The sad truth about building a container home and why I'm giving up

a recent study showed that over 90 of high-end and luxury container homes were built for just under 15 000 furthermore whenever polled building and safety officials all agreed that permitting a container home was super easy oh boy uh well obviously i'm kidding i can already feel the comments coming there are two kinds of people watching this video right now the people that are gonna hate me and the people that are gonna be very thankful that i'm shedding light on the idea of building a container home before i really dive into this i do wanna say that on three separate occasions i've gotten very very close to actually pulling the trigger and building a container home myself and for various reasons it never worked out one of those reasons being that i got scammed by a container home company and then sued by them for a million dollars for leaving a bad review which i've almost made a video on this topic but my attorney advised me to not poke the bear getting back on track here the reason i wanted to make this video today was because we've all been there we've all thought about buying a 2 000 container and then turning it into a luxury high-end container home that you could then live in super cheaply or make a bunch of money on airbnb with and back when i was consulting for short-term rentals i had a lot of clients that would say hey rob like there's this three acre parcel that i found out in the middle of nowhere and guess what it already has a 40-foot container on it so i can build a container home right not really so today i want to talk about the top misconceptions that come along with building a container home and things that you should really consider if this is a project that you actually want to endure in life pro tip you're going to want to stick around until the very end of the video because i'll actually be chatting with the shipping container home expert so one really really big consideration that i want you to keep in mind when going down the shipping container rabbit hole as many of us have is that it's trendy all right and so that's not necessarily a bad thing because you know if it's trendy that means it's in right now it's hot it's fresh everybody wants it but you have to keep in mind that whenever you're designing something or whenever you're building something you want to try to make that house or style feel as timeless as possible just think about all the different times in your life when you thought a certain style or interior design was super nice only to realize that five years later it looked super super dated having a trendy design sometimes just doesn't age super well we change us as people we change so much over the course of a year or two or three and our style evolves it really wasn't too long ago when i was hyper obsessed with like pipe furniture and the industrial look and i actually had a furniture business where i used to build like pipe coffee tables and stuff and i was obsessed with it and now i just hate it but it's just because my design palette has shifted this is something that i think people are very short-sighted about whenever they're super enamored and infatuated with the idea of a shipping container home here's something that people don't really realize when they're getting into this game and it's that counties and building and safety departments they're a little outdated and they're often playing catch-up with a lot of these non-conventional builds like tiny houses tree houses prefabs and container homes they just don't always understand your vision the concept of a container home can be so clear to you but if you call old bob behind the desk at the county he's going to be like a container what and you really have to explain to him that it's a container home like yes those containers that travel across the sea holding foreign goods or some yeah you're going to convert that into this super trendy amazing awesome architectural house and they're going to be like uh yeah we don't do that here so you really have to know how to frame up your questions whenever going to the city instead of saying hey i want to build a container home you might want to say something like hey i'm looking to build a home that's a steel frame construction then at least you're talking in the lexicon and the verbiage that they're used to dealing with every single day something else to consider on this front is that container homes can often be classified as something that's called a prototype design meaning it's like a spec home or the first of its kind and a lot of counties will actually make you compensate and over engineer your house because it just doesn't conform to traditional building materials in the same way one final thing that i want to touch on here is that a lot of the times a typical building and safety inspector is not actually qualified to inspect your container home because it has so many specialty niches and trades in it like a welder for example all right so these next couple of points all sort of relate to each other so let's just say that you're willing to face the county and you're like come at me bro well now you gotta hire an architect or a draftsman the problem is that a lot of drafters and architects will turn you down because they don't want to touch a shipping container home because it's too unconventional they don't understand it they don't understand the structural loads and they just don't want the liability and the headache of messing with container homes to this day i still have not worked with a drafter or an architect that was super passionate about building a container home for me but let's just say that you find that golden goose architect and they're like real bad i'm gonna build you the most perfect container home ever i think that was french and spanish at the same time anyways let's just say that you have an architect that's willing to do the job for you well next you need to get it engineered and often over engineered and guess what group of people also don't want to work with containers engineers in my experience it's been very difficult to find an engineer that will stamp my container plans now i know that a lot of you all are probably thinking well it's a shipping container they're literally engineered to withstand a bunch of weight on cargo ships they literally stack them up 10 high and load hundreds of thousands of pounds on top of each other and that is true containers are engineered to structurally support a lot of weight kind of that assumes that you're not making a bunch of different cuts within that container see containers get their structural rigidity rigid i've done this too many times structural rigid rigidity oh my goodness am i saying that right why what time is it oh it's 12 39 that's why containers get their structural rigidity from being one fluid piece of steel that's all welded together and all engineered as one piece but the moment you make a cut for like a window or a door or like a body disposal anything like that you take away from the structural integrity of that container now you have to over compensate and re-engineer that structure with different steel beams and steel supports so that it i don't even know what i'm talking about like i just i've literally i blanked out the last like three minutes let me know in the comments if like any of this makes sense you have to overcompensate and re-engineer the structure with new steel supports and beams so that it's structurally sound to support the weight of the house that you're building all to say that it's usually a horde pass for engineers and last one here let's say you have your architect you have your engineer now you need someone to actually build it your contractor and guess what a lot of contractors won't touch container homes a lot of contractors that have approached or talked to they just don't want to do it they don't want to deal with the container home they know that it's hard it's outside of their wheelhouse they're used to building houses with two by fours and two by sixes so to bring this like wacky container home it's often difficult for them to see your vision and in this market where most contractors are booked out anywhere from six to 24 months in advance they just know that they don't have to deal with this headache of a container home when they can just have all these other dozens of jobs that are just regular homes that they're very good at building and remodeling okay so here's probably the single biggest misconception and mistake that people make when getting into the shipping container game and the misconception is that people just think it's cheap like they genuinely think oh well container is gonna cost me like four thousand bucks and another four thousand bucks and a couple of shiplap panels and some laminate tile and i got a beautiful shipping container well no that's not true if your shipping container home is cheap it's probably ugly i've just triggered like half of my audience i think container homes very often they can be more expensive than building a regular stick built house there's so many things that make containers a very costly endeavor for example the different trades that you have to hire to work inside of a container one of those trades being a welder a specialty welder that can actually work on a container home can charge you anywhere from 125 to 150 an hour on top of that remember all that over engineering i was talking about well if you're having to put in steel supports or steel beams in your container like let's say that you want to combine two containers you want to cut out a wall on both and connect them you're going to need a very long beam to connect both of those things that's expensive steel is one of the most expensive materials to deal with right now especially in the era of kovid where supply chains are just like see ya goodbye i'm dead now another reason that it's so expensive is that you can't just put in fiberglass insulation you need to do specialty spray foam insulation which is not particularly cheap so in general i think this is where most people mess up i did whenever i was first budgeting out my very first shipping container home which could have cost me anywhere from 120 to 160 000 which i didn't have at the time and yeah very much dodged a bullet on that so i guess my recommendation here is that if you're dead set on building a container home make sure to get different quotes from contractors like the rule of threes here right get three different contracting quotes and try to work with a contractor who's actually built a container home before because if they've never built a container home before then there's just so much that they don't know and ultimately i think that's going to lead to some budget overages which is never fun it's 1am and i'm so tired ready for this yes i'm ready what are you stalling for i'm not stalling for nothing watch this spin it a pen oh pretty cool focus rob so getting through construction once you get through construction congratulations you've built a container home it's very difficult and you should be proud of yourself it's an accomplishment in and of itself that you were able to complete a container home one thing that i think should be up for consideration is resell like you built this house for yourself but if you ever want to sell it so that you can use the proceeds to get into your next home you may not have an easy time finding a buyer remember container homes are somewhat trendy so let's say that you live in this house and you like it and in 10 years you decide to sell it well not only may it be out of trend and out of style and maybe you won't like it as much but that probably will apply to the rest of the population too and you just may not be able to offload your container home at the price that you're wanting to sell it for this actually goes into my next point here which is appraisals let's let's say you do find the buyer and that buyer's like you son of a i'm in you still need to be able to appraise meaning that if you're selling it for four hundred thousand dollars you need an appraiser to agree that it's worth four hundred thousand dollars because if they don't you're gonna have issues with financing and either you or that buyer is gonna have to pay for that gap on top of that you really have to consider how appraisals work typically an appraiser is going out and trying to determine the value of your home based on other homes that are similar like in square footage in building materials and so if you have this one-of-a-kind architectural shipping container it's going to be hard for them to determine the value of that container based on other homes that have been sold within the last 90 to 180 days on top of that this is assuming that the buyer that you're selling it to can even get financing in place to finance something as unconventional as a container home and even just diving into financing a little bit more you may not even find a bank that will give you a construction loan on a container home because it's so wacky in a bank size so you may very well have to pay cash to buy a container home or pay cash to build a container home financing and appraisals are such a fickle fickle beast in general but add the complicated layer of a shipping container and it gets crazy which i'd be more like enthusiastic and animated if it wasn't like one something i was gonna review that take but honestly i don't remember what i said so let's move on okay last little consideration here is that sizing limitations typically shipping containers are eight feet across eight feet tall there are what are called high cubes that are a little bit taller i think they're about nine feet but you know conceptually like the look of a container it's very cool it's very modern it's got a striking look to it and conceptually they're great but whenever you're actually in the space eight feet across is like not very much and when you start talking about putting in studs and insulation and everything like that and cutting inches into your space that can actually be pretty significant given that you only have eight feet across so just like looking at this room right here let me see this room is 16 feet across meaning two containers can fit in here meaning one container is about from here to that wall right there which might seem kind of spacious because this is like a wide angle lens but maybe it doesn't like if i had to live in a space that was from here to that wall i would set i would set my house on fire because i'd be so frustrated at living in such a cram space and i get it i get it if that's your prerogative and if you like the tiny house living mentality and like the idea of a shipping container you might be fine with the narrow space but it can feel a little claustrophobic and you might think that you're ready for it but i don't know once you're in there it might drive you a little crazy now that i've given my personal pov on container homes i wanted to talk to my friend kai andrew who's a shipping container home expert because he's actually built one before and he's building a couple right now cool so we'll do a cold open here like hey what's up man as if we didn't plan this oh really good yeah hey what's up man long time no talk i know man it's been a while well let's jump right in man building a shipping container pretty easy right no not at all you think it would be and you think it'd be cheap too but i think it's uh becoming further and further from the truth since this isn't like your first time around the block can you give us like three or so misconceptions or things to keep in mind when building a shipping container so the first one is that it's cheaper and it's not if you were doing something completely off-grid and you're doing yourself with a cutting wheel and you're just doing on your own without code engineering or anything yeah it could be cheaper right now it's post you know illness levels and so everything's weird i think containers now like 20 or 30 000 just for a normal 40 footer one way whoa 20 or 30 000 it used to be like eight right no it used to be three and a half so when i was first looking buying containers they're about two and a half three and a half thousand maybe a brand spanking new one that was perfect condition was four thousand i paid five and a half for mine it's not that inexpensive just because you have to work with metal metal is just really expensive because you have to customize it and then steel is not cheap so the other one is you don't know what you don't know because it's not a standard building project it's not like everybody's been doing basically building out of wood for uh ages metal is relatively new and so when you need to connect a deck or you need to brace a beam or something like that you're all of a sudden dealing with a lot of metal and metal calculations i can't just go to home depot i'm like hey can i get a eight inch by four inch beam delivered to my place tomorrow it's like no that doesn't it doesn't work that way and then the other one too that a lot of people don't get right and i've seen this on youtube so if you guys are looking at doing it um hopefully i'm not talking anybody out of it cause i love shipping containers i just want people to be informed because you know the three times that i've like gone down the rabbit hole of almost building a shipping container had those projects actually gone through i would have been so in over my head and probably would have made some very very costly mistakes no you you would have figured it out yeah i mean i i really do think that you could figure it out it's kind of like one of those situations you you figured out your own adu and your backyard in l.a but yeah going back to it though the last thing is that most people don't get this right is they don't seal the containers correctly and so if you think about it they're a giant metal box if you guys ever had like you know a glass of water like this on a hot day and it's cold on the inside you get condensation on the on the outside and that's what happens in containers if you guys want to check it out just go into any storage container or any construction site container inside there will be droplets literally dropping down on stuff we always have to cover our stuff on the inside because the condensation will drop down on our lumber and our tools so we always had to cover with tarps and stuff you know prefabs tiny homes shipping containers they're awesome but you know the the marketing behind all of this stuff is really good and so it makes anyone feel like they can do it which they can but there's some due diligence needed i think 100 i think a lot of folks that get into it and they don't realize how much work and how much money it's going to take because we see i've seen the shipping containers we built this for nine thousand dollars we've seen tiny homes like we built this uh a-frame for three thousand dollars or 274 dollars you're like what are you doing most of the time they're not doing it completely legally that's where it starts getting really expensive like whenever you talk about actually having to put in like the foundation get it inspected plum it correctly do the electrical by code it starts adding i mean it's effectively a house except a lot of the times it's a lot more expensive yeah i mean like just to give you some insight on mine i i originally budgeted this i started this about two years ago the one the project i'm working right now it was supposed to be about 75 000 i'm about 60 70 percent done and i'm at 129 000 so for somebody who's first starting off just make sure that you have a budget um and you have a contingency plan in there for those of you at home just make sure that you have a budget and then you have double that budget all right man you wanna tell everyone a like and subscribe before we hit it yeah go check out my channel kai andrew you guys probably seen my videos pop up next to rob built videos on the little suggestion bar come check me out i talk about shipping containers financial freedom independence and real estate well i meant tell everyone to like and subscribe to this channel but that also oh no yeah so ultimately i want to leave you with this this is in no way me saying don't go out and build a container home this is really just me coming and speaking my heart because i've been infatuated with container homes time and time again and i've just learned a lot of these different mistakes and lessons along the way ultimately if you want to build a container home i fully support you do it for you understand some of the risks that i've outlined for you understand some of those budgetary considerations too can you build a container home cheaply yeah i mean sure if it's not permitted and you just want to throw it together is it going to be nice yeah probably not and maybe that's not your goal care or desire this always brings me back to the same question is it worth it maybe i mean i will say that i have a unique fascination with container homes especially because i do love how unique they are and me as an airbnb operator and entrepreneur my wheels start turning because i just see so much potential on how i can transform a space like that plus i think that container homes are super marketable and they just do super well on airbnb so have i given up completely on container homes i don't know i still kind of want to build one what do you all think should i build a container home should i build the ultimate container home airbnb like legitimately if enough of you all wanted that i would do it because like it's challenging and i'm like always down for a challenge so i don't know i might build a container home like i might do it i might but also am i not

Channel: Robuilt

Views: 109,538

Keywords: container homes, shipping container homes, shipping containers, how to build a container home, how to build a shipping container home, are container homes worth it, are shipping container homes worth it, container home scam, shipping container scam, are container homes expensive, are shipping container homes expensive, shipping container, container house, shipping container house, container home, shipping container home, container build, prefab home, prefab, prefabricated home

Id: f70vL6iMc5w

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021