What Does It Mean for Housing Affordability When You Can Buy a House on Amazon?

By: Jenna Louie, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer

The Rise of Prefabricated Homes and the Future of Affordable Housing

These days, you can buy anything on Amazon. You can even buy a house! A guy and his friends did just that, buying a house and filming the unboxing and assembly experience on Tiktok. At first, the men are surprised that the house is so small. They walk in to find what looks more like a hallway and full bathroom. But then  they realize that they need to unfold the walls, and the previously “tiny” house turns into a much larger, single-story home.
That house is just one of dozens being sold on Amazon – a recent look suggests a range of prices and products – from a “container” house for $10,888 to a 3-bedroom “expandable villa” for $28,999. 

How Prefabricated Homes Could Revolutionize Housing Affordability

Of course, as the group in the Tiktok video above found out, these homes don’t come pre-connected to any local infrastructure like water pipes, sewer pipes, or electricity. This is the norm for “prefabricated” housing units which have  been constructed “offsite”, although self-contained disaster relief models do exist (even featuring “incinerating toilets” which… well, dispose of your waste using high heat using either gas or electricity).

The existence of listings on Amazon for prefabricated housing shows a growing awareness, and maybe intrigue, from the public about new construction methods. Indeed, the most interesting part of being able to “buy a house on Amazon” is that you avoid any onsite construction. Instead, everything ships to you in a box, and you unpack and assemble it onsite. 

What Does Amazon’s Housing Market Mean for the Future of Construction Innovation?

In 1994, when Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, few people could have imagined that a little online bookstore might fundamentally reshape the retail and shopping experience in America. Thirty years from now, what might be true for how we build homes?

On a project level, we can expect prefabricated methods to grow, which have the potential to lower costs and shrink the time it takes to actually build a new house at its final location. Instead, you might have many parts (if not the whole house!) shipped in pieces, and then assembled quickly onsite.

How Prefabricated Housing Methods Could Lower Costs and Drive Innovation in the Homebuilding Industry

On a neighborhood level, prefabricated construction methods decrease the inconvenience of construction for neighbors (less noise, shorter construction timeline, etc). Could this make previously unwilling neighbors more amenable to infill housing?

The Future of E-Commerce in the Housing Industry: Innovation and Affordability

On an industry level, the availability of housing units on an e-commerce website like Amazon suggests that this is just the beginning of a significant change in how we build and buy new homes. Over time, more sellers may offer their housing products online – and prices may drop as the market becomes more crowded. While shopping for a house on Amazon will never quite be like shopping for a new gadget, it seems likely that the same increase in choice and decrease in prices will drive down industry costs as these options become more available and more trustworthy over time.

Will Prefabricated Homes Become the Future of Affordable Housing?

So if you’re in the market for a new house, or maybe a backyard cottage or ADU – consider it. You have a chance to be an early adopter  if you do.