We’re in the market for a new place, and it’s such an interesting position to be in. Architecture appreciation is a hobby of sorts for us. We love to drive around looking at buildings and trying to find what makes them interesting or the polar opposite. I phrase it like that because where there’s one piece of good architecture there are two to three that are not.
So despite the fact that we’re looking at places in a limited budget range, there was the phase of seeing what we could afford in the building vs. buying department. Sure, we could afford some 3,000 square foot CP Morgan house in a suburban county, but being conscious of the effects of suburban reality on society, we made the conscious effort remain more local to the urban core we support and depend on.
Anyway, I looked into modern, pre-fabricated housing (not trailers, though they are quite affordable)… Prefab is attractive to us for three reasons.
- First of all there’s the design… finding good modern housing is about as rare as hearing G.W. give a speech and not stutter throughout the process
- Then there’s the factor that buying a prefab house is supposed to be “cost effective”. This makes sense. Building the house in parts within a factory should reduce the costs dramatically.
- The last reason is the ability to incorporate “green” aspects to the structure more easily than traditional architecture (greatly because it can be implemented in the factory creation of the structure).
So lets get to the point already… The reality is that the term cost effective in terms of what the consumer pays is about $250-$400 per square foot in a new prefab house (this does not include the costs of a lot or the preparation on said lot for the structure to be built on). While this may be cost effective for the top few housing markets (LA, San Francisco, etc), this is an outrageous price for anywhere else.
This came to mind thanks to a story in the LA times (READ IT HERE), and the author reached the same conclusion as I did. Prefab-modern housing will not succeed until it’s accessible to more than the upper class (who can afford custom modern design anyway). I’ll continue to applaud efforts to increase the number of modern houses in the American architecture landscape, but how can It be justified in most of middle America?
2 Comments
1 Rikki wrote:
Is modern architecture construction more expensive for any reason other than that too few builders work in that style? It seems that, like every market, once the tools, materials, and know-how are readily available, modern construction should be no more expensive than your average Davis home. Might be a rose colored specs perspective, but who knows?
2 Hungry Hank wrote:
I agree that as the number of people who peddle anything increase, it creates competition and ergo a price war, so to speak.
Now, I say screw it all and buy a motor home. Then you can start the dream of going to every baseball park in America!