Latest news with #prefabhomes
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Travel + Leisure
3 days ago
- Travel + Leisure
Amazon Just Dropped a New Tiny Home With Floor-to-ceiling Windows and a Full Kitchen—and It's Under $10K
If you're an avid Travel + Leisure reader, it's probably no surprise that Amazon is full of tiny homes for sale. We can't help but daydream about escaping to one of these cozy houses, and we love to share the best prefab homes that you'll dream about, too. After sorting through hundreds of tiny houses, we think we just found the best one yet—and at under $10K, this home doesn't have to stay a daydream. This affordable option reeled us in with its modern exterior and customizable layout. However, the more we learned about this home, the more we loved it. We're just about ready to plop this tiny home on scenic properties and hide away for a while. If you're searching for a cozy hideaway, too, keep reading to learn more. This home is fully customizable, so you can work with the seller to build the escape of your dreams. According to the manufacturer, possible layouts include up to five bedrooms, spacious living spaces, and a full kitchen. That means there's room enough for the whole family, making this the perfect vacation spot for summer getaways. This home features a sleek, modern exterior, which can be customized with white, black, yellow, or gray siding. It has a gorgeous glass front door, along with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in plenty of light. This is accentuated by the multiple windows throughout the home, which ensure the interior is drenched in sunlight. Keep scrolling for photos of the interior—we just love how sunlight seeps into the spacious kitchen and living space. This tiny home is made from shipping containers, although with the proper decoration, you'd never guess it. The steel frame ensures a durable, weatherproof exterior. Plus, the home is HVAC-compatible, so you'll be comfortable during the upcoming summer months. The manufacturer provides six standard potential layouts, although there are plenty more layout possibilities. Prices start at under $10,000. Although T+L has been in contact with the seller regarding their tiny homes, the manufacturer hasn't shared specific pricing information for the various layouts. We encourage you to reach out to the seller directly to discover how this tiny home can best be designed to suit your needs. Still daydreaming about an off-the-grid lifestyle? Keep scrolling for more of the best tiny homes we spotted at Amazon. This one-bedroom tiny home is fully customizable, and according to the manufacturer, it can accommodate any of your desired amenities. We love the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the house, which allow plenty of sunlight to soak into the interior. We've seen a lot of tiny homes, but it's rare to find one with a sunroof. You'll feel fully integrated with the natural landscape thanks to this house's large windows and sunroof. The base price includes two bedrooms, although this home can be fully customized to your desired layout. If your ideal summer includes sitting on a porch soaking in scenic views, you'll love this tiny home. The covered porch is impressively spacious, while customization options offer plenty of space inside, too. Plus, this home includes a 10-year structural warranty, so you'll have peace of mind throughout years of tiny-home living. Love a great deal? Sign up for our T+L Recommends newsletter and we'll send you our favorite travel products each week.
Globe and Mail
08-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Morning Update: Canada's prefab housing push
Good morning. Modular housing is making a well-funded comeback – more on that below, along with the second round of conclave voting and the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. But first: For a brief period just over 100 years ago, it was possible to purchase a Frank Lloyd Wright home for US$2,750 – which would shake out to US$75,000 today. The house had strong horizontal lines, a deep roof overhang and wraparound windows. Inside, the layout was open; out front, rows of planters stepped from the door to the lawn. Wright created seven variations on this Prairie Style model. Each one came in a kit. Turns out the Fallingwater architect was bullish on prefab homes. During the mid-1910s, Wright and his associates produced nearly 1,000 drawings for a project called American System-Built Homes, which sought to bring affordable – and architecturally distinctive – housing to the middle class. He promoted the kits in the Chicago Tribune and Ladies' Home Journal, but fewer than 20 were actually assembled. The United States entered the First World War, and lumber shortages ground the work to a halt. Good news: Canada has a boatload of lumber. And Mark Carney seems to share Wright's belief that modular building can help address the housing shortage. The Prime Minister has promised to double the speed of construction to roughly 500,000 new homes each year, with federal investment in prefabricated units a cornerstone of that pledge. He's said the government will provide $25-billion in loans and $1-billion in equity financing to companies that build homes in factories, rather than on construction sites. Ottawa will also place bulk housing orders to help jump-start the industry, since the Modular Building Institute estimates there are only about 40 prefab manufacturers in the country. 'Experts say the plan is visionary – and laden with risks,' The Globe's personal economics reporter, Erica Alini, writes in her recent analysis. Let's take a closer look at the promise and pitfalls of Carney's big prefab bet. The promise The benefits of this sort of building sound almost like a Daft Punk song: cheaper, better, faster, safer. Because structural elements – including floors, walls, ceilings and windows, plus fully equipped kitchens and bathrooms – are built on assembly lines in a factory, labour and construction costs are markedly lower. A 2024 report from the University of Toronto found that modular housing can cost half as much per square foot as homes built on-site. Construction time is shaved by up to 25 per cent, and the whole project is a lot greener. That same report estimates prefab housing reduces both landfill waste and delivery-vehicle emissions by 70 per cent. Japan first turned to modular construction in the 1950s, when the country needed a speedy and cost-efficient solution to the housing shortage caused by widespread bombing during the Second World War. Now, nearly all construction in Japan is industrialized, and prefab homes make up 15 per cent of the single-detached stock. In Sweden, where 42 per cent of homes are modular, year-round off-site construction means there's no hold up for bad weather. That translates to safer working conditions – people aren't trying to build roofs in the snow – and more predictable hours, which helps attract a more diverse labour force. At Lindbäcks, a Swedish prefab construction company, women represent 30 per cent of the workforce. On-site in Canada, it's more like 5 per cent. The pitfalls Prefab housing only becomes cheaper at scale, and right now it accounts for less than 5 per cent of the residential construction here. A giant obstacle to mass production is Canada's wide-ranging building codes, which determine everything from roof shape and window appearance to the thickness of materials, and which vary between provinces and even cities. 'The complexity of building code differences can make scaling up across provinces and territories, or even scaling up beyond one municipality, difficult,' the U of T report laments. North American building codes are 'prescriptive,' and so dictate the thickness and required layers of drywall that have to be used for fire resistance. Sweden opts instead for 'performance' codes – a wall just needs to withstand burning over a certain time, and it's up to the engineers to work out how to do it. But streamlining our building regulations would be a big undertaking in Canada. We're still trying to get a bottle of wine to Ontario from B.C. Then there's the unfair perception that modular housing is boring or bare-bones or homogenous. (I'd invite you to google 'Muji + prefab home' and see what the Japanese retailer has cooked up.) There has to be an appetite for this kind of housing – otherwise, new builds could find themselves as vacant as condo units in Toronto. Canada will need to determine how to boost prefab demand, as well as its supply. Maybe we could start by ripping off a few of those Frank Lloyd Wright designs. Tens of thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square with their eyes locked on the Sistine Chapel chimney – and after this morning's first vote ended, it was black smoke that appeared. There will be as many as four rounds of voting today to see if two-thirds of the cardinals sequestered can agree on the choice of a new pope. Abroad: Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 92 people, including women, children and two journalists, as Israel prepared to ramp up its campaign further. At home: As of last week, there were more than 1,200 measles cases in Ontario. Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the province's outbreak strategy was working and that the government would stick to its plan. In Ottawa: As Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to unveil his updated cabinet next week, he has several new faces to choose from. V-E Day, 1945: A Dutch teacher filled a 250-page scrapbook with mementos from the Canadian soldiers who liberated his country. A small archive is trying to get digital copies to their relatives in Canada 80 years on. Summer, 1969: Bryan Adams isn't a fan of CanCon – but to the singer's surprise, his new digital radio channel is doing well in the country.
