Save a Minimum of $100,000 on This Housing Alternative: Amazon’s Foldable Homes
Written by
David Nadelle
Edited by
Nicholas Morine
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While prefabricated housing and home construction kits have long been popular options for homeowners who want to save money on sale prices and a variety of home-related expenses, leave it to Amazon to up the prefab game and make it even easier to get affordable housing delivered to you in a few days.
Amazon is selling portable prefabricated tiny homes by manufacturers like Chery Industrial, Doinuo and Zolyndo. The latter offers three home options: a $19,999 13-by-20 foot structure, a $22,999 15′ x 20′ house and its largest foldable house, which is a 380-square-foot home with a sale price of $34,999, according to The New York Post.
As The Motley Fool reported, the median home sales price for the first quarter of 2024 was $420,800, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — down $2,400 from the previous quarter and $8,200 lower year-over-year. Compared to $35,000 for a top-end folding prefab, that’s quite a disparity.
Costs of Traditional Home vs. Prefab Home
Of course, there are a lot of additional costs associated with owning a “traditional” home. Likewise, you’ll need to figure out the costs that come with owning a mobile home that comes delivered on a pallet and takes less than a half-hour to assemble.
Although shipping through Amazon will be free, a new foldable homeowner will need to factor in costs like land on which to settle (or to store or rent in a mobile home community), water and electricity hook-ups and insurance, plus any inspections or municipal approvals required. If you want to splurge on solar panels or extra insulation or reinforcement, you’ll have to add those costs, too. Some public commenters criticized the likelihood of an insurer taking on the building, as well as the pitfalls surrounding wiring, heating, and plumbing.
Still, you would need to pay most of these expenses if you bought an established or new-build house anyway — and would be paying much more for utilities in a bigger space. Considering the average sale price of a new manufactured (mobile) home in the U.S. is much lower than a conventional house ($122,200 in Dec. 2022, per Statista), buying a tiny foldable house on Amazon for a top price of $35,000 plus ancillary costs could provide you with a financially accessible path to homeownership, free you from being tied to a long-term mortgage. This could easily save you $100,000-$350,000, depending on your location and home prices in your area.
If you want to see a typical fold-out mobile house, check out Tiktoker Jeffrey Bryant’s 19′ x 20′ house unboxing video. The unit comes complete with a living room area, kitchen, full bathroom and hookups for plumbing and electric. Taking only 20 minutes to unfold, Bryant plans on getting the unit ready to list on Airbnb. The house tour video garnered 8.5 million views in two days and now has nearly 20 million plays.
