History of Home Building Kits

Home building kits have been around for centuries, offering individuals and families the ability to build their own homes without having to hire a professional contractor. The concept of a home building kit has evovled over time, eventually leading to the invention of factory-built homes like ours.

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The earliest known home building kits date back to 16th century Europe, when log cabin kits were rising in popularity among American settlers. These kits included everything needed to build a small home, including the logs, nails, and instructions. This was a great option for building a home quickly and inexpensively.

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In the 20th century, mail-order homes became more popular. Sears began selling home building kits in , allowing buyers to choose from a number of pre-designed houses or send in their own custom plans. Companies like Montgomery Ward and Aladdin Homes stood as competitors to Sears in this category, but Sears is most often recalled as the category leader from this time period.

Sears "Preston" Kit Home (Photo courtesy of Sears Archives)

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Home building kits have also been instrumental in providing housing during wartimes. These homes could be built quickly and effectiently for soldiers and their families, sometimes being called "Victory Homes". This helped boost the economy by creating manufacturing and construction jobs in countries at war.

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The most modern equivalent of a kit home is a modular home. Modular homes are manufactured in a factory and assembled on your property. Modern kit homes (or modular homes) come in all shapes, sizes, and styles. Today's buyers can take advantage of advances in design and construction to make the dream of owning their own homes come true.

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The overall history of home building kits reflects the desire of consumers to have control over the design construction of their homes. With so many options for home buyers to customize a modern factory-built home, this building method continues to rise in popularity and is expected to maintain that growth in the future.

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Learn more about modular homes on our blog post, "What is a modular home?"

Often the entire mail order house (in the form of labeled timbers) came via freight train.

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Aladdin Homes of Bay City, Michigan premiered the idea of kit houses in . It wasn't until that the largest provider of kit houses, Sears, Roebuck and Co., building upon its earlier forays into building materials and house plans, entered the market for complete kit houses.

Between and , thousands of North American homes in the United States and Canada were built according to plans sold by mail order companies such as Sears and Montgomery Ward.

A fter World War I, between and , middle class society was expanding and, for the first time, beginning to buy more homes. To meet growth demand, companies started expanding in the residential building industry. Kit houses purchased through mail-order became popular in the s, allowing new homeowners to be a part of the design and building process and giving the option of buying the home in stages,

According to Houses by Mail, over 100,000 kit houses were built in the United States between and . Many people have lived in kit houses for years without realizing the historical and architectural significance of their humble abodes...

Aladdin Homes of Bay City, Michigan premiered the idea of kit houses in . It wasn't until that the largest provider of kit houses, Sears, Roebuck and Co., building upon its earlier forays into building materials and house plans, entered the market for complete kit houses. In the years that followed, Wardway Homes (Montgomery Ward), Harris Homes of Chicago, the Ready Built House Company, and Robinson's also got in on the kit home market.

Sears Roebuck is still the most well-known of kit home manufacturers, perhaps because of their market share. Ordering directly from a catalog entitled Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, prospective buyers enjoyed the convenience and affordability of a pre-fabricated dwelling. The purchaser would receive all of the necessary supplies in shipments by rail car (a typical house could fit into two boxcars) for assembly either by the new homeowner or a local contractor.

These houses came in a wide variety of styles, designs and prices, although kit houses were generally cheaper than traditional building options.

Following the stock market crash of , the construction of these houses gradually declined and in Sears printed its last Book of Modern Homes.

For many years these house were slowly forgotten, but in the s, people looking for affordable housing began to discover kit houses.

- University Libraries. University of Maryland, Kit Houses

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