Redefining Home: Alternative Housing Options

As more and more people search for affordable homes, housing start-ups such as Boxabl offer an alternative to “traditional” housing. Boxabl provides mass produced building construction for small ADUs (or Accessory Dwelling Units). For instance, their Casita product, a 375 ft ADU is delivered on a regular flatbed trailer, unfolded, and apparently set up as a complete home in two hours. Need more room? According to Boxabl, you can order additional rooms to stack as an additional floor. Boxabl claims that there is a 47,000-person waitlist for the Casita, which has a full size bathroom, kitchen, appliances, and big windows for under $50,000.00. Most notably, Elon Musk apparently has a Casita on SpaceX property which he stays at when there.

The concept of a mass-produced home—from a manufacturer as opposed to building by hand—-is fascinating and yet daunting. Boxabl founder Galiano Tiramani claims that his company’s way of building housing is “cheaper, faster, and can help solve the worldwide housing crisis.”  This is done by making building construction compatible with assembly line mass production. By doing so, Boxabl rooms fold up onto highway containers which provides for factory built mass productions of homes on a new scale. Tiramani claims that their initial manufacturing plant should produce one house every 90 minutes.

ADUs in general and Boxabl in particular not only expand the notion of home ownership but also offer creative options to combat our housing issues. While one would have to check local ordinances and association covenants to determine if one can place and live in an ADU within a certain community, the bottom line is: ADUs offer a less expensive way of obtaining home ownership.

Further, ADUs may be used to obtain rental income or as an addition to an existing home depending upon the local zoning requirements, city, and state laws, as well as homeowner association rules.

Aside from redefining the concept of home, residential real estate construction is itself evolving.  As stated in our earlier blog, 3-D technology is a potential disruptor in home construction as 3D printers have the capacity to extrude concrete. Plastic, or other building materials through nozzles to gradually build a house.  A typical 3-D printed two-bedroom home made of cement can take up to one day to be built. Like 3-D printing, Boxabl homes seemingly offer housing materials right off  an assembly line.

What does this all mean?

Not only is housing but also the actual construction of housing is continuing to evolve as more and more people seek more economical homes. While no one may predict exactly what will happen in the time ahead, we all can agree that continued change in the real estate industry and the home construction industry is here to stay.

Roy Oppenheim

From The Trenches