Dwell House – 540 sq ft prefab home that you can add to your backyard
house.dwell.com
house.dwell.com
I mention "designer" since there is a pre-fab market for non-designer homes, which do come pretty close to the mission of being a better value without being a "mobile home" - think Pratt, etc.
Ultimately, we went stick-built on-site and paid roughly 35-50% per sq ft of what a comparable pre-fab designer home would have cost, while allowing us to focus costs on the aspects of the house that mattered most to us, while going budget where it didn't matter as much, and still having full control over the process. FWIW, for less than the price of this unit alone, we had a full custom 1,200 sqft house 3BR/2Bth, metal garage, 800' driveway, well, septic, and 1-acre pond built.
I can see if you're willing to pay the premium on the design aesthetics, but designer modular houses have a long way to go to being a more affordable option for most buyers.
Describe what you want to a drafts person, get the regulatory stuff done (via the draft person or architect), hit the Google machine and talk to contractors. It’s painful when you have no idea what you are doing, which is why the all inclusive price is attractive (and high).
As to how we found the builder? Google was of little help, and nearly everyone with a website was saying things like "we start at $250/ft for a barndo" -- basically, insane pricing.
What we ultimately did: I went to local stores, talked to neighbors, and started asking them for references for different parts of the process - e.g.: well building, dirt work, etc. I aligned on the most common people they referred, then asked each of them the same two questions: who do you like working with as a GC, and who built your house? Everyone aligned on a single person, so I called him and the rest is history.
But I generally agree - $390k base price for a 5XXsqft house is ridiculous. But it seems this is marketed towards CA residents (who might be used to much higher costs).
Edit: whoops, I see your's was targeted at "designer" prefab.
But then of course you have the problem that many cities ban manufactured houses and they are only considered socially acceptable in lower income rural areas.
If you look at the floor plans of some modern "singlewide" manufactured homes they are totally a fine amount of floor space for one or two people to live, though obviously constrained by the maximum legal road lane width allowable and their long/linear design.
It seems like most urban/suburban CA zoning would prohibit either model - a trailer, or placing this in a backyard. It seems trailers are common in rural areas and small towns because the zoning allows for that option.
A shorter double wide might be an option. Triple wides are a thing also.
My 2nd thought would be something like a Tumbleweed if I wanted an extra room for the back yard with some mobility (have an office that you can take on vacation).
And my 3rd thought would be go even smaller than 550 sqft if I just wanted an office and https://www.autonomous.ai/adus/studio-pod or https://www.autonomous.ai/adus/autonomous-work-pod - though those aren't things for living in, they're interesting for creating a separation between the house and the office in the WFH environment.
https://youtu.be/a984YzmJB4M has a video of them setting up the home and 1:41 in, you can see the two sides - one being put on the foundation, one awaiting the crane. At 4:00, you can see one with a very high peak with the roof being propped up while being assembled (I assume that it was shipped in a folded position).
When you've got that degree of modularity, then two, three or even four modules becomes feasible. The key is that the modules are assembled ahead of time.
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As to the 644 sqft - 46 x 14 = 644. The porch doesn't appear to be part of that and would add another 84 square feet if it was.
See my sibling comment for specifics, but this price/sqft is higher than construction costs in even the priciest CA construction markets.
Yes, there are some Californians who fit that profile, just as there are some people in Texas for whom that is also chump change, but they are a tiny fraction in either place. This is targeted at very few people - probably the top 0.5% of the wealth or income distribution.
They are selling premium design, status, and convenience, not "cheaper, with more design options". There are lots of products sold that way, most famously Gucci bags, which I've heard are a very profitable business for that company.
If the price seems high to you (as it does to me), then you, like me, are not part of the target market.
They are 22 years old, enough to have been referred to in mainstream popular culture like the Office, the Simpsons, and famous punk rocker memoirs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwell_(magazine)#In_popular_cu...
Often the most expensive part of the house building is the labor, and if you can do some of that yourself or work with a builder who can tell you how to save labor costs you can do quite well.
For example, a simple "shed roof" without any gables or whatever those little decorative accents you see at the corners can be much cheaper (each accent could cost $500-2000 in labor alone). If you have a builder and architect who work together, you can really reduce the cost without making the house look like a garage with windows.
Generally speaking, it's best to think in "heated + cooled sq feet" for comparison, and also consider the foundation type. These are post-frame, so in the market where I had built, $120/sqft for post-frame is "cheap/budget", and $300/sqft is "high-end". We paid $180/sq ft, and that included electrical work, plumbing, appliances, A/C, full custom cabinets, custom windows, etc. As you can see, these aren't a great deal in that regard, but your local market conditions may vary.
$400k for a prefab 1 bedroom house - with the caveat that costs can go up if you don't have the perfect specifications they require. If you were to actually buy the land to fit this tiny home, you'll likely end up with a bill north of $700k-1M+ depending on your location.
Either I've become poorer or the world has become far richer to afford $400k sheds.
"Engineered oak floors" is an example - and while more expensive than vinyl I'm not sure it's really "top of the line".
Even some of the really fancy custom builders would be able to build a 600 sq ft house for less than $400k.
Probably get more of what you want and better deal by using some local contractor.
I would say they are targeting the top of the market. Looking at their marketing it looks like they aren't even pitching this as an alternative to a home, rather a n alternative to a backyard "shed". They aren't going after people looking for an affordable prefab home. They look like they are targeting the folks that have a huge backyard and an itch for a designer "shed".
This is just the current process with better marketing. You can get the same result from finding and buying an ADU plan and submitting it to a few contractors for quotes.
I’m sure there are places where adding this would increase the value of the property for more than the cost - but going this route would be leaving ~$200k on the table, at least. The market segment that prefers to forego $200k of potential profit in favor of convenience cannot possibly be that large.
The house is ridiculously priced, but you're way off about land.
Let's be honest, this doesn't need much land. But you can still easily buy land for $2,000/acre and less. I paid 60k for 40 acres, and that's if I value the EIGHT buildings at $0 (about 6 years ago).
Interestingly, some locals have sold property recently at exorbitant rates by marketing in NYC and similar markets. I think people in the city just have no idea.
There's a whole country out here.
My neighbor's 11,000 sq-ft house sits on two 15 acre lots. You buy the land in places where a 40-acre lot isn't considered unusual. IOW, pretty much anywhere that's not a city or a suburb of a major city.
As for the "how," you contact a realtor who specializes in rural properties and tell them what you're looking for.
Rural property is usually listed as a lot. 40 acres is the most common size in my area--most of the original 40 acre plots have stayed intact and not been broken up.
I bought it in a pretty traditional manner.
Here's a site selling acreage in southern Missouri starting at under 2k/acre: https://www.landwatch.com/missouri-land-for-sale/southwest-r...
Land is absolutely cheap in some places in the world, but any place you'd actually want to live in this house is going to have expensive land.
If you're living in a place with $2k/acre land, you'll likely want to build a proper house anyway.
You are probably correct if you restrict to exactly $2K.
However, right now on Zillow there is an 18+ acre lot advertised at $65K, which is 17 miles or about 25 minutes drive from the capitol of the fourth largest state in the US.
That's about $3.5K per acre.
My first thought is it's not buildable, but it says there's electricity and a well. Suggests it would be good for a hunter, but I don't know what a hunter would consider adequate.
A trailer about this size would go for maybe 75k.
https://www.thehomesdirect.com/homes/palm-harbor-homes/casa-...
Once you find one, you can use that company to find if they're part of a "factory build housing alliance" or similar (eg https://www.factorybuiltwisconsin.com/about-us/ ) and spread out from there.
Modular is the term of art for a factory-built home that is installed on the land and becomes titled as "real property" with the land its self, search for "modular home builders." Nearly every modular builder also builds mobile homes, so when you go to their site, look for "available as modular" or "modular" as a category or search term.
FWIW, "modular" and "mobile" are actually built to two different manufacturing requirements and specification, and why "mobile" homes are often disallowed in towns and cities, amongst other reasons, is that HUD controls the specs for "mobile" while "modular" must meet local building codes.
Stick building a 550 sq ft rectangular shaped boxy house with a very boring and standard roof truss design on concrete sonotube piles, screw pilings, footings or a traditional concrete slab foundation is not rocket science.
Your various other costs in rural areas will come in with things like code compliant underground electrical trenching to extend service to its breaker panel, septic tank/connection, water lines, etc.
If you were to go to the US base in Qatar you'd see housing not radically different from it. Designed to ship by standard 20/40 ft ocean cargo container.
I am skeptical that it costs 50k however, the thing as shown in the front page website promo that occupies an approximate 20'x20 area surely costs more than that.
What would be exciting about these companies (any of these companies!) is getting a state like CA to pre-exempt local permitting so that if you meet certain requirements you have a shall-issue one-stop permit to install.
Just spitballing but saying something like "any property that is over 1/4 acre and currently has less than 2000 sq ft of dwelling space may add one of these subject to a utility inspection only" or something like that.
Then suddenly the modularity is really useful; skip all the permitting/inspections that are for stickbuilt and use these.
A lot of smaller municipalities would probably jump at that. It would be a smaller market segment to start a company, but you wouldn’t even have to be building anything; you could probably rebrand existing designs made by other companies and get the certification on your rebranded version.
If you could get to the point where you could offer a very easy approval process with a major city and could guarantee that the structure be in place and usable in a given time frame or a full refund, I strongly suspect you’d have more business than you could easily handle.
Now some of that stuff listed can be quite pricy, septic systems can run upwards of $50k but this thing is designed to be stuck in a backyard.
Happy to see someone shares my back-of-the-envelope calculation.
"Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment."
(Side note, does anyone know if installing an ADU, where you live, qualifies for a primary residence mortgage or not? You won't live in the ADU, but you live on the same land as it.)
Otherwise, this is certainly too expensive, so the average person is not the market for this product. If an average person bought this, they're a bit foolish, probably better off buying existing property or trying to DIY a container home somewhere it's legal. Of course, the unit here itself looks quite nice, and I'd love to see them figure out how to lower prices and expand their market to customers who are aspiring homeowners, not people who already own and want some rental income.
I don't believe the ADU qualifies for primary residence mortgage unless you have a HELOC.
But, yes, you shouldn't have problems taking out a construction loan to buy the ADU, and then after completion, refinancing as an investment property.
Are there really many people with the finances to buy a $400k ADU for their backyard who want to rent it? That seems unlikely. More likely these are targeted for home studios/gyms or in-law (or adult child) suites.
I have nothing against ADUs, and wish more areas allowed them, but $400k is an absurd price.
The other thing they have working against them is cost per sq ft goes up with smaller builds since you still need expensive spaces kitchen and bathroom and they can only shrink so far.
In most high cost of living places where building ADUs makes the most financial sense I'd be surprised if you could do something like this start to finish for much less than 400k between permits, variances, drawings, groundwork, utilities, construction and finishes. The foundation and utils alone could be 100k+.
This price seems out of whack unless they're abusing some loophole (technically it's a trailer so it's DMV) but most of those are pretty tightly closed.
A quick search yields mobile homes range from 784 to 1440 square feet, with an average retail price of $76,400 [1]. This is 540 square feet for $400k. For those unaware, mobile homes are not just the tin can on wheels stereotype. Some look no less gorgeous than this does. Except they're 2-3 times as large, and go for a fraction of the cost.
[1] - https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/how-much-...
Main page: picture of a pretty house. First question: how much does it cost?
Scroll, scroll, scroll, lots of pictures, here's a floor plan, it works as a pool house too, premium materials, click here to reserve one, oh, hey, a link about pricing.
Pricing page: it's a great investment!
Scroll, scroll...just $1,577 a month! Get out magnifying glass, read fine print. 4.5% interest rate on a 30 year term. Okay, let's get out a calculator, what was the interest rate formula again? Gotta solve for P...about $400,000.
Why do we have to play these stupid games? I don't care that it drives up click-through, you need to tell me how much it costs.
I can have a local builder do two of these in my backyard for well under that price. I don't live in a HCOL but MCOL? in Colorado but for $225k including permits you can build a 1300sqft livable space (3/2), two story with two car garage. Now it's not using high end fixtures or flooring but working with the local builder you have an allowance for each room and if you want to stay within budget you can or you can go over or under.
What's the advantage of this thing? Ease of use and quick delivery? No disruption from construction for a few months?
$720/sqft is INSANE. Pay bay area prices anywhere in the US!
I ended up buying a 6x9 shed (https://cedarshed.com/products/cedar-studio-shed) for about $5k delivered. I then spent about $9k to have it assembled, outfitted with drywall, filled with noise cancelling insulation, electricity to the unit, lights, plugs, blinds, laminate flooring, and painted. Most of the work was done by 2 handyman for about $5k. Electrical was about $1k. Materials were about $1k. AC including installation was about $1.5k. I helped out, and it was definitely some work on my part, but in the end it turned out great and was all in about $14k. All this was done in the last year.
Now this isn't directly comparable to their product (no bathroom/kitchen and it is about 10% the size) but I am tired of all these super luxury prefab homes, and I want to see costs come down for construction.
https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/10/modern-by-dwell
For reference, I completed a custom full house rebuild about a year ago in the insanely pricey Bay Area construction market, built to an equivalent high-end design and construction quality as this, and construction costs were still $450/sqft. I brought the $ cost down even a bit further with sweat equity.
I agree with you totally on the principle behind that, but a very higher end tiny house is still usually only $300/sf.
I think that this ADU is priced for someone looking for nearly instant gratification with high-end-design and materials for a second dwelling on land they already own - which is what the marketing photos depict - and not for someone in the market for a primary residence.
The customer for this isn't like most of us who seek to value-maximize their housing, but rather someone for whom the cost of this thing is pretty marginal compared to their overall wealth. That is a very niche market, definitely far narrower than Dwell's subscriber base.
Furthermore, at what is likely at least 50% profit margin on these, they don't have to sell many to do quite well, as long as they can deliver a very high quality product on time with minimal hassle to their well heeled customers.
This costs over $700 per square foot, and even if you have the land for it, that cost doesn't include the infrastructure to pull electricity and plumbing to the site. Or a foundation.
There's a lot of variability in how to build.
No idea how this is built; just noting.
https://www.muji.net/ie/younoie/
Glad to see that the commenters here on HN recognize this as a totally obnoxious concept.
Here's a very interesting read on how things were almost a century ago. Surely we can do better than $300K prefab nowadays.. https://thecraftsmanblog.com/the-history-of-sears-kit-homes/
Any cost savings is eaten up by greedy companies through marketing to the affluent and any flexibility and modularity is eaten up by your local bureaucracy, NIMBYs and absolutely draconian building codes.
Until the latter points change, I'm afraid prefab benefits will never see the light of day and we'll stick to traditional housing that costs, you know, under $500/sqft (lol)
No clear price, just the monthly payment, how much one (supposedly) can rent it for, and the expected profit.
I find this a turn-off and a clear sign of the company's practices.
Unfortunately I am the minority, I know.
It's there, just not at the top. Does that count?
But if you like the design, Den Outdoors sells similar house plans: https://denoutdoors.com/collections/small-modern-farmhouse-p...
I love ideas like this, but this one isn’t in the same universe as something I would consider for practical purposes.
> MONTHLY DWELL HOUSE PAYMENT > $1,577
> Monthly payment assumes line of credit of $389,000 equal to base cost of Dwell House with fixed 4.5% interest rate, a 30-year repayment term, and a 20% down payment
… my mortgage on 5-bedroom, ~1.8K sq ft home on a half acre lot in a small town in the South is <$825.
I understand property values vary widely - that’s why I live where I do - but this is still ridiculous. Consider also that to buy this, you already have to have the land to put it on. The comparison to rentals includes the cost of the property, upkeep, and overhead amortized into it. It’s not a fair comparison.
If you already have land suitable for this, why not just build a small house? The average cost per sq ft in the US is around $100-$150 for new construction. This thing is 532 sq ft; to be competitive with traditional construction it would need to be priced at <$80k…
There are way better priced similar options already. There are similarly sized mobile trailers that are just a bit less fancy around 120k.
Even then if you assume a 50% markup due to difference HCOL and better rates big builders would get, I think we are still talking about construction rate of about $375/sqft. So a 550-600 sq ft homes would cost around $225K.
But as an anecdote I did an additions project a few years ago and got quotes ranging from $100K to $300K. And surprising to me, the $300K quote guy was very busy. So I guess there are people who sort by "High to Low" and go with the highest bid.
So your $300k guy may have been telling you "I'll do it but don't want to" or he may have been quoting out a higher-end job; there are many, many variables.
this is not a tiny home it's in the market for "ADU".
Many pre-fab tiny-homes are just mobile homes with trendy marketing material. This is where a lot of the issues come from with tiny homes - mobile homes are frequently banned in nicer suburban/urban areas. They're built to different codes than build-in-place homes as well (not a bad thing, necessarily, just different code written by a different organization).
The only backyard I ever knew was around that size, so that's one way to put it. Even if it takes up 100%, it kinda fits.
https://greenhomescout.de/property/office-pod/
I understand many of the visitors to this fine site are rich software devs in SV, but from my perspective, I paid about this much USD to buy a house in Calgary.
I had to replace the roofing for about 10k, and the water tank, but there are houses here that are more than 100 years old. More than 400k CAD for a depreciating asset makes no sense.
At 400k... Man that's a lot. Can't justify it for any reason unless I have cash to burn.
Also. Not a box. zomes.com
Get outta here with 400k.
I’m a capitalist to the core, but I have no problem with the ideas of renting things that are cheaper to rent than to buy, or with “eating bugs”. Alternative protein sources are pretty interesting to me, actually. Every dollar I can cut from my cost of living is a dollar I can use to buy assets - and to me, an “asset” is something that either produces income or appreciates at a rate above the cost of maintenance.
If I were a collectivist, what’s the advantage of trying to force either of those things on people - or even to incentivize it? Why would I care how people feel about their food and property? I’d want to change the structure of society itself to provide more obvious value in public services than the free market provides privately. Angering people by imposing things on them - especially if that imposition is easily assigned to the things I’d want to grow, like the government - would be extremely counter-productive.
Actual free markets that exist are "free" in the way that a wheel turns freely if it has good bearings with little friction. They're not free of human oversight or in competition with the people who maintain them.
In that sense, they want you to think of the cashflow opportunities, not the overall cost. You're not supposed to think this is $400k, you're supposed to think "I'll earn $1000/mo from renters if I buy this".