[walrus01]

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.

[shagie]

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.

[walrus01]

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.

[shagie]

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.

[kyleee]

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

[giantg2]

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.

[rascul]

> 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.