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Housing: the scalable house, a solution for small budgets?
Many French people struggle to obtain a mortgage loan. There may be a solution when you want to buy on a small budget: build a scalable house to which you can add rooms later.
(France 2)
Many French people struggle to obtain a mortgage loan. There may be a solution when you want to buy on a small budget: build a scalable house to which you can add rooms later.
Imagine a scalable house, that is to say designed from the start for its expansion. An Alsatian couple has just had one built. Modular housing designed to adapt to many uses. “Here, we have an office space which, eventually, could be transformed into a bathroom”, explains Valentin Lakomiak, owner. For a budget of 221,000 euros maximum, they had a 100 m² house built. Expansion plans have already been made.
Homeowners were unable to extend their homes
In 2016, France Télévisions filmed a report in a housing estate in Seine-et-Marne with 35 convertible houses. Eight years later, no family has completed the extension planned by the architect. “It was 30, 35,000 announced, against 50,000 euros currently”, says Max Lecointe, owner. Plan B: extend their house from the inside on their own. In their living room a floor is being built to accommodate their bedroom. Cost of the work: 10,000 euros. Contacted, the developer assures that the price of raw materials and the cost of construction has changed in eight years, and that the work is necessarily more expensive than at the time.
