The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home

by Karrie Jacobs, Karrie Jacobs

An architecture and design critic's coast-to-coast search for an ideal American home that is both aesthetically pleasing and affordable cites the challenges facing prospective homeowners today, describing the authors' meetings with architects and builders who are revolutionizing the ways people think about homes, construction techniques, and community. 20,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, Urban Planning

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2006

About the author

Karrie Jacobs is contributing editor at Metropolis magazine where she writes a monthly column, "America," about how ideas and strategies in architecture and design play out on the landscape, and is a regular contributor to Travel + Leisure, where she writes about destinations of interest to the architectural tourist. She is author of The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home (Viking, 2006), a book about housing in America. Between 1999 and 2002 Karrie was the founding editor in chief of Dwell, a San Francisco-based magazine about modern residential architecture and design. Prior to launching Dwell, Karrie served as the architecture critic of New York Magazine, and she has written about design, technology, and visual language for many periodicals including The New York Times, I.D., and Fortune. And in the early 1990s, Jacobs was the founding executive editor of Benetton's Colors Magazine.

Reviews

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, does The Perfect $100,000 House exist? Karrie Jacobs road trips to meet with architects across the US to find out… Such a cool dive into prefab and affordable housing (what can we expect from these builds?), and fair compliments and criticisms of mass new construction (they have made it so efficient, even if it’s not pretty—but maybe people deserve for their houses to be pretty!). And so much awesome innovation across the country, from Seattle to Vermont, from architecture professionals and students…I just wish it had had more pictures. Anyway, the perfect book to read bit by bit before bed!

[Rachel B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacobs travels around the United States talking to homebuilders and architects, trying to find the ideal help and the ideal location to build her dream house for only $100,000.

While I did learn about some interesting companies and organizations (such as Yestermorrow, a design/build school), the author and I have pretty different ideas about what makes the ideal home, and she mostly revolved this book around her own preferences. In short, she likes modern design and I don't. Jacobs is convinced that modern design should be the standard, not the exception, to newly built construction; but there's a reason that it's not - the majority of homebuyers here in the U.S. don't prefer it!

And despite her claim that she's serious about finding her ideally designed, affordable house, she ends up purchasing an apartment in Brooklyn while writing this very book. In the end, the book seemed just an excuse for her to travel and earn a living. I'd be curious to know if she ended up building her dream house post-publication. (Since this book was published 15 years ago.)

The book was also too long for what it contained - it began to drag and I had to force myself to finish.

Note: There is some profanity, including God's name used in vain.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, a former editor of Dwell magazine, hits the road in search of an honest, affordable Modern house. Call it Blueprint Highways. The architects she visits in Seattle, Denver, Austin and Alabama are doing brave, fascinating things. She’s honest enough to express her doubts or air her reservations, and let us know when she’s rooting for the architects.

The strength of Jacob’s $100,000 House is her incisive understanding of Modernism and, surprisingly, tract houses. She says that the few Modern houses built today have the manners but not the mission. They pose Modern, but it’s all about style. These are one-off houses for the well-off which photograph so well in magazines. But the Moderns were concerned with housing the masses. They were concerned with comfort, but didn’t make a fetish of it. The Modern poseur has good finishes, but its true ancestor sought to make good spaces for living in modest square footage.
Does she find the perfect 100,000 house? Well, almost.

[Kyla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title says it all: woman searches for my own Holy Grail - not only a livable, smart, inexpensive house but ALSO a Place. Home. Why can't the two overlap? Which is the unfortunate conclusion she comes to - driving all over the country but ending up back in Brooklyn, buying a studio apartment. I'm not as dead keen modernist as the author but I get what she's looking for. The only weakness of the book is it could/should have been more extensively illustrated - often she would talk about elements that truly needed a picture to illustrate her point.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to laugh at this book. The author, an architectural critic and journalist, leaves her comfortable home base in Manhattan to take a job on the West Coast where she again lives in a multi-family complex, a condo or apartment situation. Then she decides to throw it all up and determines to find her perfect home, four walls, a roof, a deck and a yard by way of traveling the country talking with residential designers and builders. These constructionist artisans have the potential to approach Jacobs ideal, some come close to the cost per foot and a few agree to build it.

So Jacobs writes this marvelous book of longing and desire, finding bits and pieces of her vision, changing it as she goes but she is never quite ready to commit. She seems to fall head over heels in love with a place, and then as quickly loses interest though upstate New York or New English may hold promise. Her book is published in 2006 at which time she's still rootless and seeking. Then she moves back to New York, Brooklyn this time, safely ensconced in most comfortable urban setting, and she's still there in 2021. And the perfect $100,000 house is even less a possibility today then in 2006, though I'm sure she's up on the tiny house trend and has definite opinions.

Jacob's journey is delightful, whimsical and revealing especially so with respect to the architectural influences of modernistic and minimalist designs. Most interesting were the design/builders who are committed to low cost, craft builds but can't find find funding (or perhaps the logistics) to scale their ideas. Drawings of many of the structures presented in the narrative.

[Du · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun story about traveling around the country looking for the perfect home, home the author. It's interesting to see what 100k buys all over the nation and how our tastes are united in some ways. There is great commentary and enjoyable free form observations (some are expanded upon, but not all are). Good book overall.

[Melody Warnick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect book to feed my current real estate/home building obsession.

[Tito · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have been a better book with less memoir and more pictures and technical discussion.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to magically tell me a house I'd like to live in, and where I'd like to live. Ha. You must find these things out for yourself, ignorant one. Overall, a decent read. I liked the road trip aspect - although she only really included her stops at fast food joints. You must know your architecture jargon, or have the internet standing by to look up styles and terms. The various architects she met were interesting, and she does include a list of websites to reference. My favorite part was the analysis of the prefabrication of houses. And a periscope shower: chimney-like (wider of course), with a 45 degree angled mirror so you can look up and see the surrounding scenery while you commune with your loofah. So, if you have nothing else to do, or read everything on housing/architecture, read on.

[Jeannette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit more sterile than I had hoped. I am someone who is also looking for the perfect $100,000 house (obviously not in Vancouver), and I'm certainly a lot more emotional about my search than this author, who is on a quest for a modernist dwelling. And maybe that is it...the cold, concrete and straight lines of someone who wants to live in a modernist home is also reflective of the someone's writing style. But regardless, I still was curious enough after I finished the book to Google the author and see if she did find her dream home (since at the end of the book she reveals that her search across America took her right back to purchasing a tiny Brooklyn studio apartment).

[Barryhobbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's just a rather whiny, self-important story of one of the founders of Dwell magazine realizing that there is nobody that's interested in helping one person make a reasonable house for a reasonable price, because as soon as they do, they're swamped and can charge a lot of money, or there's just no money in it in the first place. She likes KRDB in Austin, who I find to be pedantic, boring, and expensive. Basically, I dislike her style of writing, and just found myself wishing she would shut up.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A women goes off in search of the perfect $100,000 house, convinced that a great house doesn't have to cost a fortune and that it's ridiculous for people to be paying $300,000. I liked her premise but she seemed to be too focused on finding a piece of art or something 'amazing'. I was hoping she'd focus on the thousand of 'normal' homes out there that are amazing in their own rights.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the author's adventure across the country looking for a perfect, modern home for under $100,000. After I finished the book I checked online and sadly I think she has moved back to Brooklyn and hasn't actually built her dream home. Yet.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off interesting, but ended up skimming last third of book, at that point it became redundant. Also was able to tell she wouldn't end up building a house, so it became just an exercise in theory.

[Alissa]

Recommended by Treehugger.com

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice combo of road-trip, architecture, and sociology...

[Junio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got Katie this for Christmas and it was on the bargain shelf, so I got 2. The first person to ask for it in the comments will be sent the second copy.

[Stephanie]

Man I want to build a nice green modern house!

[Viki Sonntag · Rating 3 out of 5]

She doesn't share my sensibilities but I learned lots about how architects think. As I am in the middle of designing a house it had something to offer me.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone seriously thinking about building my own home, this book was very helpful.

[Orianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun look at unique housing possibilities and road-tripping across the US.