How Much Are 3-D Printed Houses? The Answer Might Surprise You

When it comes to home design, many people are on the lookout for new and unique builds. One that's taken the world by storm over the last couple of years is 3-D printing. This method leads to homes built in almost no time, and is said to be fairly cheap to create compared to more traditional homes. Some simple options can cost as low as $4,000 to build out the frame, with prices increasing for specialty designs such as the 3-D printed home styles that make people excited for the future. At first, this may sound like a much more affordable option than the current housing market. Unfortunately, just because something costs a certain amount to build, it isn't how much the buyer can expect to pay.

You may have thought that a 3-D printed home could save you money. However, with this much variability, you may still need to consider tips and tricks to make building a new home more affordable, instead. There is no one hard and fast price you will pay for a 3-D printed house, which makes it difficult to give a specific value. In areas of Texas, for example, you can expect about an 1100-square-foot home to be roughly $23,000. However, for one of the first builds in Michigan, a 988-square-foot design, the asking price was $224,500. This made it far more than the average cost of homes in the area, listed at $82,000, at the time of building in 2023. 

Though 3-D printed houses can be more affordable to build than the average home on the surface, the benefits really only show themselves when producing several at once, like for a large home development. That Michigan property, for example, actually cost the developer $36,000 more than the asking price to build, which is why it was so expensive for the area. There are a lot of factors that go into the final price a homeowner could expect to see. After all, printing certainly speeds up the building process, but the parts that can be made with a 3-D printer only account for a maximum of 30% of the total cost of the entire build. There are also upfront costs, like the machine itself and experience using one.

In Salida, Colorado, even basic 3-D homes are looking at price tags of $500,000, primarily due to the cost of the land. However, there are hopes that with a little more technology and better materials, the cost could eventually decrease to about 20% less than the traditional home in the area. As technology develops and builders get a feel for the process, 3-D printing can start to go down in price. It may even end up more affordable than current homes down the line. For now, though, the main perk doesn't appear to be the affordability, but instead the speed of building and the wild-3-D-printed home designs, including more curved walls.