Why Is Dwell Making ADUs?

Finding better ways of building houses has always been a part of Dwell’s mission. No more so than in 2004, when we unveiled the winner of our Dwell Home Design Invitational, a competition to create a prefabricated home that could be realized for $200,000. We went on to build the winning design for a real family. Then editor-in-chief Alison Arieff compared it to a concept car, "a unique version that sets the stage for future production models." Now, almost 18 years later, we’re drawing on that history to address the urgent need for more housing in the U.S. by putting pre-built homes into production.

The Dwell House is a 540-square-foot, one bedroom home—with a full kitchen and bath—that you can add to your backyard. It’s built off-site and delivered to your property move-in ready in a proprietary process developed by Dwell’s partner Abodu. Call it an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), a backyard house, or an in-law suite (whatever name you prefer), the Dwell House is designed to accommodate all kinds of uses—whether that’s as a guesthouse, home office, rental unit, or just more space.

Here’s how and why it came to be.

William Hanley, Editor in Chief: A single-family home on a single-family lot just doesn’t fit the way many of us live now. Working from home, multigenerational living, hosting and renting, all of these situations were becoming more and more common for people—then, the pandemic accelerated all of them. Most homes weren’t built for flexibility and that range of activity, which has made ADUs an obvious way to adapt.

It also feels like no one under 40 can afford a place to live right now, so we wondered, how can we build things that diversify the housing stock in parts of the country that are being really choked by rapidly rising prices? We always advocate for flexible homes that respond to how we really live now and greater density as one solution for the affordability crisis. It seemed like a logical extension to put our money where our mouth is and to make both a reality.

Why offsite construction was the way to go?

Zach Klein, Chief Executive Officer: Dwell helped popularize the prefab movement, not only through our coverage, but by prototyping, too. Back in 2004, when we built our first home in North Carolina, prefab was kind of a solution looking for a problem. It wasn’t cost effective for most builds in most markets, but we learned a lot and we’ve been waiting for our next turn ever since. In the last 20 years, housing costs have skyrocketed and conditions are favorable for prefab. Even if you can afford to buy a home, ultra competitive house hunts and unreliable contractors are the new norm. It’s practically a full-time job to manage the process to get more space. Suddenly, the math for building, say, a prefab home off-site, checks out in many regions.

"We’re not the first to offer a prefab ADU, but so much prefab being passed off as houses either looks like a spaceship or a tool shed." —Zach Klein, CEO

There’s something else. Architecture is perceived as expensive and elite, and I wish it wasn’t. I have the impression that if you could tap a "Buy It Now" button for more, well-designed space, a lot of people would. That provoked the challenge: Can we deliver great spaces to people and make it more affordable than doing it themselves? Then the final piece came in play: On the West Coast in particular, new ADU laws that suddenly allow hundreds of thousands of new homes to be built in and adjacent to major cities, which creates a historic opportunity for a product like this.

We’re not the first to offer a prefab ADU, but so much prefab being passed off as houses either looks like a spaceship or a tool shed. The Dwell House was designed to be a home, and it feels like one. Plus, we aim to radically redefine our customers’ expectations for what building a home feels like. No chasing down contractors, no messy red tape to manage, no expanding costs. Our partner Abodu is going to be their single point of contact and manage everything from locking in pricing, to permitting, to prepping the site, to delivery. Dwell fans expect quality, and in Abodu, I know that we have the perfect partner to deliver to help us deliver it.