Ok, we get it. You want to go off grid but don’t have much for start-up capital. One way people are beginning their off grid lifestyle is by starting out, if not full timing, in a tiny home. While tiny homes are in fact small, they are also cheap to build, which makes for a great option to start off gridding much sooner, and get you out of the wasteful spending in the rent and mortgage trap.
What are Tiny Homes? Tiny homes are typically full time or vacation dwellings under 500 square feet (46msq), which are optimized for minimal utilities usage, for the purpose of a cheap living, or having marginal impact on the environment.
If you are looking to go off grid, or maybe just save a bunch of money, tiny home living maybe for you. Tiny homes are economical, require little energy, and can give you a break from city life by providing a simpler, and seven more secluded life.
How Are Tiny Homes Made?
Tiny homes can be made from many various things. Some popular options include:
- Stick built homes
- Trailer built homes
- Shipping Containers
- Bus and van conversions
- Campers
- RV’s
- Shed conversions
So-called Stick Built Homes are what you might consider a traditional home to be. You lay a concrete foundation, and build a home on that slab by using traditional 2”x4” framing. The difference here is only in square footage and efficiency. You can build a tiny home using traditional methods, but maybe you use different precautions to keep the initial cost or the operating cost down, such as extra insulation, or ultra efficient utilities. The benefit of this form of tiny homes is that they are the least likely to shake up any local building codes, or neighborhood associations.
Trailer Built Homes is a type of tiny home that is build on top of a trailer that can be pulled by a car or truck. The downside of this type is that you’re restricted to what you can fit on the trailer of course, and the weight restrictions of the vehicle pulling it, but the upsides of this style home can be very beneficial. In many areas you need a building permit to build a stick built home, but that’s not the case with a trailer built home. In some areas it is illegal to camp on your land for long periods of time, and that rules out other methods. However a trailer built home is largely considered in the same class as a mobile home. Another bonus to a trailer built home is that if you decide to move to a different property, or you’re unfortunate enough to loose your property, these homes are very easy, and very cheap to move.
In the last few years, Shipping Container Homes have been gaining in popularity. A shipping container is a large sturdy metal box used to carry cargo across the seas, and come in various sizes from 20-53 feet. Chances are you have seen one of these containers being pulled down the road by an 18-wheeler, or even down the rails by a train. Shipping containers are built very strong, and are meant to withstand the punishment of thousands of miles of journey over sea and land, but they aren’t always reused. Sometimes its more practical for companies shipping items to just buy/build new containers rather than ship old ones back to be refilled. For that reason they can be purchased fairly cheaply. A lightly worn 52-foot shipping container can be purchased for about $3,000, and that makes it an excellent choice for the shell of a tiny home!
Bus and Van Conversions are great for the tiny homeowner on the go. These exceptionally small home options are very mobile and easily customized. If you want to see the world, this might be right up your alley. School bus’s, city bus’s, and vans are often discarded well before the end of their serviceable life, and can be purchased for ultra cheap. If you have some DIY knowledge, and a little capital, you can build these into something that will rival $100k rigs for a fraction of the price. The sky is the limit!
Speaking of being mobile, Campers and RV’s are another route some tend to opt for. Don’t have much in the way of building or DIY skills, but still want to be mobile? This might be the route for you. People spend tens of thousands on new campers every year, only to barely use them and sell them off a few years later for dirt-cheap. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are slapped full with people trying to get rid of these things at only a fraction of the cost of what they paid. If you are patient, you might be able to find a nugget of gold in these ads. A word of caution here though, Campers and RV’s tend to not be as well built as bus and van conversions, as they are built with weight limits in mind, so a heavily traveled camper or RV may have to be repaired or replaced more often than some other options.
Shed Conversions are becoming so popular now that manufacturers who used to solely make prefabricated tool sheds are now catering to tiny home enthusiasts, buy building shed designs that are looking more like homes. They are even making sheds with front porches! The idea here is, to purchase a “shed”, but insulate it and install utilities and everything to make it a livable space. These unfinished sheds can be rather pricey, especially when you consider all of the upgrades you will have to add to them to make them livable, but if you can fork out $15k or so, they can give your off grid homestead an easy kick start.
Why do People Decide to Live in Tiny Homes?
The average American home is around 2,600sqf, so what would compel someone to willfully live in a home under 500sqf? There are a few reasons, and they are more understandable than you might think.
Most Americans spend 1/3 to ½ of their income to keeping a roof over there heads. Lets face it, we really don’t have any control over how expensive the housing market gets, or if it even retains the value of the dollars spent on it. Many home owners spend 15-30 years or more of their life just trying to pay off a place they have chosen to sleep, often meaning they spend more time working to pay for the home than physically being at the home. The alternative is tiny homes, which can be a lot easier to pay off quicker, sometimes even in cash.
Tiny homes also have tiny utility bills. It obviously takes much less to heat/cool and power a home that is ¼ of the size of a typical home. This is not only appealing to the economically thrifty, but also to those who want to live by a smaller environmental fingerprint. The smaller you are able to scale down your energy usage, the cheaper and easier solar, and other alternative energy becomes.
Because a much smaller portion of your pay is going into paying for your home and utilities, you can quickly build up a savings account, vacation funds, health care account, and so on. If you give up the idea of “trying to keep up with the Jones’”, you can potentially live out a lifestyle you could never before imagine.
For some, tiny home living comes down to simply living an easier life. Living in a small space means you really have to scale back on your belongings, it makes you decide what in life is most important to you to keep around. It also means there is less maintenance, and less to clean up.
Others, who prefer a tiny home on wheels, enjoy the mobility along with all the other benefits. You have to admit; there is some appeal to being able to travel and see the country without ever having to leave the comfort of your home.
A truly off grid mobile tiny home has one really great advantage though, boondocking. Boondocking is basically referred to camping anywhere off grid for short periods of time, sometimes up to 6 months. This could be on private or public land, or even in large parking lots (although parking lots of businesses that allow this usually restrict you to one night stays). The best part about this type of camping during travel is it can be totally rent-free!
The Downsides and Considerations to a Tiny Home Lifestyle
As great as it may sound, there can be some drawbacks to tiny home living. The first is obvious; it’s a tiny space. Over time, Americans have grown accustomed to living in larger and larger houses, to accommodate more and more stuff, and an expanding list of luxury items. If you aren’t willing to scale down your lifestyle to only the simpler things in life, a tiny home lifestyle probably means you’re going to have a bad time.
If you ever decide to sell your tiny home, you probably won’t get much of a return in all you’ve invested. While there is a market for tiny homes, there’s a chance you won’t be able to sell quickly, and the buying price wont be as much as you’ve spent, as many people interested in tiny home living are into it for the low cost.
For these reasons, tiny homes are also very hard to get financed. Banks don’t usually consider tiny homes to be enough collateral to cover a loan for one, so you may have to expect to pay out of pocket. Of course, this also means that whether you build or buy, you are not likely to have a mortgage.
You may run into some resistance from local government and neighborhood associations, who don’t view your choice of lifestyle in a favorable way. First of all, land prices in urban areas where tiny homes tend to be popular are very restrictive. If you are getting into tiny home living, you’re probably interested in it for the cost benefits, however in cities, small plots of land can range in the 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars.
But lets say you want to be close to work, and can afford to pay the outrageous price for land in a city, you still may not be able to build or live in a tiny home on your land. Many cities have home sizing restrictions, restrictive zoning laws, bans on “camping” on land you own, or even parking restrictions. Neighbors or government officials could use any of these to effectively boot you off of your land.
If you have an active social life, tiny homes may not be right for you. You won’t have the space you once had to entertain guests. Even if you had room to entertain a few friends, you may find yourself in an awkward situation trying to explain to a newbie how to use your composting toilet.
In some areas, homes on wheels have weight restrictions. If you aren’t careful, you could run amuck of your local DMV’s standards for weight on your axles, especially if you’re building a custom home on a trailer.
Another downside could be parking and insurance if you’re on the go. Some insurance agencies will not insure you, because they don’t know how to categorize your home, or they don’t have an accurate measure of how to value its worth. Some places are restrictive on the types of vehicles that are allowed in. State Parks, for example, may not allow tiny homes, or bus conversions.
Related Questions
How much does a tiny home cost? If you purchase ready-to-live-in tiny home, it can cost anywhere from $20k to $200k or more, however the average is somewhere around $35k.
Do tiny homes have plumbing? While some mobile tiny homes have traditional RV gray/black water waste tanks, and others opt for composting toilets with a gray water tank, non-mobile tiny homes can have traditional plumbing or septic.
Can you park a mobile tiny home on the street? Street parking for mobile tiny homes is allowed in some cities for limited amounts of time, however other areas are cracking down on this, towing vehicles or placing heavy fines on owners.
