Comment by drone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drone | Hacker News Reader

As someone who recently went through the pre-fab house market for a weekend/cabin build for a property we own, this product suffers from the same problem nearly every other pre-fab "designer" product we saw out there: the cost is substantially more than custom-built and the time to deliver is as long, or longer.

I mention "designer" since there is a pre-fab market for non-designer homes, which do come pretty close to the mission of being a better value without being a "mobile home" - think Pratt, etc.

Ultimately, we went stick-built on-site and paid roughly 35-50% per sq ft of what a comparable pre-fab designer home would have cost, while allowing us to focus costs on the aspects of the house that mattered most to us, while going budget where it didn't matter as much, and still having full control over the process. FWIW, for less than the price of this unit alone, we had a full custom 1,200 sqft house 3BR/2Bth, metal garage, 800' driveway, well, septic, and 1-acre pond built.

I can see if you're willing to pay the premium on the design aesthetics, but designer modular houses have a long way to go to being a more affordable option for most buyers.

When I was looking at modulars 5 or so years ago, the costs were pretty much the same.

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.

If I wanted a 550 sq ft prefab house, I'd be looking at whatever was the higher-end/better quality market segment of the "singlewide" manufactured home industry, which are built in a factory and come all in one piece and are delivered on their own wheels by semi truck.

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.

Yeah, it seems this house is similar dimensions to a single wide trailer. Just different construction and fancier interior.

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.

> though obviously constrained by the maximum legal road lane width allowable and their long/linear design.

A shorter double wide might be an option. Triple wides are a thing also.

Being from the midwest, the first thought would be Design Homes - https://www.designhomes.com. And there are some rather large ones they make. They also have a cabin series which is on the small side. Something like https://www.designhomes.com/prairieduchien/pdc-3/ (644 sqft). Digging a bit, I found a price for one from 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190117000728/http://designhome... - a 40' cabin, 560 sqft for $53k (appears to be originally priced closer to $60k). That's much less than the price in the article/link.

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.

That 14' wide 644 SQ ft unit looks pretty good as a floor plan, it's about the same size as a small 1bd apartment in any major city. I do think they're counting the porch in the square footage however. It does appear that the 14 ft width is the practical maximum for transportation by road as a "wide load" without a lot of special planning and permits in advance.

some of them bolt together on the center line so you can get double the width and a more open floorplan

If you look at the floor plans you can see where they're modular.

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.

> But it seems this is marketed towards CA residents (who might be used to much higher costs).

See my sibling comment for specifics, but this price/sqft is higher than construction costs in even the priciest CA construction markets.

Yes, I'm just saying the wording and such in their site alludes to CA as their target market. There's also no way this would sell in most of the country, where you can buy a normal house with land for less.

At the price they are charging, anyone for whom $398k isn't a lot of money compared to the hassle of a custom high-end build is their target market.

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.

Except you can get modulars this size or larger from other places for cheaper, with more design options. So if they're targeting the top .5% and they have a lot of competition, then it seems they have a poor business model.

> Except you can get modulars this size or larger from other places for cheaper, with more design options.

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.

Gucci has a name. Where is the status/name with this house? Maybe if they slapped Telsa on it...

Dwell

Never heard of it before this post. Sounds like they're new and have yet to make a name for themself.

> Sounds like they're new and have yet to make a name for themself.

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...

I've been looking at the HUD-1 "kit" homes from Home Depot. One example is $33k for an unfinished 450 sq ft multi-room home, but you can put it together yourself in 2-3 weekends. Would have to compare to that a "custom" home from a contractor. Did you consider these type options when you were looking?

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Hud-1-EZ-Buildings/N-5yc1vZht5 these look interesting.

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.

AFAICT, these range from $84-$170/sq ft for exterior materials only, no labor, no insulation, no foundation. If you're looking to DIY something and want an easy start, these and many other options may be a good choice for you, but this is very expensive for some markets, given you just have materials for the shell.

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.

How did you go about finding someone to handle the custom build if I may ask?

You contact a contractor

I’m a bit mystified at the reaction to this comment.

Describe what you want to a drafts person, get the regulatory stuff done (via the draft person or architect), hit the Google machine and talk to contractors. It’s painful when you have no idea what you are doing, which is why the all inclusive price is attractive (and high).

You need to work with a builder, since we were working in a somewhat "rural" area, we couldn't work with any of our local builders (in the city where we live), without going way out of budget due to travel expenses, etc.

As to how we found the builder? Google was of little help, and nearly everyone with a website was saying things like "we start at $250/ft for a barndo" -- basically, insane pricing.

What we ultimately did: I went to local stores, talked to neighbors, and started asking them for references for different parts of the process - e.g.: well building, dirt work, etc. I aligned on the most common people they referred, then asked each of them the same two questions: who do you like working with as a GC, and who built your house? Everyone aligned on a single person, so I called him and the rest is history.

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