Kit house

Porches, sun rooms, flower boxes, trellises, balconies, built-in cabinets, and a variety of door and sash patterns were available at an additional charge.Depending on the size and style of the plan, the materials needed to construct a typical house, including perhaps 10,000–30,000 pieces of lumber and other building material,[4] would be shipped by rail, filling one or two railroad boxcars,[6][7] which would be loaded at the company's mill and sent to the customer's home town, where they would be parked on a siding or in a freight yard for unloading.

Although most shipments came by rail, newspaper advertisements in the late 1920s and early 1930s showed Sears offering truck delivery to buyers living within a 35 mile radius of their Newark, New Jersey plant, or their Norwood, Ohio Sash & Door company.

In addition, some companies, including Sears, Montgomery Ward, Gordon-Van Tine, and Harris Brothers, offered cash discounts and generous mortgage terms.

For example,[11] Sears was ... a very able follower of popular home designs but with the added advantage of modifying houses and hardware according to buyer tastes.

Dale Wolicki lists Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, and Good Housekeeping as examples of nationwide magazines where Gordon-VanTine advertised.

[5] Prospective customers could arrange to inspect kit houses in their vicinity or visit a company's factory to tour model homes.

[5][13] The ease of construction and cost savings of kit houses appealed to many would-be homeowners across the economic spectrum, from blue-collar workers to the affluent.

For example, in 1928 Walt Disney and his brother Roy built two kit houses made by Pacific Ready Cut Homes on lots they owned in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.

According to researcher Wolicki:[46] Contrary to popular belief Montgomery-Ward and Sears Roebuck did not discontinue their pre-cut housing departments because of customers who defaulted on their mortgages.

[48] And beginning in 2006, for a few years Lowe's supplied plans and materials (not pre-cut) for small stick-built homes called Katrina Cottages, with walls designed to withstand 140 mile-per-hour (223 kilometer-per-hour) winds, intended to provide temporary housing for Gulf Coast residents who had lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina.

[51] However, although initially "hailed as the new Sears & Roebuck house,"[52] the program faced strong opposition from local governments in the Gulf Coast region who feared the cottages would lower property values, and by mid-2011, Lowe's had discontinued its product line.