SXSW High-Tech Tiny Home: Would You Pay $139K For This State-Of-The-Art Abode?
High-tech tiny homes like Jeff Wilson’s infuses minimalism with smart technology in an attempt to help end today’s housing crisis.
Affectionately known as “Professor Dumpster,” Jeff Wilson had just led a tour of his 352-square-foot high-tech house on display at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Interactive show in Austin, Texas, reported USA Today online, when the inevitable question arose: Who would be willing to plunk down $139,000 for a state-of-the-art home that small?.
Kasita CEO Jeff Wilson
Jeff Wilson, a former environmental science professor who gained that “Professor Dumpster” moniker after living a year in a 33-square-foot dumpster in Austin launches into an impassioned spiel.
“We’ve been doing housing wrong for decades,” says Wilson, who first turned his dumpster into a sustainable home in early 2014. “We are in a housing catastrophe…the Sears home catalog was the last big innovation more than a century ago.”
(MFH Note: Between 1908 and 1940 Sears, Roebuck and Company sold over 70,000 do-it-yourself catalog homes in North America at prices ranging from $360.00 to $2890. The original modular homes?)
Following his residency in a literal dump, Wilson started Kasita (casita means “tiny house” in Spanish), a designer of mobile, modular, manufactured homes that are stackable. The prefabricated homes can be constructed in three weeks — and could go a long way toward easing the affordable housing crunch that has bedeviled much of the country, according to Wilson.
SXSW High-Tech Tiny Home Gose Big!
With the help of former employees at Google, Elon Musk’s SolarCity and Bell Helicopter, Wilson thinks he has a solution to provide homes and stackable apartments in unused pieces of land such as vacant parking lots. “If you file for a backyard unit, it can be approved in weeks,” says Wilson, who predicts his home could hit the market this summer.
“We need to find cracks in the system rather than take a sledgehammer to it,” he says.
If the reaction of consumers at Kasita’s recent party at SXSW is any indication, interest is high. Hundreds patiently waited in line to get a peek at the modular home, which features a bathroom shower, kitchen, bedroom and living room patio.
A remote control allows dwellers to quickly change mood lighting and an entertainment system. Date mode finds Marvin Gaye’s smooth voice filling the small living area. Storage space is built into steps, walls, and other nooks and crannies.
Note: Long before the “tiny home” phenomenon the major manufactured home and modular home manufacturers were producing high quality constructed, superbly engineered and beautifully equipped park models built to a well-respected building code averaging just under 400 sq.ft. of living space. These sustainable park models will have a price at about one-half the cost of the tiny home featured in this article and will be easier to legally locate and relocate.
Park model floor plans, construction specifications and selected 3D virtual tours from the Skyline Homes building facilities in San Jacinto, California, Leola, Pennsylvania and Ocala, Florida are featured here at Manufactured Homes.com Click- Discover Manufacturers– to review these small homes.
