27-year-old pays $0 to live in a ‘luxury tiny home’–how she built it for $35,000 | Hacker News Reader

27-year-old pays $0 to live in a ‘luxury tiny home’–how she built it for $35,000

cnbc.com

23 pointsmooreds28 comments

An observation:

When the older generations were her age a few decades ago, they were getting cheap educations, building big houses, buying summer cabins, investment apartments, multiple new cars, having multiple kids.

Now for the younger generation, well, this article and the link below it titled "I live in a $62/month dumpster that I built for $5,000" probably tells how great things are.

I agree. All I could think while reading this was how this is considered an aspirational goal for some people in the current generation. It made me shudder to think that our ambitions have shrunk so low. Affordable housing is certainly a major problem but if this is the solution that we’re moving towards then I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen to the next generation.

Another observation: millennials now outnumber boomers.The older generation can't hold them back anymore. Millennials can vote into existence the policies, priorities and lives they want. From here on, the USA is a reflection of them and their values. It's all on them now.

Reminders like these are bittersweet for me. I'm torn between the optimism of voting in politicians who will improve the place I live, and the cynicism in knowing most people wielding power are still the generation who brought this situation into being and who will fight to maintain it. I can't see change happening until they are well and truly long gone.

You don't seem to be getting it. If your generation's attitude is defeatist, then it's your defeatism that will shape the character of the country.

In the words of Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Of course not, not as long as boomers are more effective propagandists and control more of the media, corporations, and public offices that matter.

The post-war period was a (relatively) long period of economic expansion. How things are now reflect a period of stability; a few generations before (~ a hundred years ago), things weren't so great, either.

London is a particularly dense and crowded city, so it's (unfortunately) expected to be particularly expensive.

> "When the older generations were her age a few decades ago..."

Yeah, a few decades ago in the economic boom the United States undeservedly enjoyed after the rest of the world powers were devastated by WW2 and tens of millions of human beings lay dead. The older generations outside the US jolly well were not "getting cheap educations, building big houses, buying summer cabins, investment apartments, multiple new cars, having multiple kids", etc.; they had to trudge a long, hard road to rebuild their homes and livelihoods and recover from the scars of war.

This idea that the current generation has some sort of inalienable right to do as well as previous generations is bizarre. Even a moment of thought would tell you that no such thing exists.

The spoils of war going to the conquerers is this quaint concept from history class; something that took down the Roman Empire two millennia ago. It's not supposed to be a lesson on why Millennial are getting the short end of the stick.

> This idea that the current generation has some sort of inalienable right to do as well as previous generations is bizarre.

I don't assume this applies to those who genuinely "broke a cycle" and that might have been the norm long before the post-modern era.

Not actually $0, just rents another property on the same land. Would like to know the actual property taxes, maintenance and utility costs. No one except perhaps royalty pays $0.

Even royalty pays something, or has someone pay it for them. You can't beat entropy.

I bet in the right location in the country you could get those expenses darn close to zero, but never quite there - and maintenance would eventually be the bulk of it.

All these small houses seem a testament to people's willingness to live in genuinely smaller places, and are absolutely an market that hasn't been adequately sought out.

The place in this video is ~300 sq ft. With another 200 sq ft, the place would be positively huge, and probably have room for a washer/dryer and possibly separate office area, too.

Double that; and, with good layout (most places I've lived in have just plain terrible layouts), and the place would be positively huge.

I would love to know more about safety, especially fire safety, in places like this.

There needs to be a real push toward more small places to live. It's an untapped market and could be a great way to recover lots and lots of wasted space.

> I would love to know more about safety, especially fire safety, in places like this.

These are often called "accessory dwelling unit" and have the corresponding building codes with them.

In SF, I recall them being called "in-law apartments". https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/San-Franci... has one that shows a floorpan - https://ap.rdcpix.com/156e0ebabbe946219e56040ab8c44c4fl-m409...

You'll note the two bedrooms and a living/dining/kitchen area on the lower level while the main home is on the second and third level.

Madison, WI recently had changes to make them more feasible ( https://www.cityofmadison.com/news/mayor-and-alders-propose-... and https://www.cityofmadison.com/development-services-center/1-... )

And regarding your space looking at 500 sq ft and 1000 sq ft with the Madison zoning:

    Size
      Up to 900 square feet of living space.
      At most, two bedrooms.

So yes, that is the approximate size limit of an ADU.

I want more than just accessory dwelling units. I'd be excited to see, like, properties where the front yard is replaced with 4 parking spots and 4 of these 500+ sq ft houses are put with each other pointing to a shared courtyard or something on a standard quarter-to-half acre plot.

I don't think the big house needs to be there at all!

That represents a more substantial change to the property. Subdividing may not be possible, significant changes to sewer, electrical and water metering. If you've got a parking lot that is shared then there is more of a challenging for its maintenance (e.g. condo fees) which represents more overhead.

In the SF world, going from RH-1 to RH-1S is is a much easier change than RH-1 to RM-3.

Subdividing an existing lot further can get into difficulty in some areas with minimum parcel sizes. For example, in Chicago https://secondcityzoning.org/zones/ you can't have a parcel smaller than 1,650 sq ft.

Switching from owner occupied property to something that is a commercial apartment structure can also impact the financial security of a household (you can't evict me from the house I own vs falling behind on rent because of a layoff).

We do need higher density and less impacting houses - but this isn't a simple "tear down the house and build four smaller one" changes for most urban and suburban places.

> but this isn't a simple "tear down the house and build four smaller one" changes for most urban and suburban places.

That's fine. I recognize that legislation has been adjusted by numerous forces to make this as hard as possible. It's still what I want, as long as it's safe to live in places like this.

Suburbia is killing us and wasting so very much for all of us.

I think you’re right in that a lot of people out there are and would be happy in smaller dwellings than is typical today - but I honestly can’t imagine trying to live in a space that small.

I, my wife, and our two children live in an 1,800 sq ft house. I have zero remaining space. In fact, we’re about to buy a shed to convert into an art space for our youngest. There’s just no way I could make something smaller than what we have now work without major lifestyle changes.

Are those lifestyle issues? Or floor plan issues?

I have personally found floor plans almost offensively frustrating.

When I saw the wooden frame construction, I remembered I find it interesting that wood is so affordable in the US. Here in Australia, it's very expensive and often simply unavailable! I have an old door that is made of Western red cedar, and the price to get it repaired was "$noquote - materials unavail" from two different places.

It's not just the price of property that has grown, with younger generations looking to spend more for a smaller house, with a larger deposity and lengthier loan term -- the actual house they are buying is made of very different things. Some are improved (modern double glazing!) but many are just cheap and lack artistic style.

Good for her! She links to these sites for obtaining the storage shed and site plans:

https://www.libertystoragesolutions.com/

https://www.24hplans.com/

The really amazing thing is that she was renting out a _shed_ for ~1300/month:

> Before moving in, I rented out my tiny home for almost two years and grossed almost $32,000, nearly covering the cost of what I spent to build the home.

That's San Francisco levels of obscenely-high-rent.

850 per room in her primary house. 3 bedroom. ~2500/mo, and her mortgage was, what, 1200 / mo, she said?

None of this is sustainable for the general populous.

I'm building a sauna on my backyard, and so far spend probably around $3k on it. It's not a livable space, but there is something I learned while building it: structures are not so expensive. If you want to put your own sweat, and can accept not living downtown New York, you can get a pretty inexpensive housing.

The main caveat is you have your own property to do so which will usually involve already having a dwelling on it because you can’t (really) get a loan for undeveloped land. So sure you can build cheap structures, if you already have a pile of cash for empty land or a pile of cash and income for a house/mortgage. Which isn’t to say I don’t agree with you, I keep staring at our kid’s playhouse in the backyard thinking “that’d make a nice little office…”

This isn't really true, you can definitely get a loan for undeveloped land. It's less straightforward than a house but a friend of mine did it easily enough by finding a lender who lends on land and getting a land mortgage, you don't even need construction plans or anything.

What a pretty shed.

Would have been smarter to subdivide a proper residence though.

I like it.

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