

In the future you will live in a tiny little house - sleepingbot
http://io9.com/5701745/in-the-future-you-will-live-in-a-tiny-little-house

======
RyanMcGreal
"People are starting to get a clue, I think."

Sigh. Moral suasion does not work and has never worked to promote
environmental objectives. What works is a rebalanced system of incentives and
disincentives in which consumers make decisions.

The median house size went down over the past couple of years because we've
been in a sharp, deep recession triggered in part by the collapse of an
overheated housing bubble, not because "people are starting to get a clue"
that they don't need 4,000 square foot houses.

~~~
roqetman
I think that energy costs (heating and cooling) also had a hand in the search
for smaller homes.

------
wheaties
No I won't. In the future I'll live in a normal house but I'll read about
these little houses. I might even be inclined to purchase one and put it on a
lake somewhere for fishing trips or by a beach for surfing trips but live in
it full time? Tell that to a wife and children.

------
marknutter
I think a more accurate prediction is that people will be living in smaller
houses than they have been in the past 20 years. I live and grew up in a quad
home townhouse in a pretty rich community, and my mind would always boggle at
the size of some of my friends' houses. It seemed insane that some people had
second dining/living rooms that they only used for special occasions, but sat
collecting dust the rest of the year. This kind of opulence is part of what
got us into the whole housing crisis, so I suspect that the next generation
will be a little more practical when it comes to these McMansions.

~~~
nhangen
No, that's not what got us into the housing crisis. What got us into the
housing crisis is wild west like lending practices and a really poor economy.
People couldn't afford their houses because of balloons, variable APR's, and
losing their job, not because they had an extra room.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_People couldn't afford their houses because of balloons, variable APR's, and
losing their job, not because they had an extra room._

Um, no. A balloon payment or variable APR would not hurt you if you bought a
smaller house that you could afford. Neither would short term (read: 1-2
years) job loss [1].

It's fun to blame the banks, but real estate speculators (aka "homeowners", as
the media calls them) are just as culpable.

[1] There are likely to be several recessions over the next 30 years, and you
have a reasonable chance of losing your job. If you don't plan for this, it's
your fault.

~~~
krschultz
I agree with your assesment that banks and speculators are equally to blame,
but it is easy to label people who got screwed by this as being irresponsible
and or stupid. I don't think that is true (and for alot of people,
irresponsible moves might have actually been economically rational)

So lets say I bought a house during part of the bubble well within my means at
the time. I put 20% down, and then had a fixed rate mortgage. I had 6 months
to a year of living expenses in cash in my bank on top of the cash I had to
put down on the house.

I lose my job, 1 year goes by, 18 months goes by. I have no more emergency
fund, and the house is now worth less than I bought it. I'm fucked. I have no
money left and I owe a huge amount, my mortgage is under water, and up until
that moment I made completely responsible decisions except that I bought the
house at the top of a bubble that I didn't know existed. I hypothetically had
not only 20% down, but an emergency fund equal to 2 years mortgage payments
plus food and utilities (which at that point you have close to 40% of the
value of the house in cash, who had that?)

Compare that to somebody who had no money in the bank, put no money down, lost
their job, but the house had appreciated in value. You sell the house quickly,
net about no money gained or lost, and move back into a rental apartment.
Really its not that big a deal. I could even move in with a friend for free
while I find a job.

The big assumption that screwed so many people was that house prices always
rise. You can be perfectly responsible on every move, assume house prices
always rise and don't realize there is a bubble, and be completely screwed.

You can also be completely irresonsible, luck out on your timing of when you
buy and when you sell, and come out ahead like a bandit.

Actually the conclusion I come to from that is the "safest" option is to put
nothing down, take the longest mortgage you can at the lowest rate, and have
heaps and heaps of cash in the bank. Take the 20% you could have put down on
the house and just keep it safe. You will pay more money over the life of your
mortgage but if shit hits the fan you can survive for months or years without
going bankrupt, which is counter to the advice of minimizing the cost of your
mortgage over the lifetime of it (i.e. lots of cash down, shorter term)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Say I bought $400k worth of stock options in $MY_COMPANY in a highly leveraged
bet which requires me to make monthly margin payments (which may or may not
depend on interest rates). Note that $MY_COMPANY is a highly illiquid stock -
unlike GOOG or MS, I'll be hard pressed to sell $400k shares of it quickly
except at a huge discount. I had enough liquid cash to make margin calls for 1
year, even if I lost my job. Also, the terms of my contract with my broker
impose significant financial penalties on me if I change my address.

(Notice how virtually all my investments are now strongly correlated with each
other? My investment, revenue stream, and ability to make margin calls will
all tank simultaneously?)

Would you also describe me as making "completely responsible decisions"?

Replace $MY_COMPANY's share price with some variable describing the local
economy, and you've just described a mortgage. Buying a house is a _really bad
investment strategy_ for most people. The only exception is if your goal is to
lock in a fixed rent on a fixed address for 30 years into the future.

~~~
kls
While I agree with your logic completly there are other factors that play into
a home buyer that are not in play with an investor the bigest one being
emotion and sociatal norms. I could not begin to fathom how many times in my
life I heard growing up, boy when you become a man buy a house, it's the
American dream, they are not making any more land. Real estate always goes up.
The advice like hey you could get trapped in a life sucking death trap was not
dispensed until late in the bubble and now freely flows in the crash. So you
have people that have no sophistication in investment purchasing homes because
the common mantra was what could possibly go wrong. You have skyrocketing home
prices and people panicking that they are going to be forever left out of the
greatness of home-ownership that they have heard about their entire life which
all culminates in disaster for the home owner.

I find it hard not to blame the bankers, when you have a party that clearly
lacks the knowledge to understand the realities of the market and a party that
clearly knows that they are inflating the market then you have to place blame
on the party that willfully acted while possessing full knowledge. Where the
homeowners greedy sure, and I would venture to guess that the number of
homeowners that did so out of greed where high but they where also making
decisions on information that was reinforced over years of indoctrination
information that the bankers willfully exploited with full knowledge that the
realities of the market where in sharp contrast to the homeowner perceived
reality of what homeownership meant.

So while you logic is correct it omits some very important facts the biggest
one being that the product was not sold to an investor but the average person.

------
tibbon
I like what he's got here. One of the things with small spaces is making sure
they are well laid out. You can make 96 sq/ft more functional than 400 sq/ft
if you have a great layout.

From 2007-2009 I lived in a tiny ~180 square foot apartment on Saint Botolph's
Street in Boston. It was fairly well laid out fortunately, and I was able to
fit a ton in there, including a desk with 36 rack spaces, several keyboards, a
5-piece drumkit, 8 guitars, two guitar amps, a 700 piece vinyl collection, a
few hundred books, a wine rack, a twin bed, filing cabinet, an aeron chair,
etc.

When it was clean and together it was very nice and didn't feel crowded or
cluttered at all. Fitting more than 4 people in there though was exceedingly
tight.

I'm actually always impressed when I go to Ikea. The 'rooms' they have setup
on the floor seem highly functional and spacious, but are actually pretty
small.

The worst thing that kills most small apartments is poor layouts, too many
doors/windows, all the footage being in the wallway, poorly placed radiators,
inaccessible electrical outlets (only one in the room or something silly like
that), or random pipes right in the middle of the room. One of my friends has
a random 4 inch pipe in the middle of her bathroom in her NYC apartment, and
another in the hallway. Worst architect ever. You just have to squeeze around
it.

~~~
artmageddon
>One of my friends has a random 4 inch pipe in the middle of her bathroom in
her NYC apartment, and another in the hallway. Worst architect ever. You just
have to squeeze around it.

I absolutely abhor these. Even with the insulation wrapped around it you would
still risk getting burned pretty badly if you were to mistakenly brush your
hand across it.

~~~
tibbon
I really can't figure out for the life of me what architect/engineer/builder
thought these were a good idea. I'm sure it was in some remodel, but that's
the type of thing that I couldn't even show to the client and keep a straight
face. Its like handing someone a website you did for them, turning on comic
sans and misspelling the company's name in the h1. Just sloppy.

------
nhangen
I might buy one for my kids so they can go camping in the yard while I watch
from my pool deck.

------
rickmode
The following quote from the Weekly World News link is suspect. The most
environmentally sound way for humans to live is in dense urban cities. Leave
the countryside alone.

Quote:

“People’s reasons for living small vary a lot, but there seems to be a common
thread of sustainability,” Shafer said. “A lot of people don’t want to use
many more resources or put out more emissions than they have to.”

------
jbail
I already do --- and it was built in 1885. How's that for keeping emissions
and resource usage down?

------
steveplace
Funny, I didn't know the Weekly World News was a legitimate news source.

------
JonnieCache
If we could get around the planning issues this would be the PERFECT solution
to the housing problem faced by the young, single and poor in the UK.

If we can get these classified as temporary dwellings, it could be both an
energy efficient way to house people who are currently being stiffed by
society/the economy, as well as a great big fuck-you to the housing market.

------
mise
There is nothing about living in a tiny little house in the future in this
video. But I like the approach. Heck, forget houses, many apartment dwellers
already live in tiny spaces.

~~~
zazi
> many apartment dwellers already live in tiny spaces.

True that. People in Hongkong or Japan are already living in teeny tiny
house/apartments. And some go to extreme lengths to maximise their space.
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak> \- Apartment with movable
modules in Hongkong )

~~~
wladimir
Indeed, this article is very focused on North America with its huge houses.
Then again, I do expect houses to become even smaller in the future, in any
country. After all, there will be more people in the same space.

Even further into the future, people might spend their entire days in virtual
environments so 'real space' will start to matter less.

------
crpatino
In the _Future_? sigh...

------
michaelfeathers
If you look at the video, you'll see he's wearing a wedding ring and he claims
to have lived in the house for ten years. Something's not quite right.

~~~
malloreon
If you watch the video, he says that he's lived in small houses for years, but
no longer lives in this one. He and his wife live in the 500 sq foot house
next to it, as they're expecting a baby.

~~~
michaelfeathers
Ooops. That's what I get for cutting out before the end.

------
edw519
If I were ever to get a house that small, I would want one that I could take
with me:

<http://www.lazydaze.com/photogal.htm>

~~~
wwortiz
See I can seriously see the utility of a mobile home with a bed and such small
space but when you are planting down some things are nice to have: like
running water and a washing machine. The articles tour looks terrible (from
youtube) as you would feel constantly squished and adding a second person to
the mix would make the house feel even more like a prison cell.

