Is the future a home that unfolds?
I cant figure out what to do with Elon Musk. One day hes a visionary hero, the next hes Jeff Bezos with hair. A few weeks ago I saw flyers in Oakland about an Elon Musk protest; nothing specific, just protesting his general Elon Muskiness. I dont pay close enough attention to Elon Musk, obviously, to understand his evolving relationship with the activist class, but he did do something recently that caught my eye. To me, thats the interesting part of the story; not that Elon Musk, billionaire has announced to the world that hes selling almost all physical possessions and chosen to live the life of a millennial couple on a failed HGTV show. Those are the uninteresting parts. The interesting part is that his new house was built on an assembly line. The home came from a company called Boxabl whose aim, along with a few peers like Juno, APT and Generate, is to revolutionize home building by creating prefabricated homes that, when complete, can be towed behind a standard pickup truck and then unfold onsite until they become a house. Boxabls 400 square-foot casita costs $50,000 out the door, minus the Elon Musk upgrade package. Prefabricated homes certainly arent something new. One hundred years ago you could order a home in the Sears catalog. It would show up in a box, just add nails. And weve seen cedar homes by Lindahl and others that are assembled on-site, and manufactured homes being towed precariously behind semis on the highway. Boxabl wants to become the Henry Ford of housing, building modular, stackable and transportable homes on an assembly line like a car. Elons casita is small, but the concept is scalable, up to and including multi-story apartment buildings. The finished product folds up into a box no more than 100 inches wide, for easy transport, and Boxabl claims it can finish a home in six hours. Turnaround for boxes already inventoried, they say, can be as little as one day. No sugarcoating needed: This is a potential revolution, especially in terms of affordable housing, the Casper mattress of homebuilding, a cant miss. Its inexpensive, its easy and its cool. Your house arrives and unfolds. Maybe. There are cautionary tales. But each sordid tale seems to focus on ancillary factors. Nobody thinks prefab homes are a bad idea. Theres the story of Pulte homes, a traditional home builder that built a 109,000 square-foot factory in northern Virginia to build components for 1,800 homes per year, to be assembled on-site. The problem was timing; Pulte built the plant in 2007. In 2008, the recession arrived, the housing market collapsed and the Pulte plant was quietly shut down. Then theres the spectacular flameout of Katerra, which declared bankruptcy in June after burning through almost $2 billion of investors money in just six years. Press coverage, which is plentiful, finds plenty of reasons for Katerras demise, mostly orbiting around hubris and over-expansion and a general misunderstanding of how to go about executing its business plan. Rather than adapting to the industry, says a story in Architectural Digest, Katerra would attempt to replace or buy the obstacle in its way. Short on lumber, Katerra built a huge factory in Washington State, the story goes on to say, essentially swatting a fly with an Uzi. Nowhere does it say that Katerra was a bad idea. Because its not a bad idea. Its a good idea, but it comes with some questions. Homes, after all, are not cars. Anyway, Im rooting for Boxabl. With home ownership in San Francisco looking further away than ever for so many, people maybe a home that unfolds is the answer to a lot of questions. Larry Rosen is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, podcaster and recovering former Realtor. He is a guest columnist and his viewpoint is not necessarily that of the Examiner. The Market Musings real estate column appears every other week. affordable housinghousing crisisHousing Marketreal estate  If you find our journalism valuable and relevant, please consider joining our Examiner membership program. Find out more at www.sfexaminer.com/join/