Cookie-cut houses, which are often identical, are typically found in the suburbs.
When working on a development with multiple houses, one way to save money on materials is to create nearly identical houses. This means that all the pieces for each house can be purchased in bulk, often resulting in discounted material prices. Of course, when all the houses are ready, they may offer little variation in appearance, which is why they can be called prefabricated houses. It seems that they were all made in the same way, with the same cutter.
The idea of creating houses in this way dates back to the middle of the 20th century, when the first houses were built. It’s still not hard to find these neighborhoods, though over the years the people who live in these houses may have modified them significantly to make them look less identical. Because the idea of these housing projects is tawdry, today’s manufactured homes tend to offer a bit more variety.
There may be different sizes of houses, different ways of laying out the house, and other different features to accommodate buyers of different tastes and price levels. Still, the houses appear related, if not completely identical. These developments are analogous to comparing a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Each may have a slightly different number of chips and girth, but they are still all recognizable as the same type of cookie.
There are very strong feelings about prefabs. Some people don’t really like them as they can inhibit individual expression too much. This is particularly true if buying a home means belonging to a homeowners association, where any changes to the home, including items like paint, may require approval.
On the other hand, there may be an advantage to purchasing manufactured homes. First of all, they can be cheaper, although there are very affluent communities where the style of housing is not very individualized either. Second, the materials and construction can be of particularly reliable quality, since the suppliers and manufacturers are likely to be the same for each home. Especially when buying older homes, homes tend to have a good or bad reputation for construction and materials, which can apply to all homes.
The Cookie Cutter House has evolved as a suburban feature and remains a vital approach to building multiple houses at once. They may be attractive to some people because they may be cheaper and have a certain quality. Alternatively, the uniformity of houses and the neighborhoods that own them is a disincentive to others. This negative view of manufactured homes, when it remains, is not necessarily strong enough to deter people from purchasing residential real estate, especially when many neighborhoods are made up primarily of manufactured homes.
