Beat Rocketing House Prices With a Shipping Container Home

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Would you live in a shipping container home to avoid a six figure mortgage? One architect has designed a kit home in Brighton, England where instead of paying over half a million Australian dollars, you can own your own home for a fraction of the price.

Knock on effects of London house price bubble

House prices in London, England are notoriously expensive. If you want to live in a one bed flat in Central London you need to find at least AU$833,000 but can easily spend $4 million for a luxury pad. Due to the rocketing house prices people have sought properties ever further outside of London, to the point that for millions of workers, a two hour commute to work every day isn’t unusual.

There are cheap towns to live in within that two hour radius of central London but let’s face it you wouldn’t live just anywhere if you are an ambitious City employee – location, location, location! Brighton is one of the most desirable cities to live in in the UK, with its fashionable restaurants and shops, as well as its miles of beaches and very trendy residents. Pink Floyd’s lead guitarist David Gilmour has a large waterfront residence close to the beach – he is just one of many top end celebrities who know where it’s at. If you love London yet want to live by the beach and perhaps even keep your boat on one of the best stretches of the UK’s South Coast for sailing, then Brighton and its surrounding areas is about as good as you can get.

Location, location, location… prices?!

Image source: Glo-Pamper

One of the upshots of being such a desirable location to live is that Brighton’s house prices are almost as eye watering as the WC1 postcode of Central London. For a good quality house in a more fashionable district of central Brighton you can spend AU$707,000. Yup – you spend that sort of money to do your nine hour day at work and spend three hours a day commuting. Some would wonder why you’d want to live near the beach when in winter you’d never see it in daylight, but some people find that attractive – they must be night owls who get used to living in the dark…?

Solutions to location

One of the attractions of Brighton is its young crowd. The university is good and the vibe is spot on. It is all very well executives and senior management owning homes in the centre of the fashion universe but they price out the very people they seek to live amongst. Gentrification is an issue the world over. The answer to that therefore is that cheap, good quality homes need to be built to draw in the trendy types who make Brighton what it is.

The solution may well be in a shipping container home that is currently within a 5 minute walk of Brighton’s train station. It consists of a 20ft container that abuts onto a 40ft container. The larger container is a kitchen / living area while the 20ft section is a sleep / work area. On top of the windowless house you have a garden with a built in seating area. All this for just over AU$58,000 in the centre of the fashionable universe? Do you really want to live there… or is this too good to be true?!

Image source: UCrazyRU

Look before you leap!

The house made headlines around the Southeast of England for its bargain basement cost balanced with its fantastic design and location. There is a catch though – it won’t be situated on the pavement where you can view it, so won’t necessarily be 0.3 miles from Brighton train station. You need to find your home a suitable spot for it – and you – to live when you buy it. That could add a few bucks to the overall cost.

The website advertising the shipping container home says, “The purchaser will need to own a garden or land suitable for the house and obtain any necessary permissions for its siting or any use.”

Even if you wanted to squat in the container home’s current location it would be quite difficult. It isn’t plumbed in to water or sewerage utilities. Sadly, to puncture your bubble, you would therefore have to pay $$$ for the land (that could be miles from the train station) and get planning permission from the Green Party council. The $58k is just for the home itself – you need to connect it to the world in order for it to become the des res you dreamed of!

Want your own cheap shipping container pad?

Here at Gateway Container Sales in Brisbane, Australia, we specialise in building shipping container homes as well as a range of other shipping container conversions. We also have a great network of designers and other specialists who can help you take a $5,000 shipping container and convert it into a $100,000+ dream home or commuter crash pad. Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs!