You Can Still Build a House Like a Sears Kit Home — But There’s a Catch

For better or for worse, you’re probably familiar with the process of assembling furniture. You’re sent the pieces and the tools, and hopefully, you can take it from there. But what if you could do that with a whole house? Well, you can — and people have been doing it for over a century. Kit homes, as they’re called, are not some new modern invention — nor are they a home type of the past. Here’s everything you need to know about kit homes.

Also known as packaged homes or modular homes, kit homes are exactly what they sound like. A company designs, cuts, and prepares all the pieces you need to build a home, from pieces of wood to windows and refrigerators. You have several sizes and designs to choose from, and some customization is available. Once you have the land, permits, blueprints, kit, and instruction manual, all you need to do is build.

The company most commonly associated with the phrase “kit home” is Sears — yes, the bankrupt department store. That’s because from the early 1900s to almost the 1950s, Sears was one of the major sellers of kit homes in America alongside companies like Aladdin and Montgomery Ward. The store had always sold items like paint and tools, but the choice to consolidate so many items into a “kit” was a practical choice that both helped the store sell more of its massive inventory and helped the average American attain homeownership in an affordable, accessible way.

Part of the kit home appeal was that companies offered financing. Not having to pay for the whole thing at once made it possible for more people to obtain homes. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, almost half of Sears’ home sales were through financing, which became unsustainable. However, when the department store no longer offered that option, people stopped buying, and the industry more or less slowed to a halt around 1940.

Though these original kit homes weren’t sold forever, this approach to fabrication and construction did influence components of the house-building process today, such as the widespread use of drywall.

“People are surprised this still exists,” says Dave Kimball of Shelter-Kit, a New Hampshire-based kit home company that’s been around since 1970. Indeed, there are still dozens of home kit companies across the nation — the industry actually got a notable boost during the 2020 peak pandemic days — and the process hasn’t changed a lot since the Sears days, either.

“We don’t ship as complete a product as Sears did,” Kimball explains. “They included appliances and all that. We provide a shell kit. It’s the frame, the sheathing, house wrap, siding, roofing, subfloors. We don’t include doors and windows because it’s so much easier for people to buy them locally. And, you know, shipping windows cross-country on an open truck might not end up well.”

One thing that’s definitely changed with the times is the price of a kit home. Per the WSJ, the original Sears kits, adjusted for inflation, would’ve cost between about $8,000 to about $85,000, depending on size and other factors. 

Today, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to see any kit homes below $10,000. Shelter-Kit’s smallest homes start at $25,000, for example, and many of their 2-3 bedroom offerings (usually 1,300 to 1,700 square feet) are in the low $100,000 range. There are now more higher-end options out there, too — kit homes from Hygge Supply, which has only been around since 2016, start at $360,000 for a 1,107-square foot studio. 

Even the classic kit homes originally sold by Sears have risen in value. Those that are still standing have become vintage gems sought after by both history enthusiasts and those looking to capitalize on a home sale. There are even groups dedicated to locating the remaining Sears kit homes nationwide, and there can sometimes be drama about correctly identifying the authentic ones, as many of the original kit companies no longer have their sales records.

The kit home clientele seems to have shifted a bit, too. Kimball says his most common customers are “lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers,” and other professional-class types, and you can read plenty of accounts of people assembling sleek, expensively furnished contemporary kit homes as more of a project than a housing necessity. 

“They’re used as starter homes, vacation homes, or larger primary homes,” he adds. “More and more they’re used as accessory dwelling units. When we started out many years ago we were doing 12×12 cabins in the woods, and that’s not the business anymore.”

Building a kit home isn’t just about putting the pieces together. You need a plot of land suitable for building on, and you need the correct permit. Fortunately, most kit home companies assist with those steps as well.

“We can provide whatever is needed, whether it’s just simple drawings for a small town in New Hampshire or stamped structural drawings for a place in New York or California,” Kimball says. “Permitting is becoming more stringent and more complicated over time,” he notes, “partly because of weather conditions and just regulations increasing in general. And the International Residential Building Code changes every couple of years. It’s an evolving environment.”

If you’re not a particularly handy person, the notion of building your own home may sound daunting, but kit homes are designed to be approachable. Kimball says about 70% of his clients do everything but tasks like “plumbing and wiring,” but some hire people for some or all of the work. “It’s affordable to hire somebody to do it because everything’s precut,” he adds. “They just put it together.”

Kit homes can be found all over the United States — as Sears was one of the most prolific producers of kit homes in the 20th century, you can find their kit homes all over, but especially in Ohio and Illinois, Chicago Magazine reports. In fact, the city of Carlinville, Illinois, has the largest single contiguous “collection of Sears kit homes in the United States,” per Carlinville.com.

Aladdin, another prolific producer of mail-order kit homes, sold over 75,000 kit homes to customers until they closed up shop in 1987. In the company town of Hopewell, Virginia, DuPont partnered with Aladdin to erect homes, churches, schools, a commissary, and a community center in the early 20th century, per the Hagley Museum and Library of Wilmington, Delaware.

Kit homes came in all different architectural styles and sizes. Per the Sears archives, the company sold almost 450 different home designs, including duplex designs or multiple-family homes. Aladdin also offered almost 450 different models, and Arts&Crafts homes argues their proliferation “helped create interest in Craftsman, bungalow, American Foursquare, and Cape Cod styles for houses.”