Thunderstorms. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 79F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 53F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Darren Nichter, left, and Rodney Worthington, cofounders of Citrus Container Park LLC, stand at their first container home Friday afternoon, Oct. 29, in Inverness. They have plans for 11 more to be built nearby to make up Citrus Container Village.
A kitchen table sits along a hallway leading to bedrooms and a full bath.
A full kitchen greets those entering the home. It is equipped with standard-size appliances.
The container home has this a size bathroom and another half-bath in the residence.
The living room area offers plenty of room for those wanting to watch television, rest or read.
This two-bedroom container home occupies 750-square feet of living space. It is made from two 8-foot tall by 40-foot long shipping containers.
Darren Nichter, cofounder of Container Park Village in Inverness, along with his fellow co-founder are planning a total of 12 container homes in their Inverness location.
Darren Nichter, left, and Rodney Worthington, cofounders of Citrus Container Park LLC, stand at their first container home Friday afternoon, Oct. 29, in Inverness. They have plans for 11 more to be built nearby to make up Citrus Container Village.
Shipping container houses are breaking ground in Citrus County, and their builders want to know how much interest prospective homeowners have in the vogue housing concept.
“We have the resources to make somebody’s dream of a container house hopefully come true,” Darren Nichter, cofounder of Citrus Container Park LLC, said. “Have an open mind; we want their honest feedback.”
Citrus Container Park, out of Lecanto, built a model container home on the future site of its Citrus Container Village development at 2714 E. Dawson Drive, west of Inverness and behind the Lowe’s and Walmart shopping plazas along State Road 44.
A dozen, same-sized lots will make up the container community at buildout, permitted as single-family homes.
“We plan on building 12 more so we hope this one’s at least popular,” Citrus Container Park cofounder Rodney Worthington said, referring to the model home. “We have three more lots cleared right now.”
For more information about Citrus Container Park and its container homes, call 352-302-6116 or visit facebook.com/citruscontainerpark.
According to Citrus County, Crystal River and Inverness, no other permitted container homes exist but there is interest to build them.
Crystal River city staff has been meeting with a developer applying to build one off of Northeast Eighth Avenue.
“We conveyed our standards,” the city’s planning and development director Brian Herrmann said, “and I believe that they will be proceeding.”
Nichter and Worthington said they and their other business partner, Dr. Paresh Desai, pursued their container home project to help give homebuyers an inexpensive yet aesthetic and efficient option to choose from.
“Look at the housing marking; nobody can afford to buy a house anymore,” Worthington said. “We’re hoping to get the people who are making $14 an hour; they’re getting left behind in every city.”
“We’re starting to see a trend where people don’t really need a 3,500-square-foot house with three bathrooms,” Nichter added.
This two-bedroom container home occupies 750-square feet of living space. It is made from two 8-foot tall by 40-foot long shipping containers.
Made from two shipping containers, the Container Park's 720-square-foot model house accommodates a porch, two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a living room, dining area, kitchen with full-size appliances and space for a stackable washer and dryer.
Not much of the siding was cut out, except a handful of window frames and ports for utilities, like air-conditioning.
“We didn’t want to take a whole ton of the panels out — the metal sides,” Nichter said, "because the more you take out, the more steel you got to put in again to strengthen it back up again because that is the strength of the container is the siding of it.”
A kitchen table sits along a hallway leading to bedrooms and a full bath.
Container home architects have gone wild with their blueprints.
“You can get as creative as your engineer and metal worker can do it,” Nichter said. “You can get really imaginative.”
While a container home is smaller and almost prefabricated, building one can still fall subject to the readiness of the construction industry and availability of licensed subcontractors.
A full kitchen greets those entering the home. It is equipped with standard-size appliances.
If everything’s contracted out, it could take roughly six months to construct a container home similar in size to Citrus Container Park’s model home, Nichter and Worthington said.
Citrus Container Park builds with watertight shipping containers, which have been deemed too out-of-shape for precise stacking aboard a commercial vessel.
“They’ve just made too many trips,” Worthington said.
The container home has this a size bathroom and another half-bath in the residence.
Worried about a container home and its steel frame being at the mercy of outside temperatures? Its walls are fully insulated with spray foam, which also acts as a vapor barrier.
Just on the ground, without being being bolted and welded down to a concrete foundation to be a house, a shipping container can also withstand strong, hurricane-force winds.
The living room area offers plenty of room for those wanting to watch television, rest or read.
“It’s almost comparable to single-wide,” Worthington said, “… but a single-wide blows right over.”
Nichter and Worthington said it’s tough to know a container home’s market value when there isn’t a similar residence type elsewhere in the county to compare to.
“Every Realtor we’ve talked to said, ‘you can’t compare it against a house but it’s also not a mobile; you can’t pick it up and move it,’” Nichter said.
As a starting point, Citrus Container Park will list its model home — furnished with granite countertops, wood cabinets and waterproof vinyl — for $139,900 and see how offers come in.
Darren Nichter, cofounder of Container Park Village in Inverness, along with his fellow co-founder are planning a total of 12 container homes in their Inverness location.
“We went higher-end on a lot of it,” Nichter said. “We think it finished out nicely, and we’ll just see what people’s opinions are by their offers and what they think of it; we’ll get a lot of feedback.”
For Citrus Container Park, it’s about creating an opportunity for potential homeowners who are priced out of a normal-size home but don't want to live in a trailer.
“People just think they should buy the normal, 3/2 house," Worthington said. "You’re at $250,000."
“It gives them an ability to own a home they can call theirs without having it get blown away in the storm," Nichter added. “It opens up the door for affordability; if the housing market keeps up, they’re not going to be able to afford a house for who knows when.”
Contact Chronicle reporter Buster Thompson at 352-564-2916, bthompson@chronicleonline.com or visit tinyurl.com/yxn2ahso to see more of his stories.
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.