One of the main reason retirees and other expats come to Costa Rica is to downsize and try to get by on less money. Because of Costa Rica’s popularity, prosperity and high quality of life, housing in some areas has become expensive. However, now there is an affordable housing option -— shipping container homes.

Diana Leiton of the company,   Containers of Costa Rica, says that her company can design and move container homes to any part of the country. The cost of a 20 foot container is around $9,500. Said size is generally used for an office with a small bathroom and kitchen. For $14,500 a person can purchase a 40 foot container (28 square meters in size) which has a bathroom, combination living and dining room, windows doors and electricity.

Containers of Costa Rica has a prepay interest system where you can start to pay for a container several years in advance. When 80 percent of the price is paid off then construction of your home can begin.

With a little ingenuity and creativity you can really come up with some incredible designs for affordable container homes.

Here are the main advantages of this type of alternative housing:

1. Affordable The biggest incentive and advantage for all those thinking about ship container houses is that they are quite cheap. Getting a used shipping container and converting it into a home is far less expensive than getting a home in the cheapest place of the city. And you might not even find what you are looking for. But with ship container houses, all you need to do is to look for one and you shall have one.
2. Easy to Use and construct Contrary to what it looks like, it is extremely easy to execute a shipping container home design. All you need is a shipping container, a company that you can buy or rent it from, delivery guys ready to maneuver it into your back yard and lots of ideas and you can end up with a great home. Any container ship design can be easily incorporated into any container. You want to add doors or windows or need a stair case, simple enough.
3. Sooner, the better This is the idea behind all container ship homes. On an average, a shipping container takes a total of couple of months to be up and standing and ready to be moved into,
4. Let your imaginations go free But for those who want to get down to it right to the core, there is no stopping their imagination. With container ship homes, you can get exactly the kind of home you have in mind.All you need is a container ship design and you can end up with a home that’s exactly what you had in mind. It cannot get better than this.
5. Get them where you want them Another amazing thing about ship container houses is that you can get them exactly where you need them.  But on the slightly negative side, due to the size of the container and the truck needed to deliver the container, a minimum of 100 ft of maneuvering space is needed for a truck to comfortably load the container where it should be.
6. Environment friendly But if a completely different and personal ship container architecture is not an incentive enough for you, maybe the fact that you are actually doing some good for the environment will cheer you up. Most companies offer old and new containers, both, to be used as homes. If you choose to reuse a container, you are actually saving the environment as in case of no better use of such containers, their steel is retrieved to be used again and that process takes a lot of energy.
7. Personal style statement But despite all the above mentioned facts, the biggest benefit of a container ship home design is that you can absolutely make sure the exact thing you need. Ship container architecture is so designed that if you choose, you can make it reflect exactly who you are. And also, stand out from the lot.

Check out the incredible homes at this website: http://design-milk.com/12-homes-made-from-shipping-containers/