Hi there

I am planning to build a 800sft in-law cottage on our current competely flat 1/4 acre property in foothill Cupertino, where there is already a 1700-sqft main residence. Here is my plan, and I am not sure if I am being realistic:

- two prefab modules stacked on each other (two-storey), each 400 sft ish (could be smaller depending on the module size of particular vendor)

- one single-story one-car garage module (<200 sqft)

- no high end fixture, happy with Ikea kitchen and bathroom, bamboo or slate flooring, engineered stone countertop, clean and sleek

- all utilities hookup are available on site at the main residence

- crawl space or basement, depending on how much more a basement will cost (can I do a basement with an extra 20K?)

I hope to complete this project for under $120K (excluding permit) with some job done by ourselves (not the handyman type, but definitely can deal with installing floor and painting. Can this be done? I am currently looking at LV home or MKD's glidehouse.

Some friends told me that for such a small project, custom-built may be cheaper, could that be true? For the same cost, I prefer to have modern prefab because I believe the quality will be better.

Thanks for your feedback!

Could you share your progress? We were looking at MKD a long time ago but it didn't work out to customize it as an addition to the existing house and we are in a dead end with the current custom remodel, so we are looking back at prefab as a modern and affordable alternative again...

Thanks!

I have decided not to go with MKD, she is way overpriced. A Slidehouse 672 cottage costs $249K, which is way more than customized building with an architect. She slaps on the $50K professional services even if you are just buying a standard model, and Slidehouse is frankly not that attractive looking. I think $249K is the bubble pricing. Now that banks are shutting down the spigot on construction loan so the price will have to come down.

There are lots of hungry architects and contractors out there right now with the housing market imploding. I am going to hold off my project and wait a little longer so that my budget can stretch a bit further. We don't need financing for our project so the current environment is particularly advantageous to us. I have been soliciting bids around just to test water and the bids have all come down substantially. If you don't need to remodel right away, and you have enough cash saved up, my advice is to wait for another couple of years.