The business of mail-order homes, once popularized by a Sears' catalogue-based home-selling program, has come full circle, this time with an Internet-based boost.

Big box warehouse, Lowe's Companies Inc., has expanded to the Internet sales of blueprints and materials for the Katrina Cottage, named for the home-wrecking hurricane that prompted it's development.

Last year, Lowe's became the first and exclusive distributor of the off-the-shelf home, but then only from select brick and mortar Lowe's home improvement centers in Louisiana and Mississippi. Now, along with Internet sales, all Lowe's stores will also offer the homes.

Available in 11 floor plans ranging from a two-bedroom 544 square foot model with a front porch, to a five-bedroom, two-story, 1,807 square foot unit, the Katrina Cottage was designed and developed by New York architect Marianne Cusato of Cusato Cottages, LLC, as a more aesthetically appealing and durable housing alternative to those grim-looking Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers (FEMA Trailers). The trailers popped up throughout the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to hundreds of thousands of homes.

The online home sales hearkens back to the era of Sear's popular mail order "kit homes" program. Officially called "Modern Homes," the print catalogue-based program delivered 100,000 home-building kits to empty lots from 1908-1940.

Some of the early Sear's kit homes cost a fraction of the $700 it costs just to buy blueprints for the Katrina Cottage.

For example, In 1908, the 1,300 square foot, three-bedroom Greenview started at $443 (zeros are not missing)! One Sear's home was originally "listed" at $107!

The Katrina Cottage is the darling of the "park trailer" or "park model" set -- tiny homes, which are limited to 400 square towable feet and are more commonly seen dotting recreational vehicle parks, campgrounds and other more rural vacation spots. Owners place park trailers and use them as seasonal vacation homes or rent them out to travelers as alternatives to tents and RVs.

In 2005, the national shipment of park trailers, 10,000 of them, was up 10 percent over 2004 figures. In 2006 10,100 of them were shipped, according to the Recreational Park Trailer Industry Association (RPTIA).

RPTIA executive director, Bill Garpow, says the industry has slowed a bit since the 2005 boomlet as the economy and housing market has left potential buyers with less disposable income.

The Katrina Cottage is actually much more than your typical park trailer vacation playhouse. The major upgrade from park trailers must meet home building codes.

"They took a park trailer and put it on steroids and beefed it up," Garpow said.

"It's a unique situation. What they produced was a recreation park trailer and a modular home at the same time. Recreational park trailers are not intended or designed to be domiciles. They are vacation and seasonal homes. Modular homes are intended to be domiciles," Garpow added.

Katrina Cottages are designed to withstand heavy rain and winds up to 140 miles per hour, they also meet hurricane codes for wind resistance and the International Building Code. Material packages, starting at about $30,000, include all materials necessary to build the cottage from the foundation plate up -- studs, framing, insulation, moisture- and mold-resistant drywall, rot- and termite-resistant siding, fixtures, electrical, plumbing, 25-year warranted metal roofing, even appliances.

The home owner will have to supply land, a foundation, an HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) and, of course, their own furnishings.

Lowe's says its product is a "materials package" rather than a "kit" shipped all at once. Materials are shipped to include, say, lumber and hardware in one shipment, lighting, plumbing and other fixtures in another, flooring and appliances in still another and so on.

Material packages generally require a professional contractor or highly skilled do-it-yourselfer to assemble and the home can be assembled in six to eight weeks.

Some affordable housing experts consider the Katrina Cottage and others like it to have a potential for helping to fill the affordable home gap.

However, given local zoning laws and the cost of land, the little home that could, could be hard fought to find, well, a home in housing markets outside the Gulf Coast.

Published: July 17, 2007

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.