NB: I’m not yet in Taiwan, this whole thing is somewhat of a pipe dream, but hear me out.
So I’ve been following https://www.wikihouse.cc/ and all their satellite projects for years. I have some (quite limited) experience with CNC, general building, materials, and construction.
I’ve also seen some deals on land plots in Yulan that do not require to sell both kidneys (~US$100k for ~2000 ping). I’m not sure if those are agricultural and thus inaccessible to foreign buyers. For the purpose of the experiment, let’s assume they are okay.
I did some very limited digging into Taiwan building code and I don’t see anything in particular that explicitly prohibits building a plywood house, as long as it stands on a certified foundation (e.g. an insulated concrete slab).
Having built a house in Hualien I just throw some things out there for you to investigate.
Land: most “affordable” land is farm land which has various restrictions where are stricter lately. Even if you find a way to buy farmland (usually not available for foreigners) getting government permit approval to build a house on that land is the key. Perhaps go for small non-restricted category land…much more expensive but less hassle.
Builders: Better do some sourcing of workers who can help. Tough to find any workers sometimes much less those unfamiliar with the type of house you are constructing. Find an excellent house project manager to do this for you.
Well, there are thousand things to consider. Good luck.
OP said he wants to build it out of plywood… Maybe he thinks it can be built of minimal labor…
Don’t do it. I can attest to the fact that termites here LOVE plywood. I had to throw out some nice expensive baltic birch plywood because it was completely hollowed out by termites. You will not know it until it’s too late.
Right, I’d love to DIY it with minimum help, just for the sheer enjoyment of building your own dwelling.
Termites is an interesting constraint. Somehow I was under an impression that termite-proof plywood is a solution, however on closer examination it says in fine print that termite-proofness is guaranteed for 25 years. I guess with nasty taiwanese termites maybe 5-10 years is more realistic. Let me ruminate a bit more on this.
We’ve got a thread or two on shipping container conversion, if I remember right some businesses in Taiwan do it. Not sure if that’s interesting to you or not.
there should be a wikihouse at Pei-Ping Elementary School in Hsin-Bu Township, Hsin-Chu County, built in 2015 or 2016. you could ask how it is now.
For the foundation construction, Canadian cypress was used to coat the asphalt for anticorrosion, and two hollow bricks were raised to prevent ground gas and moisture. At the same time, thick asphalt is applied to the timber section to prevent termites from invading from the section. After the main building is assembled, one layer of heat-resistant and flame-resistant paint is used to treat fire prevention, and three layers of wood-protecting paint are used to prevent moisture, corrosion, and insects. The outermost part is covered with cypress rain panels, and the roof is assisted by local subway workers to cover the light-transmitting plate to adapt to Taiwan’s humid and warm environment and prolong the life of WikiHouse’s wooden structure.
that’s about 400,000+ per fen for land. I dont want to say it is impossible, but those prices are almost impossible now.
more likely they are either for aboriginal land, in which case you must be aboriginal or sign a long term lease (not recomended) or it is government in which case it is also a lease system.
cheap land now, at least in my observations…take with grains of salt) are at least 800k/fen now. that’s for farmland which you cant buy unless you are a local. need the ID card and all that. in many places even crappy farmland is growing from 300k/fen to 2mil plus now. the speculation game is now an intense snowball. hopefully it will peak soon, but taiwanese are rush…so who knows when.
dont mean to piss on your dreams, but I would look onto the land aspect first, it isnt as easy as it always seems. unless you have money. then it’s fairly easy through trustworthy lawyers that actually are aware of all the land issues The building aspect is easy, but also check laws Taiwan is super strict compared to most developed countries.
edit to add there are a lot of canadian cypress “log houses” in Taiwan. "mosquito houses " government projects that are rotting and abandoned now. The wood was crap. but one can certainly buy decent wood here to build for the weather, but it will be very expensive now!!
I agree figuring out the land situation is paramount to anything else. The safest option is 建地 of which there are 4 types. Type 1 and 2 will be land within the city. Expensive and probably not what you’re looking for. Type 3 is rural construction land and type 4 is industrial construction land. Type 3 is probably what you have in mind. Undeveloped type 3 land is pretty rare, but it’s out there. Unlikely to find anything good for less than $40,000/坪. This type of land allows you to build on 40% of the land area so you need to take that into consideration too. Many times this land is sold together with farm land or forest land attached, could fool you into thinking it’s a larger piece of land than it really is. Even after having type 3 land you’ll have to apply for a building line before moving forward with any of the other red tape. Best to confirm ability to get a building line before purchasing the land. There’s many other things to consider, electricity (easy), water/sewer (more difficult), public road access.
There is a publicly accessable interactive castral map for Taiwan. You can check the zoning of land on that website (sorry I forgot the web address)
Most rural standalone homes you see in Taiwan are not fully legal.
You can build a wood house that is fully legal if done properly, there are a few local builders.
Can look on land319.com to see what’s out there. Or look for the yellow hand written signs you’ll see around the country side.
I don’t know Chinese, and I don’t know if this will help, but in addition to @tando’s video, there appear to be some Taiwanese discussions of these kinds of houses:
The discussions are in Chinese, but with a Chrome browser, you can right-click for Google Translate (maybe you can do that with other browsers as well, but I don’t know much about the other ones).
If the above search results don’t appear to be helpful, maybe you should just skip them to avoid wasting time.
I would guess that if you could find the people who were involved in the subject of @tando’s video, they might be able to help.
Thank you, agree that the land is probably more expensive than I estimate. Those US$100k patches are probably some terrible swamp and / or agricultural land that will require a lot of hoop-jumping to acquire.
The building aspect is easy, but also check laws Taiwan is super strict compared to most developed countries.