$50k House Package

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Main Cost Breakdown

  • $40k materials
  • $10k House Build Support Package
  • You bring your own land.

House Support Package

If someone wants to build, we charge a $10k service fee for build training + materials drop ship + build support.

The fee covers OSE support for a successful build - adaptatuion to build site, choice of features, a permit package for the local building department, materials drop ship, remote quality control, a weekly live webinar for support on build questions, live support, guidance on finding suitable land, help in hiring workers or contractors, and providing a Swarm Build in unique cases.

  1. Customization and Drop Ship - you select from our selection of house models that best suits your needs, and let us know what options, materials, finishes, and appliances you would like to use. We generate a complete bill of materials which details all parts for you, and you call in/submit the the order and pay, receive the shipment, and inventory the shipment. We work from a database of suppliers that meet our specifications. The base package is approximately $40k and includes a house ready to move in.
  2. Building Package for Building Depertment - We provide a complete package that you submit to your building department. This includes architectural drawings and details, calculations, and engineering approvals - and all foreseeable supporting information that a city may need. You meet with your building department for preliminary review, and submit this to your building department once you acquire land. Our plans should be suitable for most cases - but if you are in a heavily-regulated environment with special conditions such as earthquakes, flood zones, hurricanes, special ordinances, special state or federal restrictions, or restrictive home owners' associations - there would be additional costs involved or you can choose to find a more suitable site. We can support you in navigating this with our support services (online, live webinar, or live support). You are ultimately responsible for permit fees or any other fees associated with doing your build while navigating legal requirements of your building location.
  3. Remote Quality Control - using an app, you have an option to submit pictures of your build at different stages of the build, and we can verify that your build is proceeding correctly. We will inform you if there are any critical mistakes that you need to correct. See Remote Quality Control.
  4. 'Support. OSE staff is there to provide full support on any of the build process via email, live webinar, or calling our support desk. We will assign a personal Build Facilitator to each home builder. You can email us questions, and we go over the questions on a weekly live webinar. Or just call our help desk and we can answer any questions if you cannot wait for our weekly live webinar. You are entitled to unlimited support via email, you can participate in all weekly live webinars, and we can provide you with up to 10 hours of phone support
  5. Assistance on Finding Land. We help you with a webinar on How to Find Land so that you can learn what to look for and what to look out for. You can contact us with any questions that you may have.
  6. Community Support - We know that building a house can be a psychologically taxing project. We are here to provide the encouragement and community support to help you finish. Between our private Facebook Group and Discourse Forum, as well as the live weekly webinar, you have access to a community so you don't have to do it all alone. All the builders have access to a FB group to communicate and collaborate with other builders on any issues that come up throughout the build. The dedicated Forum for builders where you can discuss any technical issues and questions. The Forum is designed such that all content can be cross-posted to the wiki - so that design discussion can happen effectively using version control functionality of the wiki.
  7. Hiring Out Work - If you find out that you just don't have the time and energy to complete your build - we can support you on finding capable workers. Between using online recruiters, resources in your community, Craigslist, social media, ads, and our database of builder reviews - we can help you find someone that you can pay to build your house for you. This is part of the support package that we are creating to bring affordable, ecological housing to the world.
  8. Swarm Builds - Only in extreme cases. Using our swarm build model of rapid building, we can ultimately organize a weekend build event for your house if you are really stuck. We will be able to do this only for a small percentage of the houses (5%). We are developing relationships with affordable housing nonprofits to do this - such as Habitat for Humanity so that we can provide hands-on-deck in cases where most help is needed.

FAQ

  1. I see your collection of house models, but I want a different design. How can I do that? You can select only from our collection of models of varying shape and floor plan. We customize these models for your selection of materials, floor finishes, and other options - and you can make your house as fancy as you like. You are paying for the materials - it's up to you how much or how little you want to spend. If you want a different design, then we can help you design a different model, but since that is much more involved that choosing from our options and customizations - we would charge you at standard rates for redesign. However, all the work that we do enters the public domain - so that by requesting a redesign - you are helping others if they choose to build the same design.
  2. I want a tinyhouse. How can I do that? You can go as small as 256 square feet with our house models. You will likely pay less for materials, otherwise all other costs and benefits of our package remain the same.
  3. I would like to build a larger home. How can I do that? We can support that as well. The materials cost, which you cover, will naturally be higher, and our service fee is $5k per any 1000 square foot addition.
  4. I would like to build a cluster of single and multi-family homes that is more like a small village. How do I do that? You can certainly use our system in the multi-home configuration - and we can help you do this. The service fee for this will depend on the size and complexity.
  5. I want to build a residential skyscraper. How can I do that? We are not set up to do that yet, as residential building codes and techniques that we cover go up to only 2 stories and an attic. but we are beginning collaboration with the open source Vivihouse project for designs that are up to 6 stories.
  6. I already have some building materials on hand that I want to use. Can I do that? We allow material substitutions as long as the substitution works and you are capable of making the material adaptations based on our explicit designs. If this can be done within the normal time budget of the We can help if you have the skills required to modify our designs to use your materials. Since you are responsible for the actual build - . We can help you within our support time budget - but if there is significant rework and redesign - you are
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