This $2,100 Vanlife Build Might Be The Cheapest Way To Own A Dwelling

The United States is in a housing crisis. Rent prices are skyrocketing coast to coast, and minimum wage earners can no longer afford a one-bedroom apartment in any major city. But fear not, fellow poors, for there is a solution for at least one of us: This $2,100 Ford Transit Connect vanlife conversion. It may well be the cheapest dwelling on the American market, and it could free one lucky buyer from the yoke of rent payments forever. 

The Transit Connect isn’t a traditional Instagram-ready vanlife choice, due to its small size and low roof height. But that makes it attainable, since it lacks the kind of wild demand that pro-built, offroad-ready Sprinter vans have — those cost as much as houses, which don’t do much for those of us who already can’t afford houses. Instead, we poors need to look at simpler ways to get what we need to live. This Transit Connect has a bed, sink, hot plate, and “real flooring.” What else do you need?

The Transit Connect does have some mechanical issues, which the seller credits to either a shot wheel bearing or a busted differential. The former is usually a cheap enough fix, but the latter could be costly — though the $3,600 repair quote that seems to have scared the seller into listing the van seems high. Still, we’re less about the “van” part of this build and more about the “life.” You could live here! $2,100 plus the cost of a gym membership for shower and bathroom access beats the cost of any rented apartment. 

The economy is bad for folks like us, and it doesn’t show any signs of improving. We all may have to get a bit more creative about cost-cutting in the future, and turning that rent cost into an investment in an asset is a great way to go about saving money. Vanlife may be the future for a lot of us, and this $2,100 Ford Transit Connect shows us all that it can be cheaper than Instagram makes it out to be.