Originally posted by @Marian Smith:
I was being serious. I don’t know what “very friendly to containers” means but I was rather surprised they were not allowed on residential zoned lots in the city limits of Amarillo. And so I would certainly check with any city before buying and relocating one in city limits on a residential lot. Could save some heartache. Are there container adu’s in some sections of Austin? Btw I have always thought the container dwellings and the tiny houses have not made a lot of sense due to cost per square foot finished out vs travel trailers or site built sheds/buildings...but I have never delved deeply. Just napkin estimates.
The cost of container homes typically would run to $25k per container (finished at a typical builder level) for a 40' (roughly 350sqft) container. Thats not including slab and utility hookups. Multiple containers can be added to make bigger units so they don't have to be just ADUs but main houses - for example use 3 to get roughly 1100 sqft.
So apart from the time frame saving (say 3 months instead of 9 months), there is moderate cost saving over even the cheapest stick frame one can find in Austin. That may not be the case in say Amarillo.
In an urban context, containers make more sense in infill lots in cities with high land and labour costs.
Austin city treats containers no different from new homes. The only constraint is that they expect you to build it on-site which increases the costs. Those are the ones given above. If one could build offsite and drop it in place, there could probably be a further 20% reduction in cost and time.
