Yes. The structure I priced out was also only 8 feet tall.
About half the cost -- if I recall -- was doors, windows, and skylights, and the other half was the walls, ceiling, and floor. So you'd expect a structure with roughly double the surface area to be roughly $3000 instead of $2000. Depending on material choices, you would probably end up with a cost of between $2000 and $4000 by the time you put the last coat of paint on it. Again, having not actually followed through I don't have a final bill of materials. I could have over-estimated the cost of something, or forgotten something else entirely.
But the point is the same. Is $2100 really that cheap, when compared to a $4000 stick-frame structure with comparable function, or is it only cheap when compared to a $40,000 house with a bathroom, kitchen, furnace, water heater, and appliances?
And if you hit up your local Recycling yard you can often acquire a number of windows and doors at very economical prices. I once stayed at a house that had an entire wall made of doors of varying styles, salvaged building materials can lend a lot of character to a structure.
You can't plan, receive approval for, build, receive inspections on, and move in to a house for anywhere near as little as $40,000. Try double or triple for a bad one. Perhaps with the exception of a kit-home in nowheresville, NO.
You're more or less right, but I can weasel a technical victory.
The cost to build a house is essentially per square foot. In my area, about $140 / square foot for decent quality. Not the best quality, but good enough. So a small house (1000 sq ft) costs about $140,000 to build, and a large house (4000 sq ft) costs about $560,000 to build. That's parts, labor, permits.
But if you're willing to build what amounts to a studio apartment, you can totally build it for next to nothing. The smallest standard set of plans I found online was 213 square feet. Even adding in the $2500 they're wanting for that one (most standard plans are around $500), that still gives you a price tag of $32,500, which gives you a $7500 margin between the estimated budget and the stated $40,000, for cost overruns and furnishings.
Of course, the point wasn't "You can build a house for $40,000, that's totally cheap", it was "Now, a $2100 dome is 20x cheaper than even a minimal house, which is fantastic, but it's nearly half the price of a $4000 stick-frame structure with identical functionality. Is that cheaper-enough to declare domes the way forward on price alone?"
