Magic Green Homes: A Hobbit House You Can Build in Three Days

Tiny homes have become quite a prominent trend in today's housing situations. They can be eco-friendly, affordable, easy to maintain, and promote a slower lifestyle. Not to mention, living in a tiny home helps get rid of unwanted clutter and helps you stick to a minimalist way of thinking. There are many creative ways tiny homes have manifested. One of these ways being homes that resemble those from The Hobbit. Magic Green Homes is the creator behind hobbit houses that you can build yourself.

This adorable prefab is a 400-square-foot hobbit home that almost anyone can build in only three days. Okay, that may be using "build" a bit loosely. The manufacturer claims that you can construct the prefab shell of the home in three days. This is not counting any site work (foundation), interior finishing, or exterior planting. But even so, that's a very fast assembly time for any prefab―and even more amazing for an earth shelter.
What's an Earth Shelter?

Tiny homes have been quite the trend in the past few years, but traditional earth shelters have been around for centuries and are so named because they are built partially underground. They rely on soil and plants to protect the home from the elements and to help regulate the indoor temperature—naturally. However, buildings like these are very difficult to waterproof and offer few options for finishing the interior.
The Magical Hard Shell
Enter Green Magic Homes. It developed a modular home building system that modernizes the humble earth shelter using vaulted panels. The panels are made from a fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) and are designed to work in conjunction with Earth covering. The assembled structure is rated to hold 8 inches of soil and a live load of 44 inches per square foot. The additional load might be imposed by things like plants, snow, or people walking on the home.

So what makes these structures so easy and fast to assemble? Two words: perforated flaps. They make it a snap to attach and seal the vaulted panels together. A 400-square-foot module can be built in three days using three people with limited construction skills and no heavy equipment. Also, channels or ducts for plumbing and electrical runs can be added at any point during the assembly process.

These tiny dome-shaped homes can be adapted to suit different regions. They can also be personalized based on your housing needs. And future expansion is possible by adding more modules to an existing home.
So, are there downsides to these seemingly magical hobbit homes? Of course there are, just as there are with any type of home construction. For starters, these structures seem to be suitable only for warm climates, at least without some additional insulation beyond an earth layer. The estimated R-value of soil is only about 0.125 to 0.25 per inch (at 20 percent moisture content). That means an 8-inch-thick soil cover provides no better than an R-value of 2, which is about as good as a single-pane window with a storm window.

Another consideration is cost: Green Magic estimates the "turnkey" cost of building one of their homes at $125 to $200 per square foot. This is excluding the foundation, which is a significant cost for any home. Turnkey means the home is built by professionals from the ground up and is move-in-ready at the end of the job. By comparison, the cost to build a conventionally framed and insulated home with the highest energy-efficiency standards is around $150 to $200 per square foot.

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Currently, Green Magic Homes has one distributor in the United States and its website has more information about costs and features, and you can view photos and renderings of these seemingly magical structures.

Mortgage rates set new record low, falling below 3% as concerns rise about coronavirus second wave

if you're looking to buy, record low interest rates will help...

from cnbc.com

Mortgage rates set new record low, falling below 3% as concerns rise about coronavirus second wave

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage hit 2.97% Thursday, according to Mortgage News Daily, as the stock market sold off and investors rushed to the relative safety of the bond market.

The market sell-off is being fueled by new concerns that there may be a second wave of the coronavirus, which already decimated the economy in April and May.

Barely a week ago it looked like mortgage rates were finally breaking higher, but in a sudden reversal, they just set a new record low.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage hit 2.97% Thursday, according to Mortgage News Daily, as the stock market sold off and investors rushed to the relative safety of the bond market. Mortgage rates loosely follow the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury.

For top-tier borrowers, some lenders were quoting as low as 2.75%. Lower-tier borrowers would see higher rates.

“This is a very abrupt and arguably unexpected change given that last week looked like a potentially scary lift-off for rates after an extended stay near the previous all-time lows,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “It suggests we shouldn’t count out the ability of interest rates to maintain these levels (or improve upon them) even if the economy continues showing signs of healing.”

The market sell-off is being fueled by new concerns that there may be a second wave of the coronavirus, which already decimated the economy in April and May. Rates have been hovering above 3% for much of the past month and only broke higher last week, following a surprisingly more optimistic May employment report. That, on top of cities across the country reopening, fueled more selling in the bond market.

Interest rates also benefited from an announcement by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that it would continue buying mortgage-backed bonds. That will keep liquidity in the lending market.

“I think rate levels will be directly tied to the ability of the economy to recover. If it goes better than expected, rates would rise, and vice versa if things remain sluggish. Either way, the Fed is committed to keeping shorter-term rates lower for longer, and that will help to anchor longer-term rates like mortgages to some extent,” added Graham.

Low rates have fueled a sharp and fast recovery in the housing market, especially for homebuilders. Mortgage applications to purchase a home were up 13% annually last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

A new housing recovery index from realtor.com, which combines home search activity, prices and inventory, showed continued improvements in the market, even as social unrest erupted in several large cities.

“The general sentiment from consumer surveys is that now is not a good time to sell a home because of Covid, economic uncertainty, and social unrest, but the data is saying the opposite,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for realtor.com. “Home prices are back to their pre-Covid pace and we’re seeing listings spend slightly less time on the market than last week.”

Mortgage rates are just one piece of the puzzle. Mortgage credit availability is still key, and it fell last month to the lowest level in nearly six years, according to an MBA survey.

“Under the current economic environment, low rates are having very little impact due to depleted mortgage availability and a decline in savings, which are putting potential buyers on the sidelines, unfortunately, just as mortgage rates are making homes more affordable,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at realtor.com.

Could the Open Floor Plan Be in Jeopardy?

an interesting consideration given the current times....

from realtor.com

Could the Open Floor Plan Be in Jeopardy?

The rise of remote work is prompting more households to reconsider the popular open floor plan. Some of the common complaints brewing include poor sound quality and echoes, lackluster lighting, lingering cooking smells, and a lack of private spaces for video calls.

Open floor plans have dominated real estate over the past few decades. The great room in an open floor plan combines the family room, dining room, and kitchen into one giant space. But as entire families scrambled to work and school from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, they've found it difficult to concentrate in these open spaces. Now some homeowners are calling for the walls to come back.

“Our homes will change post-COVID-19,” Bret Parsons, a real estate professional in Beverly Hills, Calif., and founder of the architectural division at Compass, told realtor.com®. “This pandemic is hardly just an annoyance, but rather a significant lifestyle change. I predict the pendulum moving back to more traditional homes, with segmented rooms for multiple uses, including office suites, an exercise room, and a separate en suite for multigenerational living. Who wants [parents] in a care facility anymore?”

Regardless of a potential evolution in preferences, homes with open floor plans are still selling. But Parsons predicts owners will explore walling off certain spaces. Pocket doors can be one solution, as can zoning certain sections for work areas.

However, not all real estate pros believe this is the death of the open floor plan. “I completely disagree with the great room being a thing of the past, and I don’t foresee a major correction for the open-plan home beyond the pandemic,” Sven Simon, a real estate professional with Swell Property in the San Diego area, told realtor.com®. “The open floor plan mostly relates to the kitchen, dining room, and living room blending together into one large space to entertain, for a larger feel and natural light. Those are the public areas of the home. People changing their work habits will not change that.”

Potential homebuyers are going to face historically low inventory this summer

allot of what I'm seeing in the Colorado Market now....

from housingwire.com

Potential homebuyers are going to face historically low inventory this summer

With a decreased number of new home listings, what will happen when homebuyers re-enter the market this summer?

LendingTree says that 53% of homebuyers are more likely to buy a home in the next year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with respondents saying they’re either tired of the small space they live in currently or don’t care where they live since they work remotely now.

Many even say they are ready to attend an open house again, according to a new survey from the National Association of Realtors, which found that 65% of people who attended an open house within the last year would do so now without hesitation.

Obviously, consumers are signaling a growing appetite for home-buying.

But as Chris Stuart, CEO and president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and CEO of HSF Affiliates, said in this interview with Mansion Global, the lack of housing inventory is “the biggest pain spot at the moment as a result of the pandemic.”

Stuart said that in contrast to 2008 and 2009, when there was 10 months of inventory, the nation has only about three months right now. As a result, he is seeing several real estate markets heat up.

“We have a company in the Florida Keys where we’ve sold four properties sight unseen, and we’re seeing that elsewhere in the U.S., too. We’re seeing double-digit appreciation on the Gulf side of Florida, in the Keys and parts of the Carolinas,” Stuart said.

A lack of available homes was a serious problem even before the pandemic, as our reporting from February shows:

The nation’s inventory of homes for sale tumbled 14% in January, falling to the lowest level since at least 2012, according to a realtor.com report. The inventory of entry-level homes saw the steepest drop in the series that goes back to 2012, the report said. The supply of properties priced under $200,000 fell 19%, while homes priced $200,000 to $750,000 declined 12%.

Now, with more homebuyers coming into the market and fewer houses to choose from, competition is already fierce in many markets, including San Diego, Austin and Milwaukee, where buyers may encounter bidding wars to secure the home of their dreams.