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If the tiny home obsession wasn’t already enough, Walmart now sells prefab homes on its website for $15,900 or less. The promise is four walls and a bathroom you can set up with two friends and a few hours’ work. The same third-party company is selling an “Apple Cabin” in the classic shape of an iPhone through Walmart’s site. That miniature abode has just enough desk space for a MacBook and not much else.
Before your millennial eyes water at the thought of finally owning a home, you need to remember that permanent living will never be as cheap and simple as putting up walls and finding a place to rest your head.
The build-it-yourself homes in question come from Cheryl Industries, a brand located on Long Island, New York, which sells hanger-like shelters and shipping containers. The company sells the same 19-by-20-foot expandable home for $36,000 on its website. The Apple Cabin is $24,000 MSRP through the original supplier, but it’s $17,400 on Walmart. The smallest version of the iPhone-like abode, which is barely more than the size of a shed, sells for $11,800. That ultra-small version of the Apple Cabin has just enough room for a bed and a toilet. There’s no shower to speak of.
© Image: Walmart Walmart says it will ship it to you on a flatbed truck, but any potential buyer will need to have a forklift on hand to unload it. Cheryl Industrials even recommends renting a crane for the task. The bigger, non-Apple home weighs 7,849 pounds and is over 19 feet long. The largest, 20-foot Apple Cabin weighs 4,563 pounds. At the very least, Walmart lists that shipping is free, and the pod home doesn’t require putting up any walls.
The homes are both made in China, according to Cheryl Industries. Building the 19-by-20-foot home requires unfolding a few walls and then using drywall anchors and screws to hold everything in place. Before you ask, no, you’re not supposed to screw into the walls to hang your family portraits. At least it comes with a preinstalled toilet, but the plumbing situation will be on you. Walmart also suggests you lay it down on a concrete base.
The products have been on sale at Walmart since August. People magazine first spotted them at their current price. Amazon also sells plenty of prefabricated homes, and it has done so for years. Still, none of those on sale from the online retail giant look like an iPhone, if that’s any consolation.
Anyone who has binged Instagram videos of people turning a bus into a functioning mobile home has probably dreamt of owning a (relatively) cheap, small home. These types of homes are meant to be collapsible and transportable, akin to other manufactured homes (otherwise known widely as trailers or mobile homes, but trailer parks already get a bad rap despite largely being the last few examples of affordable housing in the U.S.).
As any manufactured homeowner will tell you, there are difficulties beyond simply owning your new home. You have to find space for it, which can mean dealing with the wide variety of municipal zoning laws that might restrict you from ever setting down roots. For example, in New York, Appendix Q of the New York State Residential Code restricts the maximum size of tiny homes, otherwise known as Accessible Dwelling Units (ADUs). All dwellings labeled “Tiny Homes” need at least 400 square feet of floor area, meaning none of these Apple Cabins meet the criteria.
