A New Zealand architecture company has designed a three-bedroom house that three people can assemble in six weeks for $335,000.
RTA Studio just constructed its first ‘Living House’ in Rotorua.
It is 85sqm and designed for quick assembly once the foundations are in place, the cost includes a functional kitchen with appliances as well as flooring, lighting, carpets and heating. It does not include the land value.
Prefab housing has been a thing for a very long time all across the world. There are massive economies of scale and automation when you build panels in a factory and just assemble them on location.
I don’t know why they never caught on NZ but I suspect it’s a combination of regulations and lack of will from the public.
Having said that even 335,000 seems like an insane amount of money for the house alone. Given you can’t buy land for under 500K in most places that still puts the total value at about a million dollars or above.
Yeah that’s what I was looking at, its nearly $4k / m2 which is kinda crazy.
I’m trying to find papers showing cost of building over time but so far only got to this one where it was demonstrated back in 2008 (by a now merged Department of Building and Housing) that a starter house could be done for less than 1.5k/m2 - and that included labour.
Yea that does seem super expensive. In all honesty though the way to go is multi story multi residence buildings AKA apartments. Best bang for the buck and better for the environment.
OK, found various sites with various estimates, but all of them suggest that this pre-fab and build yourself is probably overly expensive.
2022 - $2460 / m2 (https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/building-costs-per-square-metre.html) 2023 - $3145 / m2 (https://mortgages.co.nz/what-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house-in-nz/) 202? - $3500 / m2 (https://www.buildingguide.co.nz/planning/building-costs/)
That last one is an estimate for the very basic level, which I think is pretty close to being better than this pre-fab option.
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