The trend in building a “dream” house or buying a luxury home with lots of square footage has changed for some as people adapt to decreasing incomes and uncertainty about employment. Frugality is becoming a virtue, and smaller homes are being chosen for their low cost, low taxes and upkeep, as well as reduced cost of utilities.
Carrying the trend to the extremes, there is a movement to build “tiny houses,” some as small as 200 sq. ft. or less. These are often built on a frame with a chassis, similar to a single-section manufactured home.
An enthusiast for this trend who lives in Prince Rupert, British Columbia believes that tiny houses could help alleviate their city’s lack of affordable housing. As reported on CBC Radio’s Daybreak North, Tracy Wheeler thinks that a community of tiny houses would help solve their growing affordable housing problem.
Wheeler estimates that “If you are building it (the tiny house) yourself with very basic skills, you could probably do it for about $15,000 to $20,000.”
Wheeler wants the first tiny house in the proposed community to be her own, with 600 square feet of floor space. “Seniors wanting to downsize or snowbirds would find something like this to be more convenient than living in a huge three- to four-bedroom house,” she added.
Interest in tiny homes is not confined to only a few areas. Half a continent away, there is proof that not everything is bigger in Texas. A non-profit organization in Austin is building tiny houses for the homeless. The effort is the brainchild of a local nonprofit called Mobile Loaves & Fishes.
In an interview with TakePart.com, a digital news and lifestyle magazine, Donna Emery, the organization’s director of development explained, “We will be gradually moving 240 people off the streets of Austin, Texas, to live in our community. A tent in the woods is not going to solve what they desire most, which is to live in a community.”
Emery said that this will be a genuine residential area with a community center, garden, an on-site medical center and an outdoor movie theater. Residents will have to pay rent, although it will be significantly below market rate. Some might pay as little as $90 a month to live in one of the homes. The project will connect residents with job training and employment opportunities so they can afford the rent.
In an article entitled, “Let’s Get Small,” published in the New Yorker magazine, the author Alec Wilkinson states that “The rhetoric of modern tiny-house living begins with the assertion that big houses, aside from being wasteful and environmentally noxious, are debtors’ prisons. Their owners work in order to afford them, and when they actually occupy them they’re anxious. Tiny houses are luxurious, because they are easier to take care of and allow their (presumably debt-free) owners to spend more money on pleasures. The owner of a tiny house, while living intimately indoors, has a larger life outside, and a lighter conscience.”
One problem is that most banks won’t finance tiny houses––any house smaller than 400 square feet is difficult to mortgage. Nevertheless, as incomes and expectations decline, a lot of people are taking downsizing seriously. Some pay cash for their tiny houses.
The increased – often intense – interest in smaller housing may be a signal to the manufactured home industry that there is a market a-waiting. Here are some of the reasons why:
- When individuals build their own tiny houses, these homes are constructed on-site, and although their total cost may be low compared to conventional housing, it cannot compare to the lower cost per square foot of building a similar home in a factory.
- Since the HUD Code for manufactured housing allows for sizes that start at 320 square feet, that size fits nicely with many Tiny House plans.
- These do-it-yourself homes are generally not constructed to HUD Code standards like manufactured housing, or ANSI standards like park model RVs. Building Tiny Houses to the HUD Code should mean that manufactured home lenders would be able to finance them
See this previous Daily Business News story on a Tiny House placed in a manufactured home community, linked here. ##
Editor’s Note: for more stories about the Tiny House movement, please see the linked articles below.
http://manufacturedhomelivingnews.com/the-tiny-house-movement/
http://manufacturedhomelivingnews.com/globalnews-spotlights-tiny-houses-sparking-questions-for-manufactured-and-modular-home-consumers-and-industry/
(Photo credit: Mobile Loaves & Fishes/Facebook)
