These small houses in Omaha reimagine the starter home

FastCompany: On the corner of a tree-lined street in northeast Omaha, Nebraska, two modern and minimalist residences are resetting the standard of what a new house should look like. Their bold orange and navy blue exteriors and spare, geometric forms set them apart from the more conventional gabled houses down the street. The biggest difference, though, is their size. At just 802 and 618 square feet, the two houses are significantly smaller than the average new American home, which has a median area of more than 2,100 square feet .

The houses are the first two iterations of OurStory , a housing system envisioned as a replicable, accessible, and above all affordable approach to building homes. Using hyper-efficient spatial layouts and quickly manufactured prefab parts, the houses are designed to be built fast and inexpensively for anything from an age-in-place forever home to a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU) to a remarkably enticing option for a first-time homebuyer. They’re resetting the standard for starter homes in the U.S.

The OurStory houses are a collaboration between the nonprofit Partners for Livable Omaha and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture’s FACT studio , which engaged architecture students to design and build the first two homes. Construction is expected to wrap up by August. The larger house has already sold for just $190,000­—$90,000 less than the median sale price of homes in the city. The smaller house will likely be even more affordable. [Photo: Ashton Olvera/University of Nebraska/FACT/courtesy Partners for Livable Omaha] Not just more housing, more variety Omaha, like many cities, has a shortage of affordable housing.

The city estimates that it needs 30,000 new homes for low- and middle-income residents by the end of the decade. The OurStory project was launched partly to fill that gap, but also to address another kind of housing shortage: the low variety of housing types on the market. Of the 48 building permits issued for single family homes in the last month in Omaha and surrounding Douglas County, only six are smaller than 2,000 square feet, and none are smaller than 1,000 square feet.

Jessica Scheuerman, executive director of Partners for Livable Omaha, says there’s a need for a wider range of housing types, from smaller footprints to homes designed for aging in place. Scheuerman realized the extent of the need after seeing her mother struggle to find appropriate housing on a fixed income, and thought there should be a bigger range of options. “When you design and plan for the aging community, everybody benefits,” she says.

[Rendering: FACT/courtesy Partners for Livable Omaha] In 2024, she reached out to architect Jeffrey Day, a practicing architect and professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Architecture, to think about what a solution could look like. The two had worked together before on other projects, and they agreed that a modest aging-ready house could be a good assignment for the university’s design-build students. The project could also have legs. “The goal has always been to think about this project as a prototype that could be replicated multiple times, and in different configurations,” Day says.

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The OurStory project represents a significant shift in housing brand strategy, addressing critical issues in the starter home market while incorporating innovative design and sustainability, making it highly relevant for brand strategy professionals in the housing sector.