We get a “50 year construction structure warranty,” which is nice, but inside we have an IOT mess controlled from the smart bathroom with the help of a proprietary fake Alexa, waiting for the servers to go down or the company to brick their AI assistant for one reason or another. “Smart” homes are bullshit homes.
5 Likes
I love this aesthetic. I’ve always dreamed of having a room made in this style. It would be a disaster, completely unmaintainable and it’d get scratched to hell in a month, but that’s what makes it a fun dream, rather than a project.
1 Like
Yeah, really, it’s damn pricey for a pre-fab tiny house. For that amount, I’d think you could get a custom-built one… and the cost of land isn’t even included. (Is installation even included?) Seems like they’re trying to brand it as a luxury tiny house (except that explicitly saying it is something of an oxymoron…) by throwing some cheap electronics in and calling it a “smart” home to pump up the profit margin.
Then yeah, high-density housing is preferable (both in terms of cost and urban planning) - though stacking these seems like a poor way to create high-density housing. This is sort of a solution looking for a problem.
Except houses come on, you know, a lot. Here in California, it’s the land that costs the money, so you plop that down somewhere, it’s suddenly costing substantially in excess of $500 a square foot.
2 Likes
I bought my house for under a 100K less than five years ago in a walkable suburb of Cleveland. We’ve had a bit of a price explosion recently, but you can still get a nice three bedroom near here for under 200K. Depending on your neighborhood comfort you can easily get a house that needs a little work for under 50K in Cleveland and rehab with the remaining 50.
3 Likes
Although they are designed there, they won’t be expecting to sell many of these in Singapore. For all its justified reputation as a corporate police state, most Singaporeans live in the huge amount of public housing that’s been built there over the decades.
3 Likes
HEY HI! Now your whole house can be hacked. What more can one ask for for just under 100k.
The most “weird” (scary) thing I’ve heard about home ownership in Japan was the multigenerational mortgage. Hopefully, that’s not a banking industry offering coming to other countries soon. Given the level of consumer debt in the U.S., I can imagine that leading to expansion of filial responsibility laws and debtors’ prisons (in addition to people already imprisoned because of poverty).
3 Likes
Thankfully, I think that those kinds of mortgages are on their way out in Japan. When I got my mortgage here (20-year; they offered me 30, but I said nope), the bank lending agent even let me set up life insurance that will pay off the remainder of the mortgage if I die during those 20 years for a couple extra bucks a month.
Then again, I am not in Tokyo (though I am in a city the size of San Diego) and the place is pretty modest.
ETA: Actually, come to think of it, the lending agent was quite insistent that I get the life insurance; I don’t think that they would have given me the loan otherwise. Still, that’s better than passing the loan off to my surviving family in the event of a misfortune.
3 Likes
377 square foot is 35m² for those wondering
1 Like
I have no doubt that’s coming down the line if the neoliberal consensus keeps chugging along. There’s no way the banks are going to allow death to leave money on the table.
2 Likes
These have got to be for export only – I don’t think anyone is building single-family homes in any form in Singapore. Google the phrase ‘single family homes singapore’ and the first link is Sotheby’s.
1 Like
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
