A Unique Approach to Homebuilding: Gennadiy Tsygan’s Journey
Gennadiy Tsygan knows the cost of building a home in the United States. That’s why he chose to import nearly everything for his dream house from China. Most of the home’s fixtures came directly from over two dozen factories, and Tsygan, an engineer in Baltimore, traveled halfway around the world in 2024 to select some of those products.
His home is cozy yet industrial, standing out among the traditional colonials and ranches in Baltimore. It features gray fiber cement, welcoming floor-to-ceiling windows, and an open kitchen. Tsygan is proud of even the smallest details, such as doors with magnetic locks that produce a silent click and European-style windows. The home is on track for LEED certification, he adds.
“Building a home is a project of a lifetime, and I treat it as an adventure and try to have fun with it,” Tsygan said. “That’s how I came to trying to import some building materials from China.”
With the high cost of home construction, more Americans are exploring the idea of working with Chinese suppliers for their renovations. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the price of home construction materials in the United States increased by 3% from last year. And since 27% of these materials came from China in 2023, some U.S. homebuilders are considering skipping the middleman like Home Depot and local contractors.
The trend of importing from China is also gaining traction on American homeowners’ social media feeds. A woman who allegedly turned down a $50,000 cabinet quote locally to import from China received over 165,000 likes, and others share vendor lists. Chinese manufacturers also advertise directly to social media users, promising to deliver cabinets, tiles, and other materials to your doorstep.
This curiosity is reminiscent of previous trends where Americans were encouraged to buy designer handbags directly from China or the recent trend of “Chinamaxxing.”
However, this approach isn’t without its challenges. While the initial price tag may seem lower, there are issues such as fluctuating tariffs, specialized labor costs, language barriers, and delivery delays.
For Tsygan, importing proved to be a worthwhile investment. He estimated saving up to $100,000 through this method. However, he emphasized that the process was far from “cheap,” noting that he paid an average of $13,000 for shipping per container of custom goods from China.
Rising Material Costs in the U.S.
Constructing a home comes with a hefty price tag in the United States. Metal molding and trim have risen by 45% year-over-year, increasing the cost of windows, according to Robert Dietz, NAHB’s chief economist. Lumber prices have gone up 8% over the last year, and aluminum has seen increases due to trade and tariff policies.
“Material prices are definitely getting a little outrageous,” Will Mueller, Tsygan’s builder from IronGate Builders, told. Materials can make up two-thirds of the total cost of a custom home, Mueller said, with the rest primarily being labor.
Tsygan noted that the brown siding on his home was sold at a 150% markup on Amazon and was mostly imported from China anyway. The floor-to-ceiling windows were unaffordable domestically, and the sound-proof, magnetic-locked doors were almost four times more expensive in the United States, according to local websites.
Importing is an appealing trade-off for many consumers, and sellers based in China are aware of this. Many aspirational homeowners see Chinese sourcing agents showcasing luxury bathroom models and cabinets in English on their algorithms.
“Within one day you can buy all the building materials for your new house here” for less than $10,000, one sourcing agent based in China claimed on TikTok. Another Chinese manufacturer with almost 30,000 TikTok followers boasted the company “can copy the whole house from a floorplan for up to half the cost.”
Many of these sellers are based in Foshan, a Chinese city known for its home decoration and building material industry. As Hao Dong, a professor in operations and project management at the University of Southampton, explained, Foshan likely has lots of stuff that you can buy from Home Depot and Amazon. It’s even more important for Chinese factory owners to seek new markets with a slowing domestic real estate business market, he added.
Zhao Ke, a sourcing agent who goes by Cody Sourcing on social media, told that he gets around 300 homebuilding customers a month. Between five to 10 will visit China to tour showrooms and order products, he said.
“Especially in recent years, more and more even with the tariff war, people are still buying from (Chinese manufacturers),” he told.
A Complex Process
Tsygan did not import his entire home ready-made, as some TikToks from manufacturers suggest. The initial process was a lot of “blind navigation,” he said. He searched for windows on Alibaba, for example, as well as contacts with Chinese manufacturers that were certified in the U.S. The research culminated in a visit to China in 2024.
Then he encountered obstacles stateside. Right off the bat, he needed to find a builder that would be willing to take on designs unfamiliar to the American market.
Though Mueller, Tsygan’s builder, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the quality of the materials, there can be other logistical headaches. For example, craftsmen need to translate instructions in Mandarin and adjust any differences in measurements. People looking to follow in Tsygan’s footsteps need other pricey equipment like a telehandler as well.
“It’s a first for us, and we actually tried to talk him away from it. But it’s his money and his house,” Mueller said, referring to Tsygan’s decision to import from China.
Importing opens the door to a string of potential issues. First, materials could be subject to the fluctuating tariffs on China, which reached 145% at one point last year. There’s also the longer wait time. Tsygan’s home has been in the works since October 2024. Returns and fixes take months, and “on orders of this scale, something will be wrong regardless,” Tsygan said.
For Tsygan, the main benefit is access to features that were unavailable in the United States, or just plain expensive — though he added that it’s hard to compare American and Chinese offerings.
It’s been a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity, he said, but one that is “complex and riddled with risks.”
