Tinies remind me of flying cars. They cost a lot of money and do nothing well. You could buy a nice used RV with pop-out rooms and drive from place to place at will without needing a heavy duty truck to tow it…
If it was meant to be a small mobile home then it could be built with bump outs and folding rooms.. instead of an elevator bed you can build a pull out room on tracks.
As for the toilet and shower, they should be separate sealed rooms that can be vented. Otherwise you’re living in the bathroom. The washer dryer should be a stack item and any kitchen space used for that can be augmented with fold-out counters for food prep.
According to one article I read, the problem is the hamper–yes the clothes hamper. The thing with a tiny house, so the article, is that everyday objects like clothes hampers take on an outsized impact in that they seem to fill a room very fast. When somebody wants to sell you a tiny house they’re not going put a hamper in the middle of the one room when they show it to you, but you’ll find you have no other place to put it when you live there.
ISTM trailers are actually a littler bigger than tiny houses, usually, except possibly the ones adapted from shipping containers.
Yeah, that article makes sense to me - the presentations about tiny houses usually don’t have things like laundry hampers set up. Look at the video of the house with the garage-door-bed from earlier - I guess you could put your laundry into one of the couch or coffee table pieces, but you’re going to cut your limited storage into ‘temporary storage for dirty clothes’.
My guess is the laundry hampers are actually the washing machine. As clothes get dirty, throw them into the washer until it’s full, then wash. Forget about separating whites/colors (I’ve never separated anything other than cleaning rags which get bleach).
The implicit sneer in the thread title is carried into many of the posts, as if people are afraid someone is going to force them to live in one of these, so they have to persuade everyone that they’re awful.
If you don’t want to live in one of these, don’t. If someone else does, it’s no skin off your nose. I did not see a single critic in this thread who has actually lived in one of these things. It reminds me of how, back in the 60’s and 70’s, Americans used to turn up their noses at those tiny Japanese cars, I mean who would want to drive one of those tin cans?
Full disclosure: I don’t want to live in one, or even try it out. But I think they’re a great solution for some people who do want to, and I support changes in public policy that make that easier in crowded and expensive urban areas (like the one I live in).
I would say that the ‘sneer’ is from the people who sneer at those who live in ‘mobile homes’ and make a point of trying to say that their ‘tiny houses’ are not possibly just an upscale version of the same thing they’re sneering at. The fact that you interpret ‘doesn’t X fit the definition of Y’ as insulting to X is a pretty good sign that you look down on Y.
Also, I don’t think anyone has said anything about being forced into one, or that they’re awful for everyone. No idea where that is coming from.
Again I ask: Are they like houses, where there is a reasonable chance the value will go up, or are they like mobile homes where the instant you sign the papers the resale value goes down?
According what I read, the tiny homes that are mounted on wheels (as opposed to traditionally-built houses that happen to be small) depreciate like vehicles and require a non-mortgage loan like mobile homes and RVs:
Hence my use of the words “as if.” If my assertion is true, it would by definition be an unspoken motivation.
As for the rest, you have it backwards, but that’s OK. I don’t think “tiny” homes are better or worse than mobile homes, I just think they are different and for different purposes. In fact, if I were going to compare tiny homes to something else, it would be boathouses.
To attempt to answer Czarcasm’s question, I’ll take our house as an example. The value that has increased over the 15 years we’ve owned it, according to our assessment, is entirely the land. The house itself has only increased in value marginally because we have sunk a lot of money into renovations. So in my opinion, houses themselves don’t increase in value, only land does, and only based on supply and demand. Houses require maintenance and get used up just like cars, only not as fast. So if you are building a tiny house (or any house) on your own land, the value of the package has a chance of going up, but the value of the house itself doesn’t.
Wonder what the heat loss is from those oversized windows in the Alaska house.
Obviously tiny homes pose the same risk to occupants in severe weather as mobile homes.
For someone who likes the tiny home lifestyle, great. Imagine though “sheltering in place” in a tiny home for long periods with two or three people (shudder).
Ha! I remember when I saw that Teensy House being towed behind a Renault Twizy… and then we realized that it was actually the tour bus for the band Spinal Tap!
For the most part, though, is it the house that goes up in value or the land the house is sitting on that goes up in value?
Houses decay over time (foundations eventually crumble, roofs wear, masonry cracks, etc.) Even for houses with “great bones,” the house itself doesn’t appreciate that much, if at all.
For most people who buy a “house” the real value is in the land that it’s sitting on, which is one of the problems with mobile homes, the owners just own the building, not the land.
Whether or not a tiny house will build value over time is going to depend on how the house is built and whether the owner owns the land it’s sitting on more than its size.
That video doesn’t show any clutter. She had the four hanging hooks as you entered but of course there was nothing on them. No dishes are shown, nor a dish drain. No piles of mail or correspondence. It’s like if you look at one of those photo shoots of some fancy Manhattan apartment or ultra-modern house in Connecticut or on the California coast. All wide-open spaces with no clutter whatsoever. Obviously, they clean up in advance but it’s not how people really live.
And another thing; that tiny house is in Alaska, where I assume land is cheap. Why squeeze yourself into such a tiny space? The only reason I can think of is that heating costs would be minimal.