Looks remarkably like a single-wide trailer.

The houses you could buy out of the old Sears catalog looked a lot better...

Random is on the money. We are devolving I guess you could say.

From thenIdeabox website:

"It shows you where we came from, and where we are going!"

I sure hope not! very pretty, but they are just detached apartments, not real houses to live in. If Portland OKs this concept, they will have to come up with a skinny model for skinny lots - like the shipping container homes that are built for the homeless in 3rd world countries or following some catastrophe.

Ugly too IMO

The blown-up photo of the forest is a nice touch - almost like having a view.

Does anybody else remember the days of the dotcom boom, where apartment prices in Portland were so outrageous (through speculation, not through actual demand) that places like this actually sounded like a good idea? I say this because a former co-worker bought one waaaaaay the hell out past Hillsboro: by the time he'd signed the deed and plunked down the money, the manufacturer had already skipped town.

I don't shop at IKEA because their furniture, while some of it may look nice, always seems to fall apart way before you would expect it to. Why would I buy a house from them??

The concept isn't bad - I've thought about one of these as a beach cottage/cabin. It'd be very cramped for my family now, but my first apartment was about the same size and for two years we did OK (the issues were mostly with living in an apartment...we later moved to townhome that had more space, only one neighbor I could hear...)

But it's WAAAAYYY over priced, and it isn't a new concept. Other companies - including Oregon manufacturers - have long developed "park model" RVs which are basically semi-portable homes that look like small manufactured homes, but have a permanently mounted hitch and can be moved like a camping trailer or can be set permanently on a foundation. They also cost $30K to start.

Ideabox is basically taking a very old idea, slapping a bunch of "green" and "eco-" labels all over it, coupling the IKEA furnishing concept, and then selling it for a lot of money. Save the money - buy a park model made at one of a number of Oregon locations, and furnish it however you want. You can even buy IKEA if you want. Or somewhere else. And you'll still have $50K in your bank account.

My first reaction was exactly that of Mr. Grumpy.

This is supposed to be "innovative"? Crap, they have hundreds of these torn up each year by the tornadoes they attract. We don't need to invite any more 'freak wind storms'.

"Oregon, meet Oklahoma."

Mount the Box on Mass Transit and use trip tracker to plan your day. I also wondered where the half moon was.

Mr. Grumpy, godfry and I all had the same reaction, "That's a single wide!"

What's so new about this, other than it is from IKEA? And it doesn't say in the specs:

How many allen wrenches does it come with?

Will it tesselate into a planned community?

The idea is actually a good one, but I'm sure it could be done more attractively. The biggest expense, however, isn't the building; it's the property so this is probably never going to be a bargain unless you're situating it out in Antelope.

Plus, I'm sure you have to add the expense of plumbing and wiring it and obtaining various permits to do so.

NW Portland, the "various permits" in Portland with the over 27 permits/fees required would on average about $27,000.

Besides the plumbing and wiring you mention, the Ikea price doesn't include the foundation, which normally would be required for seismic reasons. Figure in another $20,000 on a semi-flat lot.

My parents about 15 a years ago thought of having a modular home placed on part of their homestead. The modular (double) was $69,000, but after adding all the costs (not including the land) it became $124,000.