Got any advice on possible pre-fab home building?
June 15, 2013 6:31 PM Subscribe
Have you bought a pre-fabricated home, or know someone who has? If so, what words of advice can be given about this?
I've been considering buying a home for a while now, but nothing quite fit my needs. I stumbled upon livinghomes, and am starting wonder if possibly going the pre-fab build route on a purchased lot of land might be worth at least investigating further. The designs (Kappe? seriously) are more quite appealing. I'm looking in the Los Angeles area (where homes remain ridiculously priced, and it seems, moreso than lots of land), and at least on the surface of it, the building and lot cost together would be well-below my budget for a comparable home. Even doubling that cost to include the expected added expenses (foundation work, permits, etc.) still seems affordable. I know virtually nothing about building homes, so I may certainly be underestimating the hidden costs and missing other potential pitfalls and problems. Anyone have experience with this that can share advice? On a scale of terrible to insane, how bad is this idea?
I've been considering buying a home for a while now, but nothing quite fit my needs. I stumbled upon livinghomes, and am starting wonder if possibly going the pre-fab build route on a purchased lot of land might be worth at least investigating further. The designs (Kappe? seriously) are more quite appealing. I'm looking in the Los Angeles area (where homes remain ridiculously priced, and it seems, moreso than lots of land), and at least on the surface of it, the building and lot cost together would be well-below my budget for a comparable home. Even doubling that cost to include the expected added expenses (foundation work, permits, etc.) still seems affordable. I know virtually nothing about building homes, so I may certainly be underestimating the hidden costs and missing other potential pitfalls and problems. Anyone have experience with this that can share advice? On a scale of terrible to insane, how bad is this idea?
I have absolutely no experience with pre-fab. Which is why I initially did not try to respond to this. But I have gutted and rebuilt and added on to my home over the past five years, acting as my own general contractor, doing a lot of work myself, and subbing out various specialty tasks. Now, of course, that is a whole different galaxy of issues: remodeling and rebuilding almost always prove more problematic than building from scratch. BUT, with any building project you can pretty much count on at least a couple of things not going to plan. That means you will do your homework, anticipate a bunch of potential problems, and then two or three other things that you never imagined will crop up. That is what makes it fun.
The thing with buying any home: if the location is desirable, that's half the battle. And for a given location, going pre-fab could well be wiser than buying an existing structure to "fix up". So, the idea's not insane. But if I were you, I would try to find people in the LA area who have already done it. Any reputable builder/fabricator should be willing to give you references of satisfied customers. Yes, it's probably a biased list, but it's at least an accessible starting point.
posted by fikri at 10:16 PM on June 15, 2013
The thing with buying any home: if the location is desirable, that's half the battle. And for a given location, going pre-fab could well be wiser than buying an existing structure to "fix up". So, the idea's not insane. But if I were you, I would try to find people in the LA area who have already done it. Any reputable builder/fabricator should be willing to give you references of satisfied customers. Yes, it's probably a biased list, but it's at least an accessible starting point.
posted by fikri at 10:16 PM on June 15, 2013
My parents built a prefab home in 1986 and sold it in 2009. It's a 2-story, 4br Colonial, and came in four pieces that were assembled on-site. At least while I was living there, it was a pretty nice place, with no major issues. The only hint it was prefab was a very slight offset that you could see in the 2-story entryway, but it wasn't a structural problem.
posted by angels in the architecture at 8:23 AM on June 16, 2013
posted by angels in the architecture at 8:23 AM on June 16, 2013
Pre-fab varies. Get the construction specifics, go to your town's code enforcement office, and compare the construction values.
posted by theora55 at 8:34 AM on June 16, 2013
posted by theora55 at 8:34 AM on June 16, 2013
First make sure you're able to qualify for a construction loan under terms that work for you, which is different from getting a regular loan to buy an existing house. Construction loans are structured in such a way that you don't have to start making payments until the house is completed, so you don't have to deal with making mortgage payments while you're still presumably paying to live somewhere else.
If you want to go ahead with it and think you'll be there for a long time, consider springing for a biggish lot zoned for multiple units and getting the smallest/cheapest prefab house you're sure you can be comfortable in (smaller footprint also means less money to spend on grading and pad construction.) Position the prefab on the lot in such a way that you have room left over to build a bigger nicer house some day after which you can use the prefab as a rental/guest house/mother-in-law unit.
posted by contraption at 9:14 PM on June 16, 2013
If you want to go ahead with it and think you'll be there for a long time, consider springing for a biggish lot zoned for multiple units and getting the smallest/cheapest prefab house you're sure you can be comfortable in (smaller footprint also means less money to spend on grading and pad construction.) Position the prefab on the lot in such a way that you have room left over to build a bigger nicer house some day after which you can use the prefab as a rental/guest house/mother-in-law unit.
posted by contraption at 9:14 PM on June 16, 2013
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posted by lollusc at 8:21 PM on June 15, 2013