What are the property taxes and resale value like?
Does anyone watch the sitcom Life in Pieces? There are some pretty hilarious episodes that deal with the son’s tiny house he has parked in his parents’ backyard. Especially when his dad ended up staying out there too because he was in the “doghouse” with his wife.
The weird thing is that it really wouldn’t cost much more at all to double the size of these things. Might even be cheaper since you aren’t having to buy special “Tiny” materials. The outer walls of a shed are pretty cheap. I guess if you’re building it in someone’s backyard it can make sense to keep the footprint really small, but otherwise it’s rather silly. I think they’re fun to look at, but it would be really hard to live in long-term.
The container houses are just dumb. You have to modify them so much to make it work that it would make a lot more sense just to stick-build something.
It’s my understanding that resale is almost nonexistent. The market for them is so tiny (ha!) that finding any buyers at all will be so difficult that if you’re trying to sell a used one, you’re going to have to take whatever you can get.
On a couple of different sites for tiny house listings that I checked (Tiny House Marketplace - Tiny Houses for Sale and Rent and https://tinyhouselistings.com/), the first only had 492 listings for the entire USA, and the second had over 2000 but also included RVs, unfinished homes, converted buses, and just bare trailers. I also noticed most of the listings were for brand new homes going for $50,000+, while the ones that had actually been lived in were priced at $15,000 or significantly lower.
That was really funny. I like the observation about the guy who was planning on having his 3 kids sleep in a loft, and was concerned about space for his comic books and action figures…
We recently moved my daughter’s mattress to our bedroom, she’s doing some major cleaning/work in her room. So, it’s her, my husband and I and the two dogs at bedtime. I joked the other night how cozy it was and how all we needed was a mini fridge and hot plate. It actually is nice, all of us together with limited space, but in reality, to do it all the time, we’d go crazy. Of course, a tiny house would be better than a bedroom, but I don’t think we could do it.
There is a tiny house hotel here in Portland. We went to an open house there and were impressed with the clever designs to make them habitable. But it would drive me nuts to have to live in something that is smaller than a decent hotel room.
The phenomenon is probably too new to have much resale data yet, but it’s probably like any really specialized home (or a time-share) – you’re stuck waiting for just the right buyer.
Property tax is an interesting question because in high-cost areas, the value of the land itself is going to be high, so any savings from a lower-value dwelling will be comparatively smaller.
Many of the shows build mobile tiny houses, which limits the size. People buying them seem to have visions of traveling the country, but moving even the mobile ones looks hazardous and expensive.
Space is good, and there is plenty of it, empty space makes up most of the known universe, no reason to restrict oneself for space, it is an inexhaustible resource.
Really could not do it for more then a vacation.
A trailer generally cannot withstand winter weather. They also don’t last as long as a house.
Having said that, the price per square foot of a tiny house can be $400, which to me is pretty high (real estate where I live is less than $100 per square foot).
I wouldn’t mind a 300-500 square foot house. But I couldn’t do a 100 square foot one. I enjoy having a queen size bed and I don’t want to sleep 5 feet fromt he toilet.
What you talkin’ bout Wesley?
I’ve seen trailer parks in every state in the US, even in Canada.
Price of a house, depreciation of a car. Not exactly a great investment.
Are you referring to RVs or tiny houses, because they both seem to have those problems.
Not… exactly new 
To be honest, if my father dies before me, I’m taking down all the cheap blinds he put in and walking around naked If I want. Fuck 'em if they can’t stand the view, I’m free!!
I think I resent tiny houses. You don’t have to go that small to “save your money for experiences instead” or what have you. Build a normal modest house and don’t buy too much crap to put in it. Actually make your kids share a room and not have a separate bathroom for each kid. But that doesn’t have to be a tiny house.
Really. I watched one show where the guy put up three of them in a U shape. It was a rough lot so he had to excavate and put in footings. Now if you have not been in a container, they are 8’ wide and maybe 8’ high. They already feel like a dark, cold hallway.
So he built stud walls for insulation. Now we are down to 7’. Then he covered the outside with barn siding, and built a pitched roof, all so it wouldn’t look like a container. About 3/4 of the way through the show he was having serious remorse and just sat down and looking all dejected and talked about whether the containers were a good idea to begin with.
I stared at the guy and wondered myself: Dude, you built every facet of a stick built home: foundation, inside walls, exterior siding, roof. What they hell were you thinking? There was no savings at all, in fact it probably cost him way more then if he had built the entire thing conventionally. And then he would not have a 7’ wide house. I wonder if he was swayed by the idea of being on TV. I have no idea how they recruit these people.
Dennis
Things like this are more 3 season campers.
I’m sure there is a way to make them 4 season and still be portable and transportable, but I don’t know how.
Yeah, the shipping container is just ridiculous. Sure, you can have a roof and a floor and walls for not very much money? So what? You’ve got a giant metal box. Great, a giant metal box is not very expensive. Houses are expensive because they have plumbing and insulation and foundations and windows and doors and carpet and electricity and all the mod cons. Your metal box has none of that.
OK, if you’re a hobo or a refuge and need a place out of the wind and rain, a rusty old boxcar sure beats a tent. But if you’re trying to build a house starting with a shipping container isn’t going to get you any sort of head start, because why would it?
On a similar note, I was very interested in the small teardrop campers like this one. Easy to tow, low cost, who needs more space? I was very interested in the version I linked; plans available from a company specializing in canoes and kayaks and, hey, I’ve built those so why not?
Then my wife and I went to a RV show and saw the damn things. A tiny 2-man tent replacement that’s 3X the price of a pretty decent 17 foot walk-in model with toilet/shower and 100X fewer fights with the spouse.
Another post to talk about other things that bother me about the amateur builders - ignorance of building techniques. This is in regards to the “Building Off the Grid” show. They showcase many unusual homes, and OK, I get it. You want something different, and general something you and the significant other and a few friends can do in a wilderness setting. But some things need better planning even though they sound so “green”.
One couple built a round yurt built of dirt filled bags. Actually that part worked fine. When they went to spray stucco on the inside, their generator would not run the stucco pump or something. So the afternoon job took 2 weeks by hand.
Then they pre-assembled the high pitched, coned shaped, tin roof and tried to hoist it with a crane. It fell apart and got all bent. Sigh. Now we will do it one piece at a time. Then they placed foam boards on the floor (which is great) and laid the tubing for their solar heated floor. A giant spiral of tubing placed at least a foot apart if not 15". What? I have a heated floor. My cables are 6" apart and in the few spots I cheated a bit to 7" or 8" I have cold spots.
And some dinky little solar panel to heat the water, this is in Montana or somewhere. They did have a good stove.
Another group of bicyclists built a club house on a freaking mountain. They were determined to have a zero carbon foot print. In other words, no gasoline used to transport materials. Have you ever used a bicycle to haul lumber up a mountain? And bags of concrete? And the water to mix the concrete? Yeah, no water on site. Every time they want to use the clubhouse they have to haul water.
So they poured a concrete floor. They did not want to haul sand and aggregate so they mixed the Portland cement directly with the dirt on site. Hmm, looking good. The next day they walked on the green cement (which should have been fine for foot traffic) and it cracked like dry clay, slabs sticking up in the air.
They were so sad because they didn’t want to remove the poor floor and start over because of all the hauling, including the 200 gallons of water they used to mix the floor. Huh? 200 gallons of water? This floor was about 8’ x 12’ and only 2" thick. That’s about 30 bags of cement. You need less then a gallon of water for an 80 lb bag of pre-mix. 200 gallons of water and a dirt-cement mix? Oh gosh, how did it ever crack? Oh yeah, the rigged up some silly bucket cement mixer to work from a bicycle, which was probably why they needed so much water. How about a simple mud pan and a hoe like everyone else uses? It’s even green.
But I give them credit They did eventually complete it and apparently used no fuel doing it. Me, being a Cro-Magnon with a carbon foot print you can see from low Earth orbit, I would have used more horsepower then 20 Priuses to build the damn thing.
Dennis