Why are people building homes with shipping containers? Shipping containers are an ideal building material. They're strong, weather resistant, durable, stackable, and insulated. Structures made from them can be disassembled, moved, and reassembled with ease. As they are already designed to interlock for transportation, construction is completed by simply emplacing them. Due to the container's modular design additional construction is as easy as stacking more containers. They are common and cheap because of the imbalance in manufactured goods in North American trade. The USA imports more goods than it exports, and those goods come and go in containers. As a result the US has more empty containers than it can fill; incredibly they can reach twice around the entire planet. These empties are readily available for architecture. Construction is cheap as shipping containers can be purchased used for $900.00 USD each.