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Our house, making the modern home affordable

By Creede on May 04, 2006 under Tags:

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This is the first in a long series of posts that I will be doing over the next couple of months. One of the biggest obstacles to us aspiring modernists is finding an affordable modern home. In fact, it has become a huge niche market with tons of people trying to cash in on. Prefab housing was one of the first genuine attempts to make affordable modern homes available to the masses, but unfortunately it has come up short in filling the needs of the common man. I hope to show that with a little creative thinking, and a lot of hard work, anyone can have an affordable modern home. For those that are interested in a somewhat lengthy, but thorough discussion of how we are making it happen, read on…


Ok, let me set the stage for you, tell me if it sounds familiar to you. My wife and I had been married for about two years, and had been living in various apartments around the city, some better than others. We were really tired of feeling like we were just throwing our money away, and wanted to live in a modern contemporary home. We spent quite some time researching building costs, figuring that the best way to have a modern home was just to build one. We live in Salt Lake City, Ut, and building costs for the frugal can usually be had around $100 a square foot. We thought that would be perfect, 1200 square foot home on a thirty thousand dollar lot, and we would hit our budget of $150 thousand. Sounds good on paper, unfortunately it totally doesn’t work. Problem #1, there are no lots for sale anywhere we would want to live, and certainly not for $30 thousand. We really didn’t want to compromise on location, so after almost 3 months of looking for a lot, we gave up on the plan of building in the downtown area. That left two options, either buy a house that already fits our style and budget, or find something really cheap that we could put a lot of money into. Of course finding something that fits our style and budget was never going to happen. All the cool houses go for 1/2 million or more, very frustrating. So we set out trying to find a house that was cheap and in a good location. Not an easy task, but one that at least proved possible.

Stay tuned for the next update in this series on making the modern home affordable. If there are any details you want to know, just ask.

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Creede is a frugal design junkie. He loves miminamist and mid-century influences and often finds himself with a hammer and drill in hand in order to achieve the style he wants without breaking the bank.

  • ritter

    I’m in the same situation in dallas. we looked extensively for an affordable modern home to no avail. we started dialogues with architects but all i hear from others are nightmare stories how they went way over budget. and you’re right, prefabs are still too expensive unless you go with the rocio romero units. have you seen those?

    unfortunately we will probably settle on a condo which we’ll tweak little by little to get it to the perfect level of modern.

    good luck

  • http://www.grassrootsmodern.com creede

    Love the Rocio Romero LV house. That was a top contender for us when we were looking for lots.

    I can see the alure of a condo. They are much better on the budget. We felt really lucky to find a house that was about the same price as a condo, so we figured we didn’t have much too lose.

    About arcitects going over budget, we are doing a big $50 thousand dollar addition to our house in the next couple of monthes, and I am totallly scared of going over. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

  • http://none dc

    the house looks nice. did you have to do a lot of work to it when you moved it. Is that exterior new?
    there definitely isn’t room to add on to the sides,.. are you going to build up or back or what?

  • http://www.grassrootsmodern.com creede

    dc, its a small sugarhouse lot, but luckily its very deep with alley access from the back. There wasn’t much that needed to be done when we bought it, but lots we wanted to do. We will be adding on in the back. I’ll go into more detail in the next couple of posts.

  • http://www.bryondarby.com BD

    I can’t tell you again how lucky you were to find that house! We are in the exact same situation, not necessarily trying to find a modern home, but just an affordable home in an area we actually want to live in. It totally feels like we just missed the boat. Buying a home was something that seemed so close but now seems completely unatainable. They’re saying the housing market in SLC went up 28% in the last year! We put in an offer on a tiny little home that was 800 square feet, no driveway or off-street parking, on a .03 acre lot. We didn’t get it, and the final offer was around $162K. And now, only a few months later, it seems like $162K would have been a steal of a price! Man, it get’s discouraging quick.

    Congrats again on the home, and good luck with all the future renovations.

  • http://none dc

    BD, we had the same experience here in SLC last summer. we made the mistake of selling our 1950′s modern home (flat roof, wall of windows, designed by the architect/owner) in the spring 2005.. we waited a few months to buy a different place but by then the market had gone nuts. our house would have sold for 60k more just from that summer.. and then we got in half a dozen bidding wars before we actually got something. we tried the avenues, sugarhouse, no luck. ended up with a major fixer upper in east millcreek. i had to get a 2nd appraisal just to get up to the purchase price, but it doesnt matter because the market has continued strong since then.

  • http://www.grassrootsmodern.com/2006/05/10/making-the-modern-home-affordable-2/ Making the modern home affordable at Grassroots Modern

    [...] I mentioned last week how hard it was to find an affordable home to buy. We feel very lucky to have found ours. I was practically addicted to the MLS for a couple months, looking for anything that had some potential. We had narrowed it down to two general areas that we wanted to live, downtown, or Sugarhouse. Sugarhouse is a neighborhood about 10 minutes from downtown that has a hip and unique little shopping district and lots of trendy little tutor homes. Its not exactly the place to find a good deal on a home, but it is a great place to live. We ended up getting a home in what I call Sugarhood, which is just west a couple blocks of the nice Sugarhouse area. Its a transitional area that has a lot of potential. Our home was a total steal at $106,000. It was on the market for some time in the $120 range but not selling, so the owner changed it to for sale by owner and dropped the price. Of course there is a reason it was not selling (there always is). Our house is just under 700 square feet, small even by Sugarhouse standards, and situated on a 30′ wide lot that leaves both neighbors houses less than about 5′ from our side windows. The lot is a decent size however, around .11 acres with alley access to the back yard. Now that we knew we wanted it, we had to face our first obstacle, financing. [...]

  • http://www.thebostonhometeam.com/blog/jamaica-plain-needs-more-modern-design Jamaica Plain needs more Modern Design | The Boston Home Team Blog

    [...] clipped from grassrootsmodern.com [...]

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