A House in NYC's West Village for $39,900?

• November 18th 2010

by Mark Wellborn

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In this week’s departure from all things DC real estate, we find what might be the cheapest home in Manhattan’s West Village. At least until the end of November.

A couple days ago, The Wall Street Journal reported on a $39,900 home in one of Manhattan’s most expensive neighborhoods. The catch was that it was a 320 square-foot modular home, put together in five days and it will be gone by December 1st.

The brainchild of Michael de Jong, the MEKA Luxury Modular Home is made from a shipping container but has features that might be found in any other type of new construction such as bamboo flooring and modern finishes. According to The WSJ, de Jong got the idea for the modular homes when he was building a hotel in Belize:

Construction workers came to the site from far-flung villages, and while they worked there, they set up temporary housing in shipping containers. The goal, he said, was to mass-produce a house that could be used in tropical as well as cold climates, that could be set up quickly, and that was cheap.

UrbanTurf’s curiosity with these type of homes is well documented (see here and here), but we are still at a loss for who might buy a property like this particular model. So far only 10 have sold, although The Wall Street Journal did report that movie producer Jon Kilik has shown interest — to place it on the roof terrace of his Manhattan penthouse.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/a_house_in_nycs_west_village_for_39900/2689.