Living a spartan existence is like travelling: it's a great way to broaden your mind and you really should do it when you're young and have few commitments.
As a person who recently had my house evicted from the land it was sitting on, I encourage you to read your local ordinances carefully, prepare for a legal fight, and don't talk to any curious reporters.
Its sort of crazy that this style of living isn't allowed by many local ordinances. There are tons of folks who could put these up as guest houses or detached offices and be super happy with them. Hell put one up and stick your obnoxious teen ager in it.
To your point they do seem pretty expensive. If you were building in your area what is the price per sq/ft. I understand that it is a terrible metric, but it is the only one that I can think of.
My wife and I are kicking around the idea of building one as a detached office. haven't looked into local laws yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be regulated as more than a shed (if no one is sleeping in it).
I think the tiny house movement says something about the economy in the new era of sustainability.
The classic economy wants to grow infinitely to be happy. But a sustainable approach means people are now focusing on conservation of resources, leading to behavior that is the opposite of growth.
The real economy actually wants to shrink, in some cases literally. You see that with tiny houses. If people could wave a wand and shrink their house to reduce their cost of living and footprint, they would.
I think the focus on sustainability is great, but we need to adjust our economic and social structures to accomodate that.
Cool - some of these look like fancy motor homes for a five star road trip haha.
PS: The first listing is really just an ad for a small home custom builder? Savvy of him to get oodles of free promo for his business but may want to look into that?
I have no experience living in one, but my understanding is they can be hooked up to services if you desire. The reason they are on trailers is because the person who invented the first tiny house (now runs Tumbleweed Tiny House Company http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/) was looking for a way to get around zoning laws. These houses are so small they are not allowable under most zoning laws. But if you put them on wheels, they qualify as "trailer homes" and, voila!, now you are legal.
From what I gather, the fact that they are too small to be legal in most (urban/within city bounds) areas creates all kinds of challenges. I have long been interested in the subject, and I sometimes fantasize about living in a tiny house, but I have not yet in earnest tried to make it happen.
I've lived for 3+ years in a 25' Airstream with my wife. I feel our Airstream is much better laid out then most tiny houses I see. I wouldn't want to do the loft. We love living in a tiny space. We constantly travel though. It might be a different story if the view out my window wasn't constantly changing (feeling closed in..etc.).
Having watched some of the shows I still don't catch the full appeal. Perhaps so you can claim you don't live in a trailer? Modern campers are at times better finished and likely to pass more stringent inspections. Throw in that trend towards slide outs on campers/trailers and they have space on demand.
Custom workmanship might be the real key, still it is a trailer by any other name.
Most modern campers can't do winter though. I live in a 25' Airstream. The windows and insulation are crap. Living in an Airstream in a Vermont winter would be painful and miserable. But it has wheels, so I head south.
If you're a millennial, you'd typically buy a starter home. Student loan debt and wages (having been disconnected from productivity in the 70s) cause workers to have insufficient income to devote to a "traditional" housing expenses. Therefore, a tiny home with less financial exposure is more attractive. Even though they're not dirt cheap, they can be of high quality construction and cost about the same as a traditional deposit on a traditional home.
You can't park one of these anywhere near an urban area with jobs. They do nothing to alleviate housing affordability. In semi-rural areas without jobs housing is already dirt cheap, so they're of little practical use there either.
My anecdotal experience has been that people who are buying these are creative types or tech workers with remote work.
There was a gentleman who posted his entire progress and his financials for the Tiny House on HN a few weeks back, and parked his in rural Texas. There was another young man who placed his on some borrowed land near the University of Michigan, as what he paid to build his was substantially less than what his dorm would've cost.
Remember, tiny houses get you around zoning laws. They're not homes, they're RVs/trailers. You can get much more creative about where you place them compared to a house you'd have to build.
What do these things sell dollar / sq foot? Some quick calculation show about $240 / sq foot. Better then SF bay prices but probably not better than most of the rest of the country.
In many parts of the bay area you're not paying for the house as much as the land. In fact if the house is older and in a desirable location it has negative value because of the demo and related permits; a vacant lot would sell for more.
I don't know exactly what your definition of success is, but products of hyper-specialization do indeed make money. Etsy is eBay for home crafts, Twitch.tv is Justin.tv/YouTube/Ustream for video games. And of course there are thousands of enterprise solutions that are simply domain specializations of Microsoft Office and Dropbox that are doing quite well.
Nice site and cool listings but I don't quite understand. AirBnb is for short term rentals / sharing places. This seems to be a site to buy houses. Or am I missing something?
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