26 Mar Small Prefab Homes Making City Living Affordable

According to a recent article on fastcoexist.com, there is a new trend arriving fast in some of the most expensive cities – tiny, prefab homes.

These cube homes are portable, cheap, and can be built in an instant. And when you stack them up on top of each other, you have a whole community.

London, for example, has an outrageously expensive housing market. In fact, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is over $4,000. A new set of low-cost homes from the YMCA can be a solution for young people in the area with little income.

Image courtesy of fastcoexist.com

The YMCA’s Y:Cube houses are quick to build; the home is fully constructed and finished in a nearby factory, and then can be set in place almost instantly. Its affordability does NOT by any means indicate a lower quality home. In fact, more money is spent on the quality of the materials and finishes than in traditional homes. So it’s the speed and process that make them cost-effective.

What’s really cool is that the homes are built for one – 300 square feet encompasses the bedroom, living room, kitchen AND bath – but they are designed to stack on top of each other easily to form a community.

Along the same lines as the micro-apartments in New York and San Francisco, the Y:Cube homes are even cheaper.

In Southwest London, the YMCA plans to build 36 of the units as a prototype.  If the model works, the YMCA plans to roll out more locations. The same construction methods could even be used to save costs and improve sustainability for everything from larger homes to schools.

Read more about this incredible new trend here in the full article posted on fastcoexist.com.

What do you think? Is this a positive or negative for the housing market in expensive cities? Share by commenting below!