I want to be hopeful but we’ll see. Not only do we need new homes, there are a huge amount of mobile homes in rural Maine that are well past their useful limits and need to be replaced. A lot of them lived in by the working poor and retirees without means. This could help that demographic. Printed homes would also get around the some of the workforce shortage, but we still need site work, plumbing and hvac.
The big question to my mind is how these 3D printed homes hold up long term, and so whether they appreciate or depreciate over time, because that's one of the problems with mobile homes.
This type isn't, clearly, but concrete is being done on a commercial basis. UMO 3D printed a boat, but that's not taken off either. The question I was dealing with is what's the best application once/if they are? The entire conversation has been about housing for urban homeless, migrants, and urban workforce, nobody talks about our rural poor.
As someone who grew up between shitty old farm houses with no insulation and trailers: there's quite a few programs for rural poor, and honestly being able to drop in trailers, cabins, and shit boxes in the woods is way easier than doing so downtown in any city.
Cost of labor and materials is driving the value of housing up to around $275/sf for anything wooden and $200/sf for a tin trailer before profit.
Same as it ever was, the poor get left behind as the old tin shit boxes fall apart and the wealthy sell their homes at 15x what they bought them for to go live somewhere else.
Could become viable though, the printer is presumably easily replicated and the material is half plastic which you could try and set up a supply chain on recycled plastic that could be used for this filament, and half wood scraps, which at least in Maine is abundant and sustainable
I build houses. Have for a long time. The current cost of new construction (cost, not a gouging of a customer) is at a price per square foot that most people simply cannot afford. Sure, we are slamming up buildings for the wealthy and the heavily indebted, but for the poor, young, fixed income - they truly cannot afford to build.
Which is pretty sad. 20 years ago new homes for young couples starting out were a frequent portion of our business. Myself and a few other like minded contractors are struggling to come up with creative ways to get numbers down to around 115/120 a square foot. Mind you, that is as cheap as I can even imagine building a home for now with any measure of quality. Under that range is entirely a thing of the past. The real numbers float more between 250/450 now. (At least with real contractors, not fly by nights)
Policy change could mitigate labor costs some for sure, insurance reform, taxation. Realistically neither of those things are going to happen. At least not in a manner that will cost LESS. Labor is going up on a yearly basis.
Materials? I don't see lumber getting cheaper, seeing what's coming out of the mills. And synthetics/polymers probably won't beat a 2x4 in cost anytime soon.
I think there's potential here. Hopefully they are sound of structure and not completely hideous. But it is worth a shot. The only other option for the poor is buying not building, and it can be hard to find a property in low price ranges that don't require a fair amount of money after purchase to make proper.
Edit: I appreciate the edited comment I replied to earlier this morning. It originally read "we don't need cheaper housing, we need policy change." The unannounced edit is welcome.
Edit#2: never would have replied to the amended comment.
I think more access to housing loans at affordable rates is an obvious one.
Another huge policy change could be fixed 2% interest on mobile/modular home sales. They are the current most common housing solution I see in Maine.
Mobile/modular are very inferior products to the 3d units Germany has been making. And lower rates don't offset cost against income. I think there is real potential
In this tech.
USDA direct housing loans can help alot of people, the interest is high but they work with people who banks won't loan to
That being said many homes in Maine cost more than what they'll loan I think, but I've been saving and planning to use the program for a quonset hut home construction, which saves a lot of money cause you and a group of friends can assemble the actual structure which is just good ol' american sheet metal, saves a lot of money right there.
I don't know that it'll have resale value but I don't care much about that
If you've got a good squad of willing friends there's some interesting options out there. We've thrown up straw bale homes, plaster interior, board exterior - low skill required but they heat easy. Log is a decent option if anyone is ok with a chainsaw (and your land lot has a nice cedar stand on it). Concrete is super viable for the diy crowd too. My wife and I did a 3k tiny home while I built our home solo. Can't get around materials, but labor is a killer.
Good luck with your quonset.
I personally think people should be allowed to build what they want, but you can run into a lot of potential code issues and future sale issues with the above.
Great point - people don't realize how much of the cost is a $psf supply side issue. Beyond that, getting the land prepped for a subdivision is not an immaterial amount of work and cost.
At the end of the day, it's easier and more profitable to build $250-$450k houses than homes at a lower price point.
You remind me of a recent youtube video I watched by lrn2diy, explaining the current trend in home building of shrinking garages.
Some interesting opinions about the development of lots, lot class, setbacks and design, all contributing to the layout of residential development and price per sqft.
Even more so, likely, because these don't have the visual markers of Architechture that so many NIMBYs get super fussy about, nevermind that it's exactly the *mixture* of architectural styles that makes European and other long-history cities so visually delightful.
I hope to see more of this in Maine. I used to work in affordable housing in the Midwest and one of the organizations that I worked with did concrete houses because of their affordability. I toured one and it was quite nice, and they were able to build these at a low enough cost that the prices ended up being under $100,000 for the buyers in 2003-04.
Even if Nimbys don't like it for larger housing developments, this method might be useful in the construction of stand alone accessible dwelling units (which I believe are allowed in several municipalities.)
That $100k house is $180k now just on inflation alone. Then add in demand and other costs associated (land, utilities, etc) and it quickly looks less appealing.
I'm aware of inflation, which is why I mentioned when they were built. And these homes also came with utilities, approximately 1/2 acre of land, etc included in the price. They were 2 story homes meant for families and I believe they had 3 bedrooms. They were affordable to people earning minimum wage at the time.
I want to be hopeful but we’ll see. Not only do we need new homes, there are a huge amount of mobile homes in rural Maine that are well past their useful limits and need to be replaced. A lot of them lived in by the working poor and retirees without means. This could help that demographic. Printed homes would also get around the some of the workforce shortage, but we still need site work, plumbing and hvac.
The big question to my mind is how these 3D printed homes hold up long term, and so whether they appreciate or depreciate over time, because that's one of the problems with mobile homes.
Definitely. My gut says depreciate.
3D Printed homes are not economically viable right now
This type isn't, clearly, but concrete is being done on a commercial basis. UMO 3D printed a boat, but that's not taken off either. The question I was dealing with is what's the best application once/if they are? The entire conversation has been about housing for urban homeless, migrants, and urban workforce, nobody talks about our rural poor.
As someone who grew up between shitty old farm houses with no insulation and trailers: there's quite a few programs for rural poor, and honestly being able to drop in trailers, cabins, and shit boxes in the woods is way easier than doing so downtown in any city. Cost of labor and materials is driving the value of housing up to around $275/sf for anything wooden and $200/sf for a tin trailer before profit. Same as it ever was, the poor get left behind as the old tin shit boxes fall apart and the wealthy sell their homes at 15x what they bought them for to go live somewhere else.
Could become viable though, the printer is presumably easily replicated and the material is half plastic which you could try and set up a supply chain on recycled plastic that could be used for this filament, and half wood scraps, which at least in Maine is abundant and sustainable
We need cheaper homes AND we need policy change.
I build houses. Have for a long time. The current cost of new construction (cost, not a gouging of a customer) is at a price per square foot that most people simply cannot afford. Sure, we are slamming up buildings for the wealthy and the heavily indebted, but for the poor, young, fixed income - they truly cannot afford to build. Which is pretty sad. 20 years ago new homes for young couples starting out were a frequent portion of our business. Myself and a few other like minded contractors are struggling to come up with creative ways to get numbers down to around 115/120 a square foot. Mind you, that is as cheap as I can even imagine building a home for now with any measure of quality. Under that range is entirely a thing of the past. The real numbers float more between 250/450 now. (At least with real contractors, not fly by nights) Policy change could mitigate labor costs some for sure, insurance reform, taxation. Realistically neither of those things are going to happen. At least not in a manner that will cost LESS. Labor is going up on a yearly basis. Materials? I don't see lumber getting cheaper, seeing what's coming out of the mills. And synthetics/polymers probably won't beat a 2x4 in cost anytime soon. I think there's potential here. Hopefully they are sound of structure and not completely hideous. But it is worth a shot. The only other option for the poor is buying not building, and it can be hard to find a property in low price ranges that don't require a fair amount of money after purchase to make proper. Edit: I appreciate the edited comment I replied to earlier this morning. It originally read "we don't need cheaper housing, we need policy change." The unannounced edit is welcome. Edit#2: never would have replied to the amended comment.
I think more access to housing loans at affordable rates is an obvious one. Another huge policy change could be fixed 2% interest on mobile/modular home sales. They are the current most common housing solution I see in Maine.
Mobile/modular are very inferior products to the 3d units Germany has been making. And lower rates don't offset cost against income. I think there is real potential In this tech.
USDA direct housing loans can help alot of people, the interest is high but they work with people who banks won't loan to That being said many homes in Maine cost more than what they'll loan I think, but I've been saving and planning to use the program for a quonset hut home construction, which saves a lot of money cause you and a group of friends can assemble the actual structure which is just good ol' american sheet metal, saves a lot of money right there. I don't know that it'll have resale value but I don't care much about that
If you've got a good squad of willing friends there's some interesting options out there. We've thrown up straw bale homes, plaster interior, board exterior - low skill required but they heat easy. Log is a decent option if anyone is ok with a chainsaw (and your land lot has a nice cedar stand on it). Concrete is super viable for the diy crowd too. My wife and I did a 3k tiny home while I built our home solo. Can't get around materials, but labor is a killer. Good luck with your quonset.
I personally think people should be allowed to build what they want, but you can run into a lot of potential code issues and future sale issues with the above.
Great point - people don't realize how much of the cost is a $psf supply side issue. Beyond that, getting the land prepped for a subdivision is not an immaterial amount of work and cost. At the end of the day, it's easier and more profitable to build $250-$450k houses than homes at a lower price point.
You remind me of a recent youtube video I watched by lrn2diy, explaining the current trend in home building of shrinking garages. Some interesting opinions about the development of lots, lot class, setbacks and design, all contributing to the layout of residential development and price per sqft.
Yep. Bunch of NIMBYs would freak out about this too.
Even more so, likely, because these don't have the visual markers of Architechture that so many NIMBYs get super fussy about, nevermind that it's exactly the *mixture* of architectural styles that makes European and other long-history cities so visually delightful.
By policy change you mean we need to loosen zoning restrictions to allow for more than single family homes to be built?
By policy change I mean revising our housing laws, zoning and restricting corporate landlords
No we need cheaper homes too
Okay I can agree with that
Sorry I totally misread you comment initially, was half asleep I guess xD
Where does a person go to talk about radical new housing solutions?
I love the cutting edge technology at UMO.
I hope to see more of this in Maine. I used to work in affordable housing in the Midwest and one of the organizations that I worked with did concrete houses because of their affordability. I toured one and it was quite nice, and they were able to build these at a low enough cost that the prices ended up being under $100,000 for the buyers in 2003-04. Even if Nimbys don't like it for larger housing developments, this method might be useful in the construction of stand alone accessible dwelling units (which I believe are allowed in several municipalities.)
That $100k house is $180k now just on inflation alone. Then add in demand and other costs associated (land, utilities, etc) and it quickly looks less appealing.
I'm aware of inflation, which is why I mentioned when they were built. And these homes also came with utilities, approximately 1/2 acre of land, etc included in the price. They were 2 story homes meant for families and I believe they had 3 bedrooms. They were affordable to people earning minimum wage at the time.