Micro-Apartments, Tiny Homes Prefabricated in Brooklyn

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/realestate/micro-apartments-tiny-homes-prefabricated-in-brooklyn.html

by vellum • 11 years ago

50 45 11 years ago

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I would be interested in hearing comments by anyone who lives in such a space. There was a discussion about doing something similar in Sunnyvale and the lack of actual experience really made it hard to debate.

warfangle2• 11 years ago

A while ago a close friend lived with his wife and two maine coons in a studio apartment in the east village; this place was maybe 450 square feet. As you entered, the kitchen (5x5) was to the right. As you stood facing into the kitchen, the door to the bathroom (5x5) was to the left. Turn 180'. There is a bed with its long side perpendicular to you; its headboard is against the wall to the right, and there is maybe 3' of clearance between its foot and the wall on your left. Immediately in front of the bed is a loveseat with its back to the bed, facing the kitchen and the square cut-in of the bathroom; there is a TV hanging on the wall. There is maybe 5' of clearance between the loveseat and the TV. They had expertly put together storage spaces to keep the clutter down. They would regularly host gatherings of 6+ people (they had tiny stackable stools to pull out for company) in that tiny apartment. It was pretty cozy, but we all had fun.

If I remember correctly, they paid around $2,000 for the space. It's definitely not for everyone.

The article brings up the rent inflation caused by many people living with room-mates. That may be, but most of the people I know with room-mates can afford less than $1,500/mo in rent. A $3,000/mo micro studio would not attract them. Hell, it wouldn't attract me - I live in a true one bedroom / one bathroom. And don't pay nearly what these micro apartments will cost. Most of the two bedroom apartments in my neighborhood aren't attractive to room-mates or families: they are what's known as 'railroad' apartments - though they are technically 'shotgun' apartments, as they do not have a narrow hallway running the length. The only kind of person this is truly attractive to is the kind who wants an extra room for an office. 5 years ago they were renting at $1,250/mo. These days they are renting for $2,300/mo. Most are in sad states of disrepair. Example layout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_house#mediaviewer/File:... -- swap the bedroom and the living room, add another bedroom on the bottom, and two entrances on the left in the kitchen and the bottom bedroom.

It also brings up amenity buildings -- and they're novel, at first, but then you realize that nobody actually uses them: the laundry room is either packed or half the machines are broken; the gym is a graveyard of broken treadmills and old equipment; the "dog run" on the roof is a 20' patch of astroturf that never gets hosed off... and the tenants have no recourse with the management to get things fixed.

I suppose if you're living in a micro apartment they may be used quite a bit more.

I suppose my point is: at that price, many of the prospective tenants could rent a real one bedroom and add twenty minutes onto their commute for a lower cost. This won't reduce the number of people living with roomates, as they wouldn't be able to afford them anyhow. When I was just beginning my career here, I wouldn't have been able to afford one either. Typical financial requirements are 50x monthly rent, a security deposit of one month, and first month and last month. To move into a $3,000/mo apartment, then, you need to have $9,000 cash and make $150,000/yr. This is why so many live with room-mates in apartments to which they are not a lessee.

djloche• 11 years ago

Unless it is primarily a college town (where landlords are trying to squeeze the most they can out of people that are going to try to pay as little as possible), people live with room-mates because the rent is high enough that splitting rent with 1+ people significantly reduces their expenses. Rent is not high because people are splitting the cost.

thedudemabry• 11 years ago

Yikes! 50x monthly payment + 3 payment deposit for a rental? I had no idea NYC was _that_ bad. I live in Denver, one of the highest cost-of-living growth cities in the US (aside from the spurious oil-boom townships in the midwest), and $2,000 a month would get you a nice 1,000 square foot mortgage in a good area, even with horrible credit, and like 3% down, say $6,000.

I totally get that the reasons for choosing a city are varied and I wouldn't argue that anyone should move to a city strictly based on cost. But that seems impossible for a community to maintain a sustainable workforce. How do commuters even afford to cross the bridges and tunnels?

ChainsawSurgery• 11 years ago

Hey! I'm a New Yorker who has definitely lived in apartments this small. I currently live in a studio that's 325 sq ft.

I also live pretty minimally, so it's actually not that bad. I have room for a bed, a small desk, a small dining table, some chairs, and a TV.

I might be able to fit a small couch in here, but it would be pretty tight at that point.

It's not as bad as you'd think. The biggest drawback is that you basically start using your bed as a couch, which can make things difficult if you're someone who needs really strict sleep hygiene.

If you're someone who collects a lot of stuff, it's definitely not for you. I can move my entire apartment (minus furniture) in 3-4 medium boxes, so it's perfect for me.

It also goes without saying that you don't entertain much at a place like that. You either go out somewhere, or have maybe a couple people over, but any more than 4 people (including yourself) starts to be totally unmanageable.

bane• 11 years ago

I lived for a while overseas for a while in a "micro" smaller than these. Bed, closet, small desk, almost room for a chair if it was a folding chair and I kept it folded up most of the time. Restrooms and kitchens were all common areas. I think the entire room was under 60 sq ft (under 5.5 m^2. I know some people put a bunk bed in their rooms and split the rent -- it worked better when the roomates worked different shifts.

When people talk about what you "need" as living space, it can't get too much smaller than this, but it's not a great existence.

I was working long days so I didn't really have time for much more, but it wasn't what I'd call a "great" living experience even then. You had to really be ultra-disciplined about editing stuff into the trash and keeping organized. Even if you were absolutely exhausted, you still had to go through certain "rituals" to keep the place livable on an item-by-item issue. I found it pretty stressful.

I had a chance to buy some great stuff at incredible discounts, but I didn't even have space to stash it before shipping it back to the U.S. so I lost out on all those opportunities. Not having space for a computer or TV meant I started losing track of current events and down-time was spent away from my place, only to come there to crash/sleep or change clothes. It wasn't really a place you could come back to and relax or unwind.

I remember it being really hard to clean because there simply wasn't anywhere to move things out of the way to clean under and around...where things were was where they were going to be. I didn't have place to even store an extra set of bedding, so I had to plan around taking my stuff to the laundry and making sure it got back to me and on the bed by night. Small things like that add up.

I'd say it was a little bit like a dorm room experience, but smaller.

If somebody really enjoyed the life they lived in their college dorm or in a prison cell (that you could leave when you wanted), I can guess this would appeal to them. Personally it got old pretty quick and I'd rather not live like that again.

These are positively spacious by comparison.

I have a friend in Seoul who lives in a place not much bigger than the 313sq ft one shown in the article. I've spent weeks there sleeping on the floor. It's much more reasonable by comparison. There's some oddities in the cramped bathroom, shared fixtures and the like, and the kitchen it a little cramped, but it's not a bad existence for a single person.

daeken2• 11 years ago

I lived in an apartment in Manhattan that was somewhere around 180-200sqft (it was originally larger, but the owner of the apartment decided to make a very large closet between the kitchen and 'living room', for whatever reason). It was surprisingly pleasant, when I was single. I had a queen-sized bed, a desk, and lots of shelves.

Once my then-girlfriend moved in with me, things got a bit more stressful. Not because we needed more space to live in -- we were surprisingly comfortable -- but because we weren't using the city as our living room anymore. When you're going out nearly every night, you don't tend to care about the size of your living quarters, but when you're spending your whole day there, it gets a bit tight.

I can't imagine going back to that now, but it was the perfect place from which to experience New York.

jseliger• 11 years ago

I had a queen-sized bed, a desk, and lots of shelves.

I live in NYC with my fiancée, and I've seen friends' apartments in the size range you describe. Most of them now have Murphy Beds, which have gotten surprisingly good (http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/01/13/small_space_de...). Most of them seem happy in those spaces, as long as they're not trying to cohabitate.

I'll note too that I'm a bit skeptical of the $3000 / month charge for micro apartments; even in Williamsburg, new, conventional one-bedroom apartments were $3200 – $3,500 / month last summer. I can imagine people paying $2000 for micro apartments in desirable, commutable neighborhoods, but $3000 seems less likely right now. Then again, NYC real estate is rife with people saying "That's crazy!", only to find that a couple years later it's normal or even cheap.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

It seems to me that a domicile of that size would be kind of depressing, unless you do spend most of your time away from home. Your life, contained in one small box.

It's not fundamentally different with houses, but you can fool your lizard brain a little more.

Or maybe it was really 100sqft where that feeling starts to set in...

baddox• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure my microstudio in SF (Soma) is about 250-275 sq. feet. It feels slightly smaller than the picture of Kelli's 313 sq. foot apartment from the article. I don't feel like there's much interesting stuff to say about it. It's an apartment that's really small. I have no seats other than my computer chair and my bed, which is fine for me but obviously makes having guests essentially impossible. But hey, I have a place by myself in SF.

rayiner• 11 years ago

For a year, my wife and I lived in this floor plan, with our infant daughter: http://www.halsteadnewrochelle.com/redsimages/floorplan/unit.... It was a totally inefficient 420 square feet, with lots of unusable space in that hallway and giant bathroom. Comparable to a well-designed 350 square foot space I'd say.

Living-wise, it was great! These places aren't designed for people who like to hang around at home. We were out all day--my wife would wander around Manhattan while I was at work, and we'd spend all weekend shopping/traveling/etc.

The summer before that, before the baby, we lived for three months in an extended stay hotel room, which was 240 square feet. Enough space for a bed, small bathroom, kitchen, and table with two chairs. Cheaper finishings than I would prefer, but otherwise quite comfortable. The summer before that I lived in a 150 square foot bedroom/bath where I didn't have access to the rest of the house. If the UWS wasn't so filthy in the summer it would've been great.

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

I lived in a place about this size in Amsterdam for a year. I did not have a ton of 'stuff' at the time and for obvious reasons it's better if you can take a minimalist approach to physical possessions. I liked it OK; I had a bit of a view, it was quiet, I was single at the time so it was easy to keep tidy. Living in a similarly small space with my wife before we got married was stressful. We're both inclined to be cluttered but whereas it's easy to manage your own clutter it's trickier when you share. I live in a house now and it's full of stuff - it's like when you get a big hard disk and fall out of the habit of deleting things because you don't really need to manage the space any more XD

If I was single again and needed to be in a dense city I'd consider such a place - though not at these prices - I don't like dealing with roommates, so I'm willing to pay for solitude. But I'd give serious thought to whether I might be better off living in a more rural area and having more space to play with.

mhd• 11 years ago

So in units the rest of the world actually understands this means apartments between 24 and 34 square meters?

That's supposed to be micro? I would say that this is about the regular size of "1 room apartment" in my area (Munich area, Germany). Which isn't the most densely populate one, no huge high-rises, tower blocks or anything like the public housing in British or American metro-zones. If you're converting an old house into rental flats, that's just what you usually get.

So, yes, I along with many singles, professionals and students lived (and live) in such "micro"-apartments. Kitchens tend to smaller than larger apartments (and definitely smaller than what you usually get in the US). And, well, you've got your bed next to your desk.

But otherwise I never considered this to be that much special. It's no Japanese coffin motel, you don't need complicated tricks to stow away things; no hidden floors, multi-function furniture, murphy or loft beds (the most common bed size here seems to be 1.4m x 2m -- no clue what's that in "royalty").

So around here it's certainly not the wave of the future, it seems to always have been that way. We don't tend to have that many shared apartments as they've got in the US. Once you're done with university, it's really, really rare to share accommodations (which to some would suggest an "alternative lifestyle").

sveme• 11 years ago

Fully agree. When I read "micro" I was expecting 15 sqm, not expecting it to turn out larger than my first flat (25 sqm) when I was still at the university once I've done the calculation. 25 sqm is fairly typical for student's or young professional's apartments (something like this: http://www.studiomuc.de/apartment_varianten.htm though also a total rip-off). Ikea Germany actually once had a series of tv ads showing furniture solutions for really tiny rooms.

All that being said, 3000 USD/month is ridiculous. How can any public service employee still live in a city like that?

kapkapkap• 11 years ago

"There are some 3,000 apartments under 400 square feet in Manhattan alone."

There's absolutely no way that is correct, it has to be off by at least 10x.

hueving• 11 years ago

40 square foot apartments!? Surely you jest.

nols• 11 years ago

He meant number of apartments

eastbayjake• 11 years ago

There was another Hacker News thread last month about a 32-floor prefab apartment skyscraper in Brooklyn[1]. Many commenters said the promise was hyped and that construction was slow. It was disappointing because this seems like a good solution for places like the Bay Area where armies of single professionals would happily live in small, private units with common space amenities instead of sharing a $4-5k/mo two-bedroom with a roommate.

Does anyone know whether these apartments would be legal in California? I did a cursory search and it looks like all apartments need one 120sqft room and at least 70sqft for any other living rooms (not storage?). Oakland has some additional requirements about partitions separating kitchens, but it's unspecific about how an "efficiency apartment" designation modifies that. Not sure about SF regulations, assuming they're even more onerous.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873906

chvid• 11 years ago

I don't know the regulations of California but where I live the city has prohibited the construction of smaller units (1 bedroom, less than 700 square feet) thru zoning regulation and the existing stock of smaller units has been converted to bigger units.

I think if you look for a general reason why we don't have cheaper housing thru smaller units more suitable for people living alone, you will find that it is the explicit policy of the bigger cities.

selectodude• 11 years ago

The amount of idiocy surrounding one project to build new studios and one bedrooms with very little parking one block away from a train stop in Chicago was maddening. The market wants these units but developers literally cannot build them.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20141031/CRED03/14...

santaclaus• 11 years ago

Reminds me of: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042869/tiny-homes-big-problems-...

nkg• 11 years ago

That's doing less with more. New types of housing should be designed to improve quality of life/ecological footprint. Spending that much to live inside a matchbox can't be ok.

dperny• 11 years ago

$2000 to $3000 a month is supposed to be... affordable? Jesus, New York is even more expensive than I thought.

spiritplumber3• 11 years ago

Or I could live 20 minutes away from SF and pay $700 a month for a small townhome with workshop space. Pass.

wbsun2• 11 years ago

That is an awesome deal!! $700 for the entire townhouse or just a single room?

blhack• 11 years ago

Where? That's less than prices in Phoenix.

error54• 11 years ago

As someone who lives a few blocks from where this complex is going up, I don't know what these people are smoking. $3000 for 360 sq foot apartment is utterly absurd, even in NY. I pay far less than that for a nice apartment in a doorman building so I don't know who would in their right mind would pay for these. I could see _maybe_ paying if this complex were going up in a prime neighborhood like the West Village or Tribeca, but way over on 27th street which is a half mile (which is considered far in Manhattan) from the nearest subway station, no way.

ryanckulp2• 11 years ago

Exactly. I live 2 blocks away, have a studio w/ better amenities (ie: my own full kitchen), and it's larger. $2,200.

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

After reading that they had to waive the regular zoning laws, I get the impression that this is a developer's approach to fulfilling an affordable housing requirement while actually trying to push median rents upward.

wbsun2• 11 years ago

After reading the HN comments, I just realize that the 'apartment' has really different scales for married (or family) and unmarried people. Unmarried people are likely sharing units and hence pay much less than married or families.

JDiculous• 11 years ago

What a rip-off. I don't know why anybody would pay for those apartments when you can get a better deal in Manhattan.

brianbreslin2• 11 years ago

How do these compare in size to a shipping container? In the rendering this is what the last image reminded me of.

That seems so crazy expensive for such a small space not adjacent to a metro station.

unwind• 11 years ago

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#Types, we can see that the standard "20-foot" container which I assume is what you're thinking of is (internally, since we're comparing with other housing) 18.7 by 7.7 foot, so the total area is just 144 square feet.

Note: computing the above was horrible, how are you supposed to enter 18′ 8 13⁄16″ * 7′ 8 19⁄32″ (the dimensions as given in Wikipedia's table) into a calculator?

brianbreslin2• 11 years ago

Semi related was this article about using tiny prefab homes to solve homelessness.

https://collectively.org/en/article/size-does-matter-how-the...

alricb• 11 years ago

If the details shown on this page [1] are right, these things are built in a silly way: the batt insulation between the steel studs is almost useless, and could even lead to condensation problems [2].

[1] http://cargocollective.com/pickupsticks/filter/Prefab/Modula... [2] http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-005-a-...

brenschluss2• 11 years ago

Are you talking about the section detail in which the perimeter beam creates a thermal break? I suppose that the modules are insulated on 5 sides (minus the floor) - if the floor had rigid insulation, then you'd effectively have each unit be an enclosed box.

ryanckulp2• 11 years ago

I live 2 blocks from here and pay $2,200 for a larger studio. Not sure how this is a good deal at $2-3k.

brenschluss2• 11 years ago

This is really fantastic! It's doing something really amazing and important in the realm of architecture and construction that's much needed.

It's weather-agnostic - (certain construction work you just can't do in winter). Bottlenecks are easily controlled: No questions about worrying about different trades (say, the structural steel work, etc) being slow and pushing all other aspects of the entire project behind. It's more predictable, since you have very clear quantifiable markers of progress (what % of units are completely finished?) It cuts down on the costly / cumbersome process of using a hoist during construction, which is expensive and timely since you have to hire specialized labor and get a permit to close off the street.

To use a programming analogy, it's effectively a kind of parallelization or non-blocking i/o, since you can track progress in a reliable, controlled setting, stagger your work, and have many different trades working at once, on different aspects. (Electrician behind schedule on half of the units? You can still have the plumbing crew work on the finished half while bringing more electricians on board.)

Present-day construction is highly linear, mostly single-threaded and filled with bottlenecks everywhere, since it's both a logistical and financial disincentive to hire a trade to come in to do work if there's not enough work for them to do. The contractor pads the schedule to make sure that previous work will be ready for future work. As a result, construction times are longer, less predictable, etc.

Granted, this isn't totally new, but it's really important that prefabrication is getting more visibility and is understood to be the architectural game-changer that it will be in the future.

Micro-Apartments, Tiny Homes Prefabricated in Brooklyn

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