For the first time ever, you can buy your very own 3-D-printed house — for only $299,999.
This three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a two-car garage in Riverhead, New York, is made of 3-D-printed cement. The asking price makes the property a steal on pricey Long Island, where a home of the same size would typically cost $478,380, according to Realtor.com market data.
“At $299,999, this home is priced 50% below the cost of comparable newly constructed homes in Riverhead, NY, and represents a major step toward addressing the affordable-housing crisis plaguing Long Island,” said listing broker Stephen King of Realty Connect.
The 1,407-square-foot house was designed by Manhattan-based engineering firm H2M, built by Long Island-based 3-D-printing company SQ4D and is billed on Zillow as “the world’s first 3D printed home for sale.”
The gray house with white trim sits on a 0.26-acre lot, and images reveal a meticulous outdoor garden and small front porch sitting area. The walls are 8 feet tall, but the timber ceiling is arched, providing more height to the house.
Inside, the open kitchen mingles among the living room and dining room with an island with a marble countertop and a farmhouse sink. The house has all the standards you’d find in a traditionally built house: air conditioning, gas heating, even a dishwasher, according to Realtor.com. Plus the kitchen and bathrooms sport matching pale blue cabinetry.
The owner’s bedroom has large windows and a two-door closet, and its bathroom has a standing glass shower and a lit vanity. The other bedrooms are about 120 square feet each, according to information on the listing broker’s website.
What is a 3-D-printed house?
The house was built with a huge 3-D-printing machine, which melts down solid materials and ejects them wherever you want, like a hot glue gun would do. The technology has been used for everything from prosthetics to coronavirus shields to a “living brain aneurysm.”
SQ4D uses the same method of creating concrete as other construction companies, dispensing cement in lines that build on each other to create walls. Two employees monitor the machine for issues while it prints over eight or nine days. This method is half the cost of traditional building methods, and it is carbon neutral, according to a behind-the-scenes video.
After building the house line by line, the printers then backfill the walls and put anchor bolts in and assemble pre-built timber pieces for the roof, which can take only one to two days. Then, a crew finishes the walls, applies exterior siding and adds appliances like sinks.
The house is said to have more strength and durability than a wood-frame construction house, and is guaranteed to last at least 50 years, though it is expected to last much longer, according to the press release.
Is it really the first?
SQ4D built a test house in Calverton, New York, late last year, and listed this house in Riverhead on Jan. 25, calling it the first permitted 3-D-printed house to be listed for sale.
The claim may seem dubious to techies at first, since internationally, companies have been 3-D-printing houses for years. Icon, based in Austin, built a permitted 3-D-printed home in 2018 — though it was not listed for sale, since it was intended to house homeless populations. One company, Mighty Buildings, creates houses for order from a factory, but it’s not technically a real estate sale: As with buying a trailer home, the plot of land is not included in the purchase.
So as far as we can tell, this is the first time a licensed 3-D-printed home has been listed on the open real estate market for sale and comes with the land itself.
SQ4D did not return a request for comment.
Published by New York Post
