Shipping Container Homes and Tiny Houses

Buying a home is expensive (duh). I'm a pretty cheap and eccentric guy, so I stumbled across shipping container homes (like the ones that are stacked up on cargo ships) and tiny houses. First things first, how are theses different from trailers? Well, tiny houses really aren't much different, they're basically just smaller, but more upscale trailers (like $57k for an off the shelf 117sqft home which is about $487 per square foot). Making a DIY tiny house is much less expensive. On the other hand, shipping container homes tend to be permanent structures made from one or more containers that are often stacked in cool ways. The containers themselves are pretty darn cheap, about $1k-6k (depending on newness) for a 40' x 8' x 8' container (320sqft). That's $3 to $18 per square foot (before adding things like electricity and plumbing)! To put that number into perspective, most houses I've seen, you'd be lucky to find anything under $120 per square foot. So, in essence tiny homes save you money by reducing your consumption and shipping container homes save you money by re-purposing mass produced containers. Obviously, you still need to buy land.

Elm From Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

Inside of the Tiny House

Modern Shipping Container Home