Book Review: The Perfect $ 100,000 House
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 08. 2.07
Karrie Jacobs was founding editor of Dwell Magazine and knows her stuff. She also has an approachable, breezy writing style that is a joy to read. This book is the story of her quest to find the perfect $100,000 house "a great, cheap house, a place that I can afford, that satisfies my need for a home my taste for innovative design and and my desire for a more enlightened approach homebuilding." It came out last summer; I wish I had not waited so long to read it.
It is a road trip; sort of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the Dwell set. She crossed the country twice, met almost everyone in the business, and ultimately failed. However failures are often as interesting and educational as successes (or so I tell myself often) and she has squeezed a victory out of this defeat. I was particularly enchanted by the book because in my years as an architect promoting prefab I met many of the people she visited and knew of the others. Her judgments about people and their work, the companies that she flipped off with barely a mention, show a keen eye and real understanding of who is who and what is what- she nails them all.
Karrie visits most of the prefab designers, and comes away thinking that perhaps it is a bubble. "The least expensive way of building is the most conventional" she says. "the reason no-one's saving money with modular is that systems for building houses, as old-fashioned as they are, are pretty efficient already." What prefab succeeds at is being a new form of delivery of service for architects.That is why Rocio Romero is so successful; her LV house is iconic, but ultimately it is very simple and technically no more sophisticated than a standard house.
Karrie learns that "design decisions have consequences" but also that design alone cannot deliver, context is important too. She found many houses that met the price criterion but were in the middle of nowhere and required driving miles for a quart of milk; in this era that certainly isn't perfect. At the end we read that Karrie has narrowed down her parameters; we look forward to the follow-up when she actually builds her perfect $100,000 house.
Some have complained that you can't write about architecture without pictures; TreeHugger readers will not need them, as almost everyone she meets has been covered in these pages. Her insights add significantly to our understanding of them. ::The Perfect $100,000 house found at ::Ballenford Books
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What kind of person thinks $100,000 is cheap?
You want cheap and green? Buy a $40,000 house (still not "cheap," given the number of people who never in their wildest dreams could afford to own a house even at that price) in the (gasp!) inner city and renovate it. Clean up the property, insulate the hell out of the house, do other basic common-sense things that reduce lighting costs and heating/cooling costs.
Or she could learn how to build cob or straw-bale, get a small property somewhere, and build it herself.
Both approaches require compromises. They require that she give up luxuries that upper-class yuppies take for granted (or even consider necessities), such as central air or never having to look at poor people. They require that she get her hands dirty, either literally or figuratively--and that's why they're not gonna happen.
In which city can you get a house for $40,000? For 40k I can get a parking spot in South Boston.
Every day on Treehugger we see another post about pre-fab homes. But they are always more expensive than custom homes. Isn't that opposite of their prime objective? And then we wonder why there aren't more prefab homes in the neighborhood.
It would be like Ikea furniture costing more than bespoke furniture.
In fact, maybe pre-fab architects should get their heads out of their butts and look at the Ikea model.
$40,000 for a house? The only way I could think of finding something like that in my area would be to go back in time. Unfortunately my Delorean is in the shop right now so that isn't an option.
I think $100k is a reasonable goal for building a decent and long lasting house. I think it is much more prudent to spend a bit more money on quality design and materials so that you have a product that meets your needs and lasts for many generations.
"You want cheap and green? Buy a $40,000 house (still not "cheap," given the number of people who never in their wildest dreams could afford to own a house even at that price) in the (gasp!) inner city and renovate it. Clean up the property, insulate the hell out of the house, do other basic common-sense things that reduce lighting costs and heating/cooling costs."
And then take the pther 60k to hire armed gaurds.
I'm in that situation now, bought a 60k house in an older neighborhood and in a few short years as the older people moved to retirement communities or died off the inner city took over. now I wake up to find parts of my house stolen or bullet holes in my car, or drug addicts trying to turn around in my driveway and hitting thr gas and driving through the side of my house so omy insurance company has to pay out 12k to rebuild it.
you act like living in the inner city is just seeing poor people and not being able to be a rich snob. You completely ignore the fact that there's a high likelyhood of being mugged! also there's the fear of being shot, the complete inability to regain your investment because no one is dumb enough to pay more then you bought it for to live in a bad area. you have to calculate the cost of bulletproof siding and windows (YES people who aren't poor but live in a poor area do get those thing) also there's the constant fear to call the cops when something happens because the neighbors might find out you're a snitch.
You can buy an amazing house for $40,000 - in Detroit...
Actually, if you're willing to relocate, you can find houses for $40K in a small city. We did just that and are renovating it to be as green as we can/as makes sense. In fact, we bought 2 more and are renting them out.
It is about making choices. Some of our friends wouldn't consider doing what we did because they'd be too far away from family. Others think they are dependent on jobs that they wouldn't find there. (We've always been entrepreneurial, so that wasn't a worry for us. And, we get rental income.) People said we couldn't move to a small town with no public transportation because we don't drive, but our residential house is right across the street from the mall with all the amenities that the city has to offer. And, it's at most a 40 min. walk to the other end of town up Main Street.
We have been describing this process (and other random thoughts) at www.weliveherenow.net (we moved on June 25) if you're interested!
In which city can you get a house for $40,000?
Cleveland, Buffalo, Kansas City, Des Moines, Little Rock...
You need to get out of Boston and see the rest of the country.
ben:
you probably wont find a house for $40,000 in la, chicago, and san francisco as well. most smaller population cities will have houses in the ghetto for cheap. in cleveland you can get one for $10,000.
brennan,
what exactly is the ikea 'model'. good design, cheap materials (aka short life crappy laminates), build it yourself. the thing that cost the most is the material, where you cant cut corners.
I just moved to a really cool town in Louisiana, Natchitoches. It has a great old residential historic district, is compact, has a decent grocery, a university, and is an hour from a big city (Shreveport) and three hours from Dallas and NOLA. You can buy a cool old pier and beam wooden shotgun house or cottage here for a hundred grand easily and fix it up really nicely. I lived in L.A. before this, and let me tell you, there are tradeoffs with small towns, but right now, they are looking like they are worth it.
You can't find a $40,000 house (that's move-in ready) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And cost-of-living here is dirt-cheap. Keep in mind that 40,000 CAN buy you a house in the ghetto, but once you remove the asbestos, clean out the mold, replace many of the windows, and reinsulate, you're looking at another 20 grand, easily. Not to mention the security precautions, some of which are mentioned above.
You might say, "Well, renovations are yuppie conveniences." Well, keep in mind what's more expensive- removing the asbestos and mold, or paying medical bills? Replacing broken/ancient windows and reinsulating, or paying $250 electric bills?
And something that NO ONE has mentioned yet is the condition of the land that these very inexpensive homes are in. Do you really want to raise your children in a Superfund site? Here in Tulsa, the cheap land is near the refineries and the airport. You can pretty much forget planting that vegetable garden. Or living a long, healthy life for that matter. Not to mention that it smells like Chernobyl...
As Anonymous said, you can't necessarily limit yourself to looking in your own backyard. This is a fairly extreme idea, and requires extreme measures.
When we conducted our search for a low-cost house, I searched all across Canada, with no prejudice or preconceived notions of where we wanted to end up. We had our small checklist of priorities and I painstakingly cross-referenced locations that had our amenities with real estate prices. The house that initially drew us to the place we settled was listed at $29K, but it needed major foundation work and at the time, we weren't confident enough in our ability to handle that. Now that we've almost lived through pretty extensive renovations on this house, I think we'd be prepared for the challenge.
Our house, just under $40K when you include closing costs etc. (purchase price $35K) was actually move-in ready, on a corner lot 50 ft. by 132 ft. It's about 625 square feet on one floor, plus a full, open, unfinished basement which gives us another 625 square feet of room. The renovations we've been making have been mostly cosmetic (taking down walls for an open concept -- all but the bathroom and a small office in which to keep things away from the cats) and environmental (including non-toxic/healthy materials) -- reinsulated, all new energy efficient windows, solar tubes for lighting, cork flooring, solid butcher block countertops. If cost had been our primary motivation, we could have moved in as-is.
Since the renovation has taken longer than planned, we're in a rush to make it livable so we can stop living in a hotel! So, we've tabled some of the major, non-essential for living projects. But, once we're in, we'll then look at even more options, such as solar panels (our city boasts that it's the second sunniest city in Canada) and some geo-thermal options.
We're not in an industrial park, nor are we in a ghetto. The air is clean, the land is good. No, we couldn't do this in Toronto. In fact, we couldn't have done this anywhere in the province of Ontario. It did require broadening our horizons. When how you live is more important than where you live (and admittedly, it's not for everyone) then you'd be amazed at what you can find.
"Cleveland, Buffalo, Kansas City, Des Moines, Little Rock...
You need to get out of Boston and see the rest of the country."
I've been everywhere man, I've been everywhere.. IVE BEEN EVERYWHERE