Elon Musk, the wealthy CEO of Tesla, recently announced that he owns a $50,000 foldable house made by Las Vegas startup Boxabl, confirming a story that has been going around for more than a year.
The firm Boxabl currently has a waitlist of 120,000 households and is establishing a second plant less than a year after opening its first due to the demand the rumor generated in it.
Galiano Tiramani, the founder, told Business Insider that “the target demographic knew about this earlier, and then the Musk news brought in general audience curiosity, maybe someone who didn’t care about housing.”
Musk may have had many choices when purchasing his Boxabl, but there are many others who are in desperate need of cheap housing.
In order to meet demand, at least 3.8 million additional dwellings will be required in the US by 2022 The “serious underbuilding of entry-level homes” is one of the key causes of this scarcity, said mortgage provider Freddie Mac.
There isn’t a product with a bigger potential upside or a bigger industry to disrupt, in my opinion.
In order to alleviate this shortfall, manufactured homes, which are constructed in factories and installed on site, may be crucial (if obstacles from zoning can be worked out).
In a June interview with Bloomberg, US Housing Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said, “We really can’t continue to build the houses we grew up in.” “[Manufactured] homes are more effective and durable… These are easily constructed and installed. They are very expensive, making them a significant component of the solution.
One of the startups attempting to increase the number of Americans who live in manufactured homes is Boxabl.
It hopes to produce homes more quickly and affordably than other homes by constructing them essentially on an assembly line, like cars. Meanwhile, a special design that enables folding of the residences reduces the expense and time of transit and assembly.
There isn’t a product with a bigger potential upside, or a bigger market to disrupt, Tiramani added. We have the ability to transform housing on a scale never before seen.