Every day, like clockwork, Facebook or my inbox tries to convince me I can buy a fully functioning tiny home from Amazon for the low, low price of $9,500. And it’s not just Amazon—YouTube has joined the revolution too. Apparently, there’s a whole genre of influencers building homes out of sticks and dreams in the woods, complete with dramatic music and a time-lapse montage. The captions always say something like: “How I built my $9,800 dream house with nothing but a hammer, a positive attitude, and a stack of pre-cut lumber.”
Let me ask the obvious question: are we really calling this a house now?
These things are basically elaborate garden sheds with ambition. There’s no insulation. No running water. No kitchen. No bathroom. No HVAC. No wiring. Just a pile of labeled parts, some windows and a door, and maybe, if you’re lucky, a floor that won’t buckle when it rains. You’d be better off pitching a tent from Walmart and using the money you saved to buy a year’s supply of bug spray, a sleeping bag, and therapy.
And yet, somehow, this idea continues to capture the imagination of the internet.
One clickbait headline after another promises that this is the solution to housing affordability. “You Won’t Believe What You Can Buy on Amazon for Under $10K!” they say. Well, I can believe it. Because I know what you can’t buy: a livable house. You can’t move into a shed and call it a day unless your idea of comfort is something between a deer blind and a lemonade stand.
Still, the fantasy lives on. People keep saying, “Well, what if you just add plumbing and electrical and a kitchen and a bathroom and HVAC and a septic system and a foundation and permits and… voila!” Sure. That’ll only run you an extra $70,000, give or take. But hey, it started at $9,500, and that’s the number that will live forever in clickbait infamy.
And don’t even get me started on the irony. Cities like Los Angeles are spending upwards of $100,000 per unit to build plastic pods for the homeless. That’s right—$100,000 for something that looks like a shipping crate married a Lego block. Meanwhile, you’ve got people screaming, “Why not just buy those Amazon houses for ten grand apiece and give them to the homeless?”
Great idea—if we’re cool with turning tent cities into shed villages. Let’s just hand out flat-packed kits and a couple of Allen wrenches and tell everyone, “Congratulations, you’re now your own general contractor. Just follow these 112 easy steps.” Hope you enjoy living in an uninsulated plywood box with no running water or heat. And if you want to cook something? Just build a fire out back like it’s 1812.
The truth is, most of these “homes” are going to wind up exactly where they belong: in suburban backyards. As playhouses. Or pool houses. Or garden sheds that accidentally go viral on Instagram when someone throws a rug in it and calls it a “she-shed” or a “man cave.” And that’s fine. Because that’s what they were probably meant to be in the first place. You don’t see a three-legged stool on Amazon and say, “Aha! Dining room furniture set!”—so why do we look at these sheds and pretend they’re the solution to the housing crisis?
It’s not that affordable housing doesn’t need innovation. It desperately does. But wishful thinking wrapped in clickbait headlines isn’t the answer. You can’t slap a “house” label on a box of kindling and solve homelessness. And you definitely shouldn’t convince people they can build a dream home with a Wi-Fi signal and a TikTok tutorial.
So next time you see one of those ads, take a deep breath. Smile. Maybe even click it—for entertainment purposes only. And remember: if it looks too good to be true, it probably doesn’t come with plumbing.
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With over 9,000 published articles on modular and offsite construction, Gary Fleisher remains one of the most trusted voices in the industry.
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