MSN Real Estate
Generally speaking, a kit home is a house that’s designed and perhaps even partially manufactured off-site, then shipped en masse to a home site for assembly, often by you.
It’s not a new idea. In 1906, the Aladdin Co. began selling kit homes. In 1908, Sears famously got in on the act; the company sold tens of thousands of kit homes nationwide before World War II.
The types
Kit homes generally fall into one of four categories:
1) Log homes. There are about 600 producers of log homes in the industry, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Log homes can be built of full Lincoln Log-type logs, or of milled logs.
2) Panelized homes. In this construction method, chunks of the home such as wall sections and roof trusses are made in a factory before they are shipped out to the home site for final assembly. One element that’s growing in popularity is structural insulated panels (SIPs), in which a chunk of wall is assembled with its insulation and wiring “built in” so the entire piece can basically be dropped into place and bolted together.
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