Unusual trends in residential real estate

While these stories are not local, future trends in real estate have to start somewhere.

From Detroit (via Yahoo) comes the story of old cargo shipping containers being used to make multi-family condos:

 The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year.


Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children's toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters.

But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That's when architects and designers, especially those with a "green" bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists' studios, emergency shelters, health clinics, office buildings.

In San Francisco (from CBS 5), supervisors have approved building code revisions that will allow the construction of apartment units as small as 220 square feet.