Elon Musk is selling all of his possessions, including his massive houses,
and has moved into a 375-square-foot tiny house in Boca Chica, Texas,
next to his SpaceX plant. So, let's go take a tour of that property and answer some
frequently asked questions about tiny homes. This product that we have here, it's called the
Casita. It's our smallest room module. It's 20 by 20, and it's set up as kind of a studio apartment.
We're targeting that towards the emerging backyard housing market that exists in California due to
changes in laws where they basically legalized backyard housing in almost every backyard.
Pretty cool, simple place for us to start, but the building system doesn't end there.
We're going to eventually roll out bigger room modules with different interior configurations
that all stack and connect to build any building you can imagine. We've engineered a product
that can build anything from this little Casita up to a large thousand-unit multi-family.
The first question people typically ask is how much are these tiny houses? Well, this house
right here is the Casita model by a company called Boxabl, which we'll talk about in a little bit,
but they are at the forefront of the affordable housing and also tiny house
movement. And this starts at $50,000, or you can rent it out for $250 per month.
Universal basic income of $500 a month, you can afford a Boxabl.
Those types of things are solving problems that our society says we
need to be addressing right now, and we have that capability.
The price of housing that has gone up here just in the past couple years,
that's squeezing out a considerable amount of the population, a lot of them are senior citizens.
Absolutely, and so what we've been doing and working at in my role is engaging with
some of the local officials to create new master plans for communities.
Next up, as far as other sizes and floor plans, there's really just this one right now. However,
they're working on additional floor plans with additional bedrooms, multi-levels,
they're even talking about like multi-units. So, over the next five to 10 years, you're probably
going to see a wide variety of options. We can build them anywhere in the world.
So a pretty big upside here, we think we've figured out how to build any building type,
mass-produced in the factory, anywhere in the planet. If we pull this off, we're going to
be able to help billions of people. We've had great success and traction so far. We're just
getting started. To date, we have over a billion dollars of pre-orders from the general public.
So how much is shipping for these tiny houses? Well, this company, Boxabl,
is based in Las Vegas, so obviously the closer to Las Vegas you are the better. However, they
can ship anywhere in the world, and it's going to be roughly $2 to $10 per mile from Las Vegas,
depending on where you live, so you can kind of do some rough math there and get a general idea.
The initial innovation that we had to get going was to fix the shipping problem,
because if it's too big to ship, then don't even bother building it in the factory. You're going to
lose all your money shipping. So, our product actually folds up to a highway-legal load,
and then it ships to site, where it sets up in just an hour, and everything's done.
Next question, how do you actually set up these houses? Well, these are actually foldable houses
which can be built within a day. They have licensed installers that Boxabl will set you
up with depending on where you live, and then it can just be quickly installed and
ready for use. So, it's not like they just ship it to you and expect you to
do all the work to set it up. Because if you're like me and setting up furniture,
it can be pretty difficult, from IKEA, all those instructions, so they make it nice and easy.
Now, how much does it actually cost to set one of these houses up? Like I mentioned,
the price is 50,000 to purchase the property, but it can be anywhere from 5,000 upwards of
50,000 to actually set this house up. Depending on the complexity of your site and where you live,
there's going to be permits, foundations, utility hookups, that type of thing. So,
it can range pretty widely, but 5,000 to 50,000's a good estimate.
How do you actually finance these houses? According to Boxabl, you can reach out to
them and they do have some 30-year options. It's a little vague, but I think they're
working on some 30-year options. We're actually in the process
of filling a major need for folks. And that's the whole purpose of this is to
find the need, add value, help people with a better product. Our ultimate objective is to lower
the cost of housing because it's too high. I've heard other people who have bought tiny
houses before. Sometimes they might have to use a HELOC or get some type of more like
shorter-term loan with a little bit higher interest rate. But obviously if the house is
only $50,000, it's not going to be too bad. So, what are these houses actually made of?
They're made from steel, concrete, and EPS foam. These are supposed to be more durable and more
reliable than traditional building materials. ... durability of the product in hurricanes,
and we're just going through our codes now. These panels are pressed with quarter
of a million pounds of pressure, and they are crushing all the codes in terms of strength.
Not only that, but they're rated for hurricane-speed winds,
so they can handle some pretty tough conditions, and they don't use lumber or sheetrock,
which means the building materials are not going to be damaged by water. They're not going to grow
mold. And the structure's pretty much going to be undamaged even if your Boxabl house floods.
These houses were also engineered with fire resistance in mind. And although nothing is
fireproof, it's going to be significantly more than your traditional house. And they're also
energy efficient. It probably helps that the house is so small, smaller HVAC, smaller everything, so
that might have something to do with it. Now, as far as being allowed to build these,
you're probably wondering can I even build this on my property? They have a link with
permits.com where you can find out additional information and see if it's possible to build
on your site wherever you are in the US. How do the utilities work and connect?
Well, plumbing, electric, and HVAC all come pre-installed from the factory. So the utilities
basically plug in onsite to the exterior corner of the unit. And like I mentioned,
they do have licensed installers that will do this for you. You probably shouldn't
mess around too much with utilities. Now, a little bit about this company,
Boxabl. This might be the future of housing. It's affordable housing that can be mass produced at an
inexpensive rate. It's got Elon Musk's attention. I mean, he's living in one of these houses now.
Who knows, he might even be the owner or purchase a majority stake at some point. And this company
has also even unveiled plans for a house on Mars. It's probably a little bit in the distance,
but it's a very forward-thinking type of company. This company was started in 2017, and they're
basically just trying to make housing affordable, and they already have a billion dollars worth of
orders with over a hundred thousand houses that they plan to build. And I'm sure over the next
few years, it's going to increase drastically. Building a home is no longer measured in months.
Now it can be done in less than a day. That is the promise being made here by the people at Boxabl,
who provided this promotional video. It's a foldable home that comes in a box.
Unpacks in about an hour, you plug it in, and you're living. It's very, very nice.
And all for under 50 grand, that's what we're talking about.
Yeah, $50,000 locally delivered for free. This 400-square-foot single bath Casita,
with full-size appliances and nine and a half foot ceilings, may just be a game changer.
Consider college students, people who've lost their homes to natural disasters, or the people
sent to help them, and that is just the start. It's kind of funny, over the last 5, 10, 15,
20 years, everyone's gone from the McMansions to now it's the tiny houses, and we'll see what the
future holds. So if you're into tiny houses, watch this video right here, and comment below
what you think about these tiny houses and Elon Musk, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.