in the USA. They are also referred to as "HUD Code" homes. "HUD Code" refers to the building code under which they are constructed. There are multi-section Manufactured Homes (informally called "double wides"), and single-section Manufactured Homes (informally called "single wides").

Manufactured Homes used to be called "Mobile Homes", and that term is still sometimes used, but it has no legal meaning; the last "Mobile Home" was built in 1976, before the HUD Code was codified.

"Modular Homes" also has a distinct meaning. Modular Homes are different than Manufactured Homes because they are built to different building codes - basically to whatever local or state building codes apply where the Modular Home will be sited. Modular Homes (informally, "Mods") are typically more expensive because they are generally fancier, but also because of the additional cost in constructing a home to varying (and usually more stringent) local and state building codes.

I'm a software developer, but I know a lot about this because my family owned a manufactured home dealership for four decades. And, I wrote and sell MH dealership management software.

The reason the stereotypes exist is because of trailer parks, not trailer homes right? I could be wrong, but I was always under the impression the issue was rundown parks and terrible neighbors, rather than a serious flaw of the trailer home itself.

I know you're not looking for this, but this came to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpwH9WeVEfU

"VW bug of trailer homes"