Those prices are way too high for what you are getting. Looks like they are taking standard shipping containers, cutting out some walls and then covering the steel with better-looking materials.
Connect-Homes specifically state that they aren't made out of shipping containers, but they do make them in similarly sized sections so that all of the existing shipping infrastructure (road and rail) can move them easily.
We looked at modular homes before we built last year. The biggest problem I had with them was that I couldn't find a floor-plan I liked, and you always had strange, extra wide walls at the seams. Connect-Homes looks like they use a steel frame to increase the maximum span and reduce the requirement for thick seam walls. If I ever have to move again for some reason I would probably look at modular homes again.
$75,000/160 sq ft = $469/sq ft. Downtown properties in the booming Raleigh market are around $400 sq ft, and they throw in the lot underneath the house for that.
This isn't an interesting submission about non-conventional home construction. This isn't a noteworthy example of website/ecommerce design. This isn't an editorial piece promoting interesting conversation.
It's not even a very good selection, and hardly "curated". Modular homes generally come in modules. Tiny homes don't fit the bill for me at all, and their modular selection is but a few units from some random manufacturer. Seems like spam to me too.
In my mind, modular homes are factory-built pieces that are assembled on-site, and design-sized for the 8.5' W by 13.5' H by 53' L volume envelope and 6 ton/axle weight limit of a standard US highway semi-trailer. International modules would have to design around the 40' ISO shipping container--either to go go in one, or to function as one.
The hotel-rooms-in-a-box on the linked page are like saying that a single 2x4 LEGO block, with all the studs filed down flat and holes cut in the sides, is a modular building system.
Even double-wide manufactured homes are more modular, in that they come in left-half modules and right-half modules, that get joined together at the build site.
The curation has somehow left out all the manufacturers that can crank out four 53' x 8.5' modules in 60 days, deliver them all to your flat-slab foundation, and bolt them all together to make an 1800 sq.ft. ranch-style home that meets code and actually has enough space for your kids to have their own rooms. And most of those are less than $140k for the structure. Cost average is $50/sq.ft. for stock structure designs, $10-$20/sq.ft. for customizations, $5-$10/sq.ft. for delivery, maybe $15-$25/sq.ft. for site prep and foundation, $20/sq.ft. for utility connections, permits, finishing, and everything else.
This is boutique-style homes manufacturing. If you want to make a business of it, as implied by the AirBnB rental prices, skip this curated list, and go with a larger manufacturer with a factory within 100 miles of your build site.
If your modular home is pushing past $150/sq.ft. with all costs but site purchase included, you are not competitive in your market, and are approaching being uncompetitive with custom site-built homes. At $400/sq.ft., your business will die shortly after selling to the 50 customers that want to spend $100k and yet still live inside a shoebox.
Lots of modular homes (and many mobile homes) exceed the 8.5x53 envelope. When you're already doing all the stuff required to move a house or a significant chunk of a house getting an additional piece of paper (oversize permit) doesn't really up the complexity and cost all that much.
This is true for most places, but expensive build locations like the Bay Area, where custom homes are $400-600+ psf allow for competitive modular in the 2xx price range.
It's fun to watch Silicon Valley rediscover everything that the rest of America has already known about for decades.
The only way $200/'' modular competes anywhere connected to the US highway network is if their customers don't know anything about the market they're buying into. Or if they have legal protection from competition.
The only reason I can think of to explain why SV isn't already absolutely infested with offsite-manufactured homes is that all the municipalities are pulling out every type of local government shenanigan to halt their importation. Perhaps the homes shown on the OP site somehow exploit a loophole that otherwise keep the bigger manufacturers out. That stuff happens even in vanilla American suburbia, to keep the trailer-park atmosphere from invading the town, so I can easily imagine the comfortable California NIMBYs pulling their sharpest knives on anyone threatening property values.
On the page the contact address under About is: Caleb@cereal.ventures
Quick search returns: Cereal Ventures is an experimental product incubator by Ben Adam and Caleb Barclay
Webpage returns: 'Investment Calculator' and 'Day of the Dead'.
OP 'calebbarclay' has only three submissions to HN: Investment Calculator, Day of the Dead, and Dwellito
I think HN is a great place to see people's work, but users need to be upfront about their association to what they submit. This is should clearly be listed using 'Show HN:'
These are beautiful to look at. How is life inside of them? My wife filled in for a housecleaner at a couple of units billed as "Tiny Homes" on AirBNB and complained vigorously about the contortions required to clean them and generally how cramped they are.
In my part of Floriduh they're novelties and in built up areas exist only in trailer parks. As myroon5 suggests, zoning approval in places approved for conventional residences is going to be a challenge.
So many questions! First, given the minuscule size of these things and the inclusion of “AirBNB income” these are not homes for sale, but turnkey rental house businesses. Those income figures are in what market? Surely not Nowhereville, Montana! Then they quote AirBNB incomes and mortgages in various cities, but how do they come to a single value?
Where in the heck can you (all) 1. Legally put one of these on your property given zoning laws, 2. Fit it on your property and 3. Actually earn that kind of income?
I don't understand the hype around modular homes, the build cost of a house is almost nothing compared to the costs of everything around it.
When you can build modular roads, shops, offices, pubs, schools, utilities, communities and transport links to other areas, we'll need cheaper buildings. Until then the cost of land in any location that anyone wants to live in makes the building cost almost neglible.
Seattle is pretty open to backyard dwellings at this point but you'll want to call the city. I'd recommend looking into other options though. These strike me as very pricey based on other options I've looked at.