The Cash-and-Carry House

Still, Julie and Randy Olson decided it was worth it. In 2007, they had bought 120 acres of farmland in Brook Park, Minn., only to see the value of their property plummet, along with their hopes of ever getting a construction loan to build a house.

And while the 4,200-square-foot wood-frame house they bought for a buck had been slated for demolition, it was solid, Ms. Olson said, with “tight pine lumber and tongue-and-groove construction.”

Ms. Olson, 45, a game warden for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, had heard about the house from a colleague who had listed it for public auction, to make way for a wildlife refuge. And the Olsons, it turned out, were the only bidders.

But they are not the only ones to recognize that what might seem wildly impractical — picking up a house and moving it somewhere else — can, in fact, be the most practical thing to do when money is tight.

In recent years, more cash-strapped Americans have been doing just that: realizing the dream of homeownership on the cheap, by buying land and then hauling in inexpensive (or free) houses that would have otherwise been torn down. Many of these houses come from used-house lots, the domestic equivalent of used-car lots, where one can choose from a surprisingly wide range of styles, whether quaint shingled cottages or multistory houses.

There are no hard figures on how many homes are acquired this way, but while sales of stationary houses have been declining, sales of the peripatetic variety appear to be increasing.

Owners of used-house lots, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, on the Gulf and East Coasts and in the Upper Midwest, said their sales had increased as much as 60 percent over the last three years.

Warren Davie, the owner of Davie Shoring, a structural mover with a used-house lot in Kenner, La., outside New Orleans, said his business has increased 50 percent since 2008.

“It seems like we’re even busier when the economy is bad,” Mr. Davie said. “People are looking for a way to save on demolition and dump fees on one end and save on building costs on the other end.”

Depending on a home’s size, its condition and how far it has to be moved, the cost can range from $15,000 to $60,000.

That’s about 40 to 60 percent of what it would cost to build the same structure from scratch, said Joshua Wendland, president of Milbank House Movers Inc., in Milbank, S.D., which sells and transports houses within a 500-mile radius. For the last three years, Mr. Wendland said, his business has increased about 15 percent annually.

These days, he added, “If the weather is good, we move up to six houses a week.”

Buyers include developers who want the houses for rental income while they wait for financing to build larger projects and farmers flush with cash from high crop prices, who are upgrading their residences or providing housing for laborers. Natural-gas companies are also buying houses for workers who can’t find lodging in sparsely populated drilling regions like North and South Dakota.

But Mr. Davie, who is on the board of the International Association of Structural Movers, the industry’s trade group, said most buyers were “hardworking people who don’t want to go into serious debt to own a home and are willing to put a little sweat equity into the project.”

The Olsons fit that profile. In addition to the $21,500 they paid to move their house 30 miles, they plan to spend another $100,000 renovating it themselves. “It’s hard work, but it’s going to be beautiful,” said Mr. Olson, 48, a cattle farmer.

Cheryl Moore, 52, and her husband, Kenneth, 48, of Houston are also rolling up their sleeves. The couple, quality assurance employees at an oil-rig services company, have been working on a 1,200-square-foot Victorian-style house since August, when they moved it 130 miles from Houston to their property in Nacogdoches, Tex.

Ms. Moore found the house on the Web site of a local structural mover who got it from a developer who wanted to tear it down to build a snow-cone stand. The cost, plus shipping, was $47,500. Ms. Moore and her husband plan to invest another $100,000 to put on a new roof and add two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, work they will do themselves to save money.

“It’s a great deal,” Ms. Moore said, “considering to build a house like this would cost us around $500,000.”

MOVING a house is, in theory, relatively simple.