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Thoughts After Dark answers the questions you have in the final moments before drifting off to sleep when a simple Google search turns into an hour-long exploration into how things are made and how they work. Your random late-night questions are answered here — even the ones you didn’t know you had.
While I was stuck inside in 2020 due to the pandemic, I got really into watching House Hunters. There was something inexplicably interesting about watching couples or roommates search for the perfect home within their budget constraints — especially because each episode has such range. In one episode a home buyer would be searching for an entirely updated and modern estate, while the next episode focused on finding a Victorian-style home with an original fireplace.
As I binge-watched the series, I did some Googling about the show and came across the House Hunters spin-off titled Tiny House Hunters. The show aired in 2014 with a similar premise: prospective home buyers look at three homes and weigh the pros and cons of each before deciding which was the best fit. The main difference between House Hunters and the tiny version is that buyers aren’t shown 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom properties, but a tiny houseboat or a 300 square-foot bungalow on wheels.
The tiny home trend took off in the late 1990s but seems to have made a massive resurgence due to the pandemic, Great Resignation, and movement of many people relocating from the city to smaller towns.
This got me thinking about why tiny homes are so appealing and whether or not this trend is here to say.
A Tiny Home Timeline
You may be wondering what makes a tiny home a tiny home. To put it simply, a tiny home is usually between 100- and 400-square-feet and around 8 feet tall. They can be a bit bigger, but when they begin to get into the 600-square-foot range, it’s really just a small house. To put it in perspective, the median size of a single-family housing unit in 2020 was 2,261-square-feet.
The units usually have a bathroom, kitchen, living room, and some type of bed often lofted in the living area. Many don’t have “real” toilets and are compost-based, and some tiny homes are on wheels.
While tiny homes can be traced back to 1000 BCE, the miniature-house movement, as it’s sometimes called, really picked up steam in 2007-2008 during the financial crisis. As people began to lose their homes, they looked for cheaper alternatives to living.
The Sioux, Inuits, and Samoans are considered the originators of tiny homes, building huts and igloos. And artists in the 1970s through the early 1990s toyed with the trend in both real-world living and their craft.
Famous author Henry David Thoreau lived in a 150-square-foot cottage in Massachusetts and Marie Antoinette had just over a 250-square-foot property in Versailles. In the 1970s, artist Allan Wexler focused on small living spaces in his work.
More recently, in 2013, an exhibit in New York coined “Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers” displayed design solutions to city housing challenges in the current century.
Do People Really Want to Live in Tiny Homes?
There are a few reasons someone might want to be a homeowner, including avoiding hefty rent payments and complying with landlords, or, for city dwellers, the ability to control your own heat and AC. But there’s another reason: additional space.
While the trajectory for many first-time homebuyers may be moving out of a one-bedroom apartment into a two or three-bedroom home to start a family or add an office, that isn’t the case for many tiny home buyers.
It might be easy to assume that the tiny home movement is a small one, but it isn’t. According to a survey by Fidelity National Financial subsidiary IPX1031, 86% of 2,000 U.S. respondents would consider purchasing a tiny home as their first home.
Between 2021 and 2025, the tiny house market is expected to grow by $3.33 billion.
What’s So Appealing About Tiny Homes?
It’s definitely not the additional space, so why have tiny homes become a booming trend in the last few years? While there are a number of pros, the cost might be the most appealing.
Low Costs
In 2022, the average cost of a home in the U.S. is between $119,000 and $615,000. But if you’re on the hunt for a tiny home, you may pay as little as $8,000. In general, tiny homes will run you between $30,000 and $60,000 — much less than a lower-end full-sized home.
“Exactly half of respondents say they would spend less than $40,000 on a tiny home and 79% say they would be able to buy or finance a tiny home rather than a traditional starter home,” according to IPX1031.
More Efficient and Eco-friendly
After affordability, IPX1031 found that efficiency was the most attractive factor of the tiny home lifestyle. Not only is there less surface area to care for, but it’s much more energy-efficient as it requires fewer light fixtures.
Additionally, the bigger the space, the more energy required to heat and cool it. Many modern tiny homes even include solar panels, which makes them especially sustainable.
Thinking even smaller (get it?), because there is much less space in a tiny home, cleaning takes a fraction of the time it would take to upkeep a traditional home. Repairing a broken roof or stove is also often cheaper, as they are much smaller.
Staying Mobile
Tiny homes are also sometimes built on wheels, making owners more self-sufficient. Mobile tiny homes are similar to RVs, but often look more like traditional homes with a set of wheels.
This gives tiny homeowners the ability to move at any time as well as travel without leaving their home behind because their house doubles as a car.
Millennials and Boomers Drive Tiny Home Sales
As many Boomers enter retirement, it’s common for them to transition to a smaller space with less upkeep and maintenance. Because tiny homes also cost less and don’t require mortgage payments, older generations can fully enjoy retirement with little to no debt.
On the other hand, because Millennials are sometimes strapped with student loan debt and an ever-shifting housing market, they may be unable to get approved or afford a mortgage, and a tiny home is a cheaper — and potentially less permanent — alternative.
Many Millennials and Generation Z are also focused on minimalism and paring down their belongings because it’s more convenient. Now that people have endless access to replacing possessions due to e-commerce sites, getting rid of something rarely has to be permanent.
Surprising Statistics About Tiny Home Owners
There is actually a correlation between credit card debt and tiny home living. According to statistics by Tiny House Society, 69% of tiny homeowners have no credit card debt and 89% of owners have less credit card debt than the average American. Additionally, 55% have more savings than a traditional homeowner.
Here are a few other interesting stats about tiny homes:
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In 2017, tiny house sales increased by 67% compared to the previous year.
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The most high-end tiny homes cost upward of $180,000.
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Realtor.com found that tiny homes appreciated at a 10% higher rate than traditional homes.
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Tiny homes often only use 7% of the energy a traditional home does and emit 2,000 pounds of greenhouse gas annually compared to 28,000 for a traditional home style.
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The monthly housing expenses for a tiny home may be as low as $600.
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63% of millennials would consider buying a tiny home.
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Over 15% of tiny homes in the U.S. are located in California.
Tiny Home Villages Help Homeless Americans
To provide emergency shelter for people without jobs due to the pandemic or in other turbulent financial situations, Elvis Summers started The Tiny House Movement. The movement’s mission is to “build emergency tiny house shelters for people who are houseless, ignored, and forgotten” until they can find an affordable housing solution.
One of Summers’ tiny home villages can be found in Los Angeles, a city that has been battling a homelessness crisis for several years and declared a state of emergency in 2015.
“When I built a tiny house for a 61-year-old woman who was sleeping in the dirt near my apartment, I just wanted to help her out,” Summers said. “I did it because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what we should do.”
While these tiny homes aren’t a permanent solution, it’s a temporary solace for those in need of shelter. And whether or not the tiny home trend will continue to boom, tiny homes can be used as a resourceful option for a variety of situations.
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