An Ohio man renovated an old shipping container into a surprisingly spacious house for $61,000

The outside of Josh McBee's shipping container home.Courtesy of Josh McBee

• After years living in a small apartment in California, Josh McBee was inspired to build his own house from a used shipping container after seeing a similar one online.
• He bought an empty lot in Oklahoma City for $2,500, and found a 40-foot-long, like-new used shipping container for $4,900.
• McBee hired professionals to install electric, heating, and plumbing, but did most everything else himself, including installing drywall and a bathroom.
• "I could have built a traditional house cheaper," McBee says, "But I wanted the durability and the lower energy costs."
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Josh McBee first saw a shipping container home online one day in late 2012. His one-bedroom apartment in Venice Beach, California was feeling progressively smaller, and the blue guest house he saw online made from a big metal box caught his attention.

"I saw the container guest house in Austin. It was 20 feet long, and I thought to myself, 'I could live in that full-time,'" he said.

Four years and several moves later, he did just that. McBee is now one of the thousands who are using shipping containers to build homes, and the trend is expected to grow even more. According to Market Watch, shipping containers as homes are expected to increase globally by 6.5% annually from 2019 to 2025.

For McBee, the simplicity of the living area in a container and the low utility costs appealed to him the most.