Yesterday evening while browsing around the internet, I stumbled on a page which introduced me to the Ikea Aktiv. The Aktiv is a prebuilt home and “the first in a new line of houses designed by ideabox and appointed by IKEA.” Recently, it was debuted in Portland, Oregon market of the United States after having a successful run over in Europe.
Now – I’m not one to hate on pre-built homes because my parents have a pre-built home as their vacation home – and it was significantly cheaper for them to modify the plans to what they wanted than it would have been for them to build the home from scratch. However, my parents home is a 2000-some square foot river house – this prebuilt home is only 745 square foot with a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. There is also a small storage area – but unfortunately no closets.
This is basically the size of ONE of the floors at my townhouse.
So – after reading this, I sent it to one of my friends Allie. You see, Allie and I basically spend all day sending each other links of ridiculous stuff we find on the internet, and bitching about relationships and politics. (Seriously, that’s our friendship. It’s amazing.) Here is a snippet of the conversation:
Stephanie: http://www.idea
Stephanie: a really expensive trailer
Allie: hahaha
Allie: can you imagine
Allie: hipster trailer parks?
Allie: hahaha
Well, now thanks to Allie, I am imagining hipster trailer parks – and that’s totally what it would be! Apparently, the house comes pre-furnished with your kitchen, bath and bedroom essentials. Let’s take a quick peek:
This is your bedroom a sneak peak of the bathroom, notice the chandelier to class things up?
This is your living room / dining area. Notice all the Ikea essentials.
This is the artist rendering of the outside - two people and some kids... where do the kids sleep?
I don’t even know what to think of this! The house is “typically priced at $86,500″. That’s what the website says, typically priced. I’m not exactly sure what that means except that you’ll be spending around $86K for your house, then whatever the cost of your land is going to be. So, at the cheapest you’re going to spend 100K for this house.
This sounds fairly great for anyone who is in the market for a first home, but what happens when they want to upgrade – who else is going to buy this trailer after them? Is there any hope for making your money back on something this small? Or does Ikea offer add on’s in the near future when the original buyers start to expand their family? In my head I’m imagining building my house like I do in the Sims, just drag and drop from the Ikea store right into my backyard, and presto, you have a new room.
What do you think of this house? Would you purchase it? Why or why not?