# Tiny Houses



## Least Concern (Apr 9, 2019)

(first new thread ever, plz no bully)






source

Like the claustrophobia of RVs, but hate that annoying convenience of portability? Want to take minimalism to the next level? Or are you just a pretentious granola twat down to the very space you live in? Then tiny houses are for you.

Tiny houses are pretty much what they sound like; a very small house maxing out at maybe 400 square feet. They're often pre-fabricated and start out on trailers for easy transportation, and are sometimes placed in tidy rows in parks, but they're _not_ RVs, okay? They're _tiny houses._ The difference should be clearly apparent by the photo below.





source

Some people have embraced tiny houses because of their cost. Pre-fabs can go for $40,000 to $80,000 (about the same as RVs, but they're _not_ RVs, okay?), or you could build your own for under $30,000 in materials. Cost seems to be the main motivator of this guy giving a TEDx talk about his tiny home. (A douchebag topic at a conference for douchebags… Does that mean the douchiness is doubled, or squared?)






But here's the thing; tiny houses do not appreciate like real ones do, and, in fact, it's more likely it will _depreciate_ just like a car or RV. And if you're in a "park" and don't even own the land you've put your tiny house on…

Let's do some math. Let's say you want to buy a normal house for $150,000, but like most normal people, you can't afford to pay in cash. You took care of your credit rating growing up, so you're able to get a mortgage with a 15% down payment and a 4.25% rate, and you make $900 payments every month. (I'm kind of winging these numbers based on the actual mortgage my wife and I had, but they should be mostly realistic).

After five years, you will have paid ($150,000 x .15) + (60 x $900) = ($22,500) + ($54,000) = $76,500 for your normal house and the land it's on; you still owe the bank ($150,000 - $76,500) + interest but who the fuck knows how to calculate that, but it's mostly front-loaded on a mortgage… let's say $100,000. Oh, but in those five years, your house and land appreciated by, let's say, 20%, so it now has a sale value of $180,000. Sell it today, give the bank back their cut, and you'll still have a free $3500, just for continuing to pay "rent" you would pay anyway, and that number will continue to grow the longer you hold the place before selling. (ProTip: If you're currently renting a place somewhere, save up a down payment and buy a damn house. You might end up with lower monthly payments anyway, and if you move into a good neighborhood (or a bad neighborhood which is starting to gentrify), you start making free money from day one.)

Now let's say instead you paid $50,000, cash, for a tiny house, plus $500 monthly lot fee for the RV park tiny house community for five years. That's $80,000 total - so $3500 more than I paid for my normal house. Let's say you get incredibly lucky and sell your tiny house for the same value you paid for it, $50,000. Okay, cool, but that $30,000 you paid in lot fees just went down your incredibly tiny toilet. Good job! You saved a lot of money on your tiny house, I guess.

Another argument people give for liking tiny houses is the minimalism aspect, and this can come from just wanting to live a simpler life with less material goods, or it can come from an environmentalist direction, as tiny houses take fewer resources to build and less energy to heat or cool. I'm sympathetic to these arguments somewhat since I agree that we as humans in Western society have vestigial hoarding instincts we'd be better off to stifle a bit more often than we do, and being able to afford something is a far cry from actually _needing_ it. But when it comes to housing, I have two counter-arguments. One, the finances as explained above; so long as your place appreciates in value faster than the interest rate (the 20% I used in the example above is actually far below what our place appreciated by in five years, but I'm willing to accept we got lucky), you are losing money by getting a tiny house rather than a normal one. Secondly, while living in a tiny place might be fine for a single person or a couple, once kids get involved… sometimes you just want to be more than five feet away from them, right? Like this one… if the parents wanna get freaky, they're going to be doing it practically on top of their kids (as the first commenter even mentions).






Given the low ceiling, they will also be limited when it comes to comfortable positions…

But, hey, living in a tiny house means that you're different, and being different means you're better than everyone else, and sometimes that matters more than anything else, I guess.

(Snark aside, the tiny house community tends to have a strong DIY element, with many tiny housers having built their own places or modified existing vehicles, sheds, shipping containers, and what have you to make them livable, and that's cool. You're still better off just building your own full-size home or buying a fixer-upper, though.)


----------



## wateryketchup (Apr 9, 2019)

why all the strikethroughs


----------



## Kamov Ka-52 (Apr 9, 2019)

That's all a very fancy smokescreen for saying: A. you live in a trailer and B. you are too poor for a doublewide.


----------



## obliviousbeard (Apr 9, 2019)

I live in a roughly 20 sqm flat. I don't understand why someone would actually spend their own money to get the same experience, moreso if they're married with children. Literal memehouses for cunts afraid of building their own.


----------



## oldTireWater (Apr 9, 2019)

I've been interested in them for a while now. I'd like to use one as a stationary, seasonal cabin on some land I've got. Trailers suck because they rot into the earth if they're left unattended, but a framed tiny house could be pretty durable. The biggest problem I've got is not being able to see a variety in person. There are still relatively few around, and I'm not going to cross three states to take a look at a"maybe".


----------



## Least Concern (Apr 9, 2019)

wateryketchup said:


> why all the strikethroughs


I fucked up some of the mark-up when I first posted this. It's fixed now. why u bully 



obliviousbeard said:


> Literal memehouses for cunts afraid of building their own.


As mentioned in the OP, some of them actually _are_ building their own, and I can respect that. I just think you're better off with a real house, though.



oldTireWater said:


> I've been interested in them for a while now. I'd like to use one as a stationary, seasonal cabin on some land I've got. Trailers suck because they rot into the earth if they're left unattended, but a framed tiny house could be pretty durable. The biggest problem I've got is not being able to see a variety in person. There are still relatively few around, and I'm not going to cross three states to take a look at a"maybe".


I'd reach out to a contractor. They might have small house plans in their repertoire or be able to connect you to someone who does, and they may be able to show you some places they've done for previous customers. Plans for tiny houses are readily available online, though it seems that they generally start with the idea that you're building on a trailer of a certain size.


----------



## MediocreMilt (Apr 9, 2019)

So like a cuck shed but it's the main house?

Where do I hide when Jamal comes over?


----------



## JM 590 (Apr 9, 2019)

I'd be down to see this turn into a thread where we riff on minimalists in general.  Minimalists that take it too far are cucks, but with objects instead of relationships.


----------



## Billy_Sama (Apr 9, 2019)

For the money, I would rather get an Airstream Trailer than a pretentious house.


----------



## MediocreMilt (Apr 9, 2019)

Piss said:


> Minimalists that take it too far are cucks, but with objects instead of relationships.


This is the sort of thing that could be very fun if you're like 21. But a lot of these people are 30+.


----------



## LordofTendons (Apr 9, 2019)

It's all fun and games until you put a bunch of these in Tornado Alley. Then they're just tornado food just like every other trailer out there.


----------



## UE 558 (Apr 9, 2019)

Don’t see the point of getting a “tiny house” if an apartment basically serves the same purpose at a much cheaper price


----------



## oldTireWater (Apr 9, 2019)

Billy_Sama said:


> For the money, I would rather get an Airstream Trailer than a pretentious house.


I considered it, but an Airstream is WAY more expensive that an mid range tiny house.

I like the idea of them because you can have something frame built, that can be moved if you decide to sell the land. I think of it as hedging bets between a cabin and a camper. I would never want to live in one full time.


----------



## Autopsy (Apr 9, 2019)

This channel has a pretty good balance of handy people who have needs they can't meet without getting creative (the type that are the actual origin of this phenomenon), bored DIYers, and hipsters. You can spot the difference pretty easy.
Like most independent creative affairs, it got commercialized way too fucking fast. At least these poor undergrads and engineers will have a strong yuppie market if they ever do decide to sell. Thanks, Morrison!


----------



## Vlinny-kun (Apr 9, 2019)

Whats the joy of being a hipster? Your food taste like shit while costing way too much, your clothes make you look dirt poor, your music has no beat or rhythm while being overtly preachy, your living space is cramped and overcrowded, the art you look at is ugly, and everything you do for every second of every day is directly involved in being whiny and self righteous. You claim that everything outside of your niche interest is shit while actively gate keeping against new members of your tiny little group because "they just don't get it, man." It's like overthinking masochism to the farthest degree to where it isn't sexual anymore but applied to literaly everything.


----------



## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Apr 9, 2019)

I once saw a trailer that had signs of an addition being put on at one point, but apparently they never got enough money together to finish it.  It gave me a good lol.

If I can  find the picture, I'll upload it.


----------



## Freddy Freaker (Apr 9, 2019)

The Illuminati are pushing tiny houses to make tiny cramped apartments appealing in the agenda 21 megacities WAKE UP SHEEPLE


----------



## Red Hood (Apr 9, 2019)

Postage stamp sized homes are all us dumb millenials that bought into college will ever afford to be able to call our own.


----------



## Shibaru (Apr 10, 2019)

> houses don't connect and aren't in rows


what klutz's, they don't know consistency even if it hit 'em right in the face.


----------



## Recoil (Apr 10, 2019)

If a tiny house was *alone* in the middle of nature somewhere beautiful and it wasn't made from a fekking trailer, I think it might be nice. Assuming you don't mind simplicity & solitude it might be the way to go.
That garbage in the op is another matter altogether. That's just a shit tier trailer park w/ frills for liberal arts wastoids who sport sailor tattoos & raw denim.



MediocreMilt said:


> So like a cuck shed but it's the main house?
> 
> Where do I hide when Jamal comes over?


Thanks to wifi, you can take your laptop to the subaru and read Polygon or GQ at her leisure!


----------



## TokiBun (Apr 10, 2019)

This looks like living inside a dorm but worse.


----------



## ToroidalBoat (Apr 10, 2019)

futuro house best house


----------



## Recoil (Apr 10, 2019)

ToroidalBoat said:


> futuro house best house


I appreciate the use of Duck Duck Go. How about a house in a silo, or a Yurt?


----------



## ToroidalBoat (Apr 10, 2019)

Recon said:


> How about a house in a silo, or a Yurt?


Yurts sound pretty cool. They're used in places where the weather can be pretty extreme, so they're obviously built for that.

I never heard of living in a silo.

(I recently made DDG the default search engine after I saw a video demonstrating how Google manipulates search results.)


----------



## Recoil (Apr 10, 2019)

@ToroidalBoat A silo house.






I figured out google is manipulating image results the other day, I posted about it in the TDS thread.
The hype is real.


----------



## ToroidalBoat (Apr 10, 2019)

Recon said:


> @ToroidalBoat A silo house.


It's like living in a rocketship...


----------



## The best and greatest (Apr 10, 2019)

No see none of you get it because you don't understand the hipster mindset. the tiny house is to make you feel like a world-conscious member of the consumer class so you can have your 10 acre property or your big-ass lawn that takes 200 gallons a day to water in high summer and not feel bad about it!


----------



## Staffy (Apr 10, 2019)

I saw a vid of a small house back then and it seemed like everything is on closets, the bed, table, kitchenware.

Might as well sleep in a coffin


----------



## Autopsy (Apr 10, 2019)

The best and greatest said:


> No see none of you get it because you don't understand the hipster mindset. the tiny house is to make you feel like a world-conscious member of the consumer class so you can have your 10 acre property or your big-ass lawn that takes 200 gallons a day to water in high summer and not feel bad about it!


In that regard even the hipsters can be seen in terms of glorious optimization: less house means more lawn to water. Now you too can stake your part in man-mad drought- regardless if you have a measly quarter acre property, you can have a big fifth-acre yard.


----------



## Maggots on a Train v2 (Apr 10, 2019)

I don't believe for a second that the people involved in these things don't have a storage rental somewhere, thus negating everything.  I've lived in a small space, it's shit.  Even if you only keep the things you need, junk adds up fast.


----------



## Clockwork_PurBle (Apr 10, 2019)

I'm a simple person. I don't need a really big house. If I won the lottery I wouldn't buy a mansion.

But I could never live in a tiny house for an extended period of time.


----------



## ToroidalBoat (Apr 10, 2019)

Freddy Freaker said:


> The Illuminati are pushing tiny houses





The best and greatest said:


> the tiny house is to make you feel like a world-conscious member of the consumer class


If the elite were pushing tiny houses as a solution to environmental woes, none of them would be caught dead living in one, of course.


----------



## Coolio55 (Apr 10, 2019)

Eh. I kinda get the appeal.

I've always wanted to live in some obscure location with a mix of rustic and modern technology. I hope this doesn't mean I'm a hippie 
I'd say the trick is to not make it too"tiny", don't get too wierd with the layout and don't go too far from society to ensure supply runs don't take too long.

I seriously hope this isn't something elite pushed though. (Why would they want people living outside of the megacities?) That instantly turns _*anything*_ to shit.

Ps. @Recon Your examples are cool 
I google imaged yurts and they're awesome.


----------



## The best and greatest (Apr 10, 2019)

ToroidalBoat said:


> If the elite are pushing tiny houses as a solution to environmental woes, none of them would be caught dead in one, of course.


Tiny houses also make sense if you have zero intention of having children.


----------



## robobobo (Apr 10, 2019)

I appreciate elegance in design and some of these things are beautifully designed to optimize space, I like them for that if nothing else.  However most of them are amateur hour compared to just buying an RV where actual professionals are designing it.  For example, in that video the bed is a murphy bed that folds up when not in use.  And...that's it.  You're left with a small empty patch of floor where it was, but the space isn't actually usable for anything else.  Whereas for an RV, a bed usually turns into a couch, bare minimum, and I've seen some where a bed can turn into a couch, chairs, or a table.  The sleeping space will turn into a workable living space when someone's not sleeping in it.  It would've been easy sauce for the bed in that video to have a drop-down table on the underside, so when you fold the bed up you can fold a table down and then have a slightly more functional space.


----------



## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Apr 10, 2019)

From time to time I check up on the tiny house community, it's of interest because tiny house is pretty much a friggebod but made by different people for different reasons.
A friggebod? Yes, that's what the law defining exemptions for building/planning permits is called. You know about that American thing where people can't drink in public but the police can't fucking arrest every hobo and teenager so if the the booze is in a bag then they look the other way? The friggebod is the house building equivalent of brown bagging booze, the govt had to make a legal exemption because it was just not possible to control Swedish men's beaver like instinct to build.

This is an older and largely traditional version that a dad would knock out in a week back in the early 80's, nothing fancy and red with white trimmings is like the salt and pepper of Swedish house aesthetics and it is applied instinctively.




It gets classier though




(I hope this one isn't a urinal)







Only an idiot would want to live in them though, that's not what they are made for.


----------



## Least Concern (Apr 10, 2019)

Smaug's Smokey Hole said:


> Only an idiot would want to live in them though, that's not what they are made for.


What are they made for, then?


----------



## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Apr 10, 2019)

Least Concern said:


> What are they made for, then?



There are people that build a lot of bird houses and some people build bird houses that can fit humans. What do they have in common? Carpentry and craftsmanship. 

Why would someone build a bunch of tiny houses on the back lawn of their perfectly fine house, 10 feet from the veranda? Some men just wants to see the world flooded with tiny houses, because they are bored and have the tools to make it a reality.

(I'm half joking, but it's an old joke about men building those tiny houses until they didn't have any space left to build them on and that really stressed them out, a sort of junkie/hoarder situation)


----------



## Clockwork_PurBle (Apr 10, 2019)

How do tiny house people have friends over?


----------



## 1Tonka_Truck (Apr 10, 2019)

oldTireWater said:


> I've been interested in them for a while now. I'd like to use one as a stationary, seasonal cabin on some land I've got. Trailers suck because they rot into the earth if they're left unattended, but a framed tiny house could be pretty durable. The biggest problem I've got is not being able to see a variety in person. There are still relatively few around, and I'm not going to cross three states to take a look at a"maybe".


I'm in the same situation and have seriously considered buying a couple 20' high cube containers and some rafters. Build the house stuff (kitchen, bathroom, bunkrooms) in the containers and then have a 20x20 covered patio between the 2 containers. I saw a couple guys build temporary workshops with 40' high cubes and really liked the idea.


----------



## Damn Near (Apr 10, 2019)

Clockwork_PurBle said:


> How do tiny house people have friends over?


Perhaps they have no friends


----------



## mr.moon1488 (Apr 10, 2019)

The only way I think I'd get a tiny house, would be if it was like a guest house, or something on my property.


----------



## дядя Боря (Apr 10, 2019)

Taxes. In US, you can write off the debt interest, effectively it's free money. ... unless you live in a shitty tiny house.

Why the fuck would I move to US and live in a tiny shithole? There are communal housing back in the Soviet Union. Basically like a large building with communal kitchen and bathrooms. It makes it very efficient housing. May be fucking hippies and Bernie would like to live in that before they go pinko. (spoiler alert: it sucks ass)


----------



## Professional iPad Hoarder (Apr 10, 2019)

I would easily rent one if thew were cheap, but a decent one (a.k.a none of the DIY nonsense) I just wonder how good they are in terms of sound and temperature isolation.


----------



## дядя Боря (Apr 10, 2019)

one thing I always wandered, how do they deal with bathroom? Those houses are the size of my bathroom and with the fan going full tilt, it takes a while after I unload last night's mexcian feast. Sitting and eating in the same space would be cruel.

Did anyone measure oxygen levels in those houses? It seems like they'd be sitting there smelling farts all day long. In a winter ... cabin fever is real. 

One good approach would be to dig a root cellar. It would be far more heating efficient, practically carbon neutral. I though that hippies liked that shit.


----------



## Sexual Chocolate (Apr 10, 2019)

Least Concern said:


> Another argument people give for liking tiny houses is the minimalism aspect, and this can come from just wanting to live a simpler life with less material goods, or it can come from an environmentalist direction, as tiny houses take fewer resources to build and less energy to heat or cool. I'm sympathetic to these arguments somewhat since I agree that we as humans in Western society have vestigial hoarding instincts we'd be better off to stifle a bit more often than we do, and being able to afford something is a far cry from actually _needing_ it.



Disagree. Living in a tiny, cramped, miserable little cell which is too small to get laid in (no girl is going to come over and get banged in a hipster trailer) and too small for children or pets because of _The Environment _ is completely exceptional.

The environment doesn't give a shit about your house. The environment, if it was sentient, actually wants to kill us all and has been the bane of human existence ever since God created us 6,000 years ago (it's Science, bigots)

You know what the environment is? Earthquakes, volcanoes, ice ages, famines, mosquitoes, AIDS, fire ants.

Every year, the environment is responsible for the deaths of countless people.

It's time we stopped apologizing for being a technological species who don't like living in squalor and punched the environment right in its big, fat, stupid, hippie face.


----------



## robobobo (Apr 10, 2019)

Clockwork_PurBle said:


> How do tiny house people have friends over?



As far as I can tell, they don't.  Seriously, if you see any of the tiny house porn shows on HGTV, it's inevitably a couple of twentysomethings who buy/build the thing then drive it to some other state where one of them has a new job.  They're almost always billed as a 'fresh, cheap start for a young family', who always seem to be relocating to a place where they have literally no friends.  And will probably never get any, either, since nobody's coming to their shed-sized house to hang out.

Also, because taxes were mentioned, no, they probably aren't tax deductible for the loans.  Those trailers aren't subject to a proper home mortgage any more than any other RV is, no bank is gonna give you a 15-year 5% mortgage for your shitty trailer house.  They'd be loaned out like a vehicle, so shorter term, higher interest, and not tax-deductible.


----------



## Silas (Apr 10, 2019)

My house is like 1500 square feet and I wish I had more space, I'd go nuts in a tiny house in about... a day


----------



## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Apr 11, 2019)

Sexual Chocolate said:


> It's time we stopped apologizing for being a technological species who don't like living in squalor and punched the environment right in its big, fat, stupid, hippie face.



We are winning the fight against the environment, but we are winning so hard that people have started to say "Mr. President, please, we can't take it anymore, we can't win anymore like this, Mr. President, you're driving us crazy, you're winning too much, please Mr. President, not so much, and I'm going to say I'm sorry, we're going to keep winning"


----------



## Slowboat to China (Apr 11, 2019)

I think they're interesting from a purely academic perspective. Sort of like those challenges for Sims players, trying to fit an entire house onto nine or six grid squares on a lot. But trying to actually live in one for months or years at a time would drive most people bananas. Not sure it can be considered efficient housing if you have to build a new extension on the house every time you buy a slightly larger couch.


----------



## The best and greatest (Apr 11, 2019)

Slowboat to China said:


> I think they're interesting from a purely academic perspective. Sort of like those challenges for Sims players, trying to fit an entire house onto nine or six grid squares on a lot. But trying to actually live in one for months or years at a time would drive most people bananas. Not sure it can be considered efficient housing if you have to build a new extension on the house every time you buy a slightly larger couch.


Well that's just it, tiny houses make a certain sense if you spend most of your time outdoors and the house is literally just a safe warm spot for sleeping, cooking and storing stuff. Even so I'd probably prefer more rooms, because rooms are useful for things like hobbies....and interests....Things that make you not want to kill yourself out of boredom.


----------



## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Apr 14, 2019)

The best and greatest said:


> Well that's just it, tiny houses make a certain sense if you spend most of your time outdoors and the house is literally just a safe warm spot for sleeping, cooking and storing stuff. Even so I'd probably prefer more rooms, because rooms are useful for things like hobbies....and interests....Things that make you not want to kill yourself out of boredom.



That's a really good point and in that scenario it makes sense. Hunting lodges and trekking cabins are often small and largely unfurnished because they're not meant to be spent time in as if they were an apartment or a row house. Without electricity there's only natural light in addition to a small fireplace/stove/candles/lanterns, it makes wonders for ones sleep schedule after a while. When it's been dark for an hour or two sleep comes naturally and at first light you spring out of bed full of energy and excitement even if it's 5am and you intend to spend 8 hours foraging for mushrooms and berries.

People think old farmers must have been miserable waking up at the crack of dawn every day but I think it's similar to what I just described.

Though those tiny houses all have electricity, TV's, internet...


----------



## robobobo (Apr 16, 2019)

What I'd like to see more than shoehorning people into a crap trailer is using the design ideas to make a medium-sized place more efficient.  Better storage solutions built into a 1000ish square foot place to make it more usable instead of trying to get people crammed into a 250 square foot space.


----------



## Zersetzung (Apr 16, 2019)

I think it's kind of stupid that regular houses don't have wheels.


----------



## Least Concern (Apr 16, 2019)

robobobo said:


> What I'd like to see more than shoehorning people into a crap trailer is using the design ideas to make a medium-sized place more efficient.  Better storage solutions built into a 1000ish square foot place to make it more usable instead of trying to get people crammed into a 250 square foot space.


Now that I can agree with, to a certain extent. For a short while I lived in a tiny urban apartment that actually had a literal Murphy bed (the kind that folds up against a wall when not in use), and it was incredibly convenient because it pretty much blocked off access to half the room while it was down unless you crawled over it. I kind of feel like not hoarding things you don't really need starts to solve that problem by itself, though. There's a law of diminishing returns when it comes to stuff-acquisition.



Zersetzung said:


> I think it's kind of stupid that regular houses don't have wheels.


Being able to assume you'll never need to move a house means that you don't have to consider limitations like like weight, aerodynamics, or shape (note that manufactured homes are generally comprised of shapes that fit easily on tractor trailers). There's huge advantages to being able to build a house that will stay in the same place that it was built.


----------



## Least Concern (Jan 27, 2020)

EA has hopped on the trend by releasing a "tiny homes" content pack for The Sims 4 which includes incentives for building tiny houses for the characters to live in. I never got the appeal of this series of games, but Clint from Lazy Game Reviews loves them, so here's what he has to say about it.









						LGR - The Sims 4 Tiny Living Stuff Review
					

Gameplay and overview of the SIXTEENTH stuff pack for The Sims 4. What kinda tiny stuff is crammed inside this tiny pack? Is living in a micro home worthwhil...




					www.youtube.com
				




So it sounds kind of half-assed and doesn't feature much truly unique to a tiny home compared to a regular house except for that stupid Murphy bed. It seems like it was just a quick cash-in on the trend rather than a sincere attempt.

Does this game allow you to sell a house after you've built it? I wonder if EA accurately modeled the economics of that with regards to these kinds of houses.


----------



## mr.moon1488 (Jan 27, 2020)

Least Concern said:


> EA has hopped on the trend by releasing a "tiny homes" content pack for The Sims 4 which includes incentives for building tiny houses for the characters to live in. I never got the appeal of this series of games, but Clint from Lazy Game Reviews loves them, so here's what he has to say about it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Kinda fits the sims 4 though.  Both are worthless things you end up paying way too much money for.


----------



## soft breathing (Jan 27, 2020)

I love how OP mentioned 'buying a normal house for 150k'. 

Houses here will cost you at least 250k and then you still have to pay for the land they're on. My partner and me looked around for an "affordable" house that's still near our workplaces and you end up with 500-750k, sometimes even a million. And the houses are often quite old and in not so pretty conditions - so you have to add up renovation costs to that.

Ironically, tiny houses still don't look attractive to me/us.

I don't see the advantage compared to buying/renting an apartment. I doubt it's quiet in those trailer parks where you set up your tiny house. Or that they're very well isolated against noise. For some reason I always think trailer parks are overflowing with misbehaving children. And screaming children would drive me insane in the long run.

Or: move to the countryside, drive longer to work or look for a new job and buy a cheap(er) house there.

Or, what we're doing right now: Hope the stock market will crash and save up some money for your future house. If it doesn't - you have a nice sum of money saved up. If it does: Yay.


----------



## Timmy Testicles (Jan 27, 2020)

i will admit that tiny houses can be very visually appealing from the inside sometimes, but i could never live in one. small living spaces can be cozy, but if i can't separate my living room, kitchen, and shitter i'd go nuts. i'll take an apartment over a tiny house any day.


----------



## saralovesjuicyfruit (Jan 27, 2020)

I lived in a 400 sq ft apartment with my husband for about 4 years in our early 20s and it sucked. Zero privacy both from each other _and_ from the neighbors because the walls were so thin that you could actually hear someone cough, taking dishes out of the cupboard, and I even heard both sides of a phone conversation sometimes if the volume on the phone was high enough. It's bad for mental health. The place was also really hard to clean because you have to pretty much rearrange everything to clean one area, move it back, then clean the area you moved it back from, etc. It's like playing tetris just trying to clean your fucking living space, and because it's such a small space, it gets dirty faster. Not worth it.


----------



## DrunkenDozing (Jan 27, 2020)

So, trailer parks. They slapped a new label on an even shittier version of a trailer park. Instead of working on the image of owning a trailer or modernizing trailer parks to have a communal coffee shop or some other millenial shit, instead advertisers are tricking dumb, I'm sorry, """"educated""""" young people into wasting their money on meme houses that will have zero resale value when they could just grab a few friends and rent out a house or something.


----------



## Dysnomia (Jan 27, 2020)

saralovesjuicyfruit said:


> I lived in a 400 sq ft apartment with my husband for about 4 years in our early 20s and it sucked. Zero privacy both from each other _and_ from the neighbors because the walls were so thin that you could actually hear someone cough, taking dishes out of the cupboard, and I even heard both sides of a phone conversation sometimes if the volume on the phone was high enough. It's bad for mental health. The place was also really hard to clean because you have to pretty much rearrange everything to clean one area, move it back, then clean the area you moved it back from, etc. It's like playing tetris just trying to clean your fucking living space, and because it's such a small space, it gets dirty faster. Not worth it.



I have been looking for a shoebox I can afford in Philly (lots of luck there) but it's only for one person. These tiny houses are crazy if you have a family or even a significant other or roomate. I can live happily in a small space. By myself. I will be damned if I would live in a tiny house with others. Well unless it was that or homelessness. Don't want that again.


----------



## Least Concern (Sep 21, 2021)

You know what's very similar to the tiny house life?

The van life.

I ain't saying, especially now that not all the facts are out, that the constant close proximity played a cause in that girl's death. But I will say that from time to time, people need their own space, ya know?


----------



## TiggerNits (Sep 21, 2021)

I've been debating grabbing one of those tiny cottage/cabin things that they repurpose a tuff shed in to just to have as a guest house on my property so when family comes to visit, I don't have to deal with them in my home. I wish I had gotten one 4 years ago when they were WAY cheaper, though


----------



## Picklechu (Sep 22, 2021)

Guest house, pseudo-pool house, or a different sort of branding for a cabin in the woods and/or on the water are the only reasons a tiny house makes sense. Anyone who wants to live in one full-time is a fucking psycho.


----------



## Least Concern (Jun 5, 2022)

Resurrecting my first new KF thread for some updates.

Something that's often considered for use as a tiny home are shipping containers, either singly or in combination.




Shipping containers have a lot of negatives to use as a building material. Being made out of metal, they absorb very little heat and will require more additional insulation than wood to be livable in extreme temperatures; they will be noisy in rain; rust is obviously a concern; they require additional exterior decoration to not look like a big metal box originally intended for industrial use. But a huge benefit is that modern society has developed infrastructure for moving these boxes around the world efficiently, whether by boat, truck, or rail. So what if you could make a house which had the form factor of a shipping container and could be moved around using the same equipment, but wasn't made from a literal shipping container with all the negatives that goes along with that?

I think that's what the people at Boxabl have in mind. They've developed a prefab house called Casita which ships at a shipping container size, but on site "unfolds" to be quite a bit larger. They eventually intend to develop the idea further to allow for multi-story and multi-room homes. They say the Casita will sell for only $50k, which is definitely a bargain for a "tiny home" (or regular home) of comparable size in many markets.






When looking up more info on them, it's currently kinda hard to tell where the investor pitch ends and the actual, soon-to-ship product begins, but if they can keep their word on the Casita at least, I think it stands to be the most practical product to come out of the whole tiny house "movement."


----------



## robobobo (Jun 5, 2022)

The thing looks decent, it's pretty miniscule but covers the bases for a person or a very cozy couple.  My question would be how well it actually lasts.  That foldy roof top and the walls will have seams in them, how long until they start to leak?  I remember being in prefab trailer rooms back in school that they stuck on when the space started getting tight, and while they were technically sound, like they weren't falling apart and kept the rain off, they were hot in the summer and cold in the winter, air kept creeping through the joins in the walls.


----------



## PipTheAlchemist (Jun 5, 2022)

Nice cuckpods


----------



## Pee Cola (Jun 5, 2022)

Shipping container houses can look pretty cool, but they're nowhere nearly as cheap as some articles make them out to be. Especially if you're planning on joining two or more containers together. Turns out that if you cut a hole in a shipping container, it reduces structural integrity... who'd've thunk it? To mitigate this, a steel frame has to be fabricated and installed, adding to the costs.

Even if you manage to build your dream container home in just one 40' container and you can do all of the work yourself, it'll cost you at least $17k. Well... it _would_ have cost you at least $17k in 2019. It's probably more like $20k by now.








Least Concern said:


> I think that's what the people at Boxabl have in mind. They've developed a prefab house called Casita which ships at a shipping container size, but on site "unfolds" to be quite a bit larger. They eventually intend to develop the idea further to allow for multi-story and multi-room homes. They say the Casita will sell for only $50k, which is definitely a bargain for a "tiny home" (or regular home) of comparable size in many markets.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This isn't a new or original idea. Here in Australia, there are a few places that make/sell these types of houses; usually marketed as temporary worker or guest accommodation (the latter known as a "granny flat").


----------



## BelUwUga (Jun 5, 2022)

Least Concern said:


> Resurrecting my first new KF thread for some updates.
> 
> Something that's often considered for use as a tiny home are shipping containers, either singly or in combination.
> 
> ...


A couple things: pretty much every intermodal container is made in China and made from the Chinesium that was too sub-par to even fraudulently sell. Really it is a metallurgical content to even unintentionally get steel this bad. Further, since most of these will spend time at sea, they need some kind of non-fouling coating. Which if you didn't know is one of the few compounds you're still given wide latitude to include shit like lead. Even when you can't, it's frequently cheaper. Plus many of the alternatives are no less toxic. Pretty much the best you'll do on a budget is wear PPE when working and putting all that shit under a thick layer of Kilz. Pro shops will not want that shit fouling equipment and with how outfitted abatement companies bill you're well into normal-house budgets at that point.

A mobile home is about 40% less for more space and while we can debate the components' quality, at least they set out to build a house and not a metal proxy for a corrugated cardboard box.


----------



## ToroidalBoat (Jun 6, 2022)

saralovesjuicyfruit said:


> I lived in a 400 sq ft apartment with my husband for about 4 years in our early 20s and it sucked.


Living packed like sardines in apartments - especially in modern cities - is not how people are meant to live.

I think it's better suited to machine life.


----------



## Least Concern (Jun 6, 2022)

Pee Cola said:


> This isn't a new or original idea. Here in Australia, there are a few places that make/sell these types of houses; usually marketed as temporary worker or guest accommodation (the latter known as a "granny flat").



That's interesting. I wish the video would have shown more. Does the house come with any furniture or appliances? Is it put on a permanent foundation?



BelUwUga said:


> Further, since most of these will spend time at sea, they need some kind of non-fouling coating. Which if you didn't know is one of the few compounds you're still given wide latitude to include shit like lead.


Yeah, I've heard some of the people who build with these will sand-blast the coatings off of them and re-coat them. Having lived in old houses that had lead paint, I'm not so sure it's really a big deal, though, especially in the inside where you'll have insulation and drywall between you and the original container. Just don't go around licking the exterior walls and you should be fine, right?


----------



## OldGuy (Jun 6, 2022)

"Tiny House" yeha sure buddy... i know a Cuck Shed when i see one


----------



## Pee Cola (Jun 6, 2022)

Least Concern said:


> That's interesting. I wish the video would have shown more. Does the house come with any furniture or appliances? Is it put on a permanent foundation?


They can either stay on a trailer or can be permanently attached to a foundation.  The company's website has a gallery of what this looks like.

In terms of furniture and appliances, they come with a basic kitchen and bathroom including sinks and tapware, but no appliances such as hot water heater or cooker. Looking at the floor plans, I'm guessing that the bathroom and kitchen cupboards are pre-assembled.

A composting toilet is an optional extra (it comes with a conventional unit as standard, which is a bit odd given that having to plumb a traditional toilet into a septic or sanitation system would be more difficult than just having a self-contained composting toilet in the house).

tbh I've been umming and ahhing over buying something like this and putting it on acreage out in the country. There are some parts of Australia where you can put one of these on your property without needing to get approval.  That's one of the reasons why these are sold with a trailer as an option, so that it can be classed as a caravan rather than as a tiny home. Either way, they look OK for the $35-$50k dollarydoos they're asking for one of these (depending on configuration and options).


----------



## BelUwUga (Jun 6, 2022)

ToroidalBoat said:


> I think it's better suited to machine life.


I know it's not what you meant but I manage surprisingly well in cramped quarters as long as it's for a purpose or actually doing something like on a ship. I was surprisingly okay in a tiny windowless room as my house for a time because I was on a behemoth over a quarter-mile long and regardless of where you stood if you paid attention you could feel the hum deep in your bones. Medical/PL-stuff has delayed things but machinery/tools to do cool shit with easily takes up twice the space I actually regularly do in my home. What I cannot wrap my head around would be someone subjecting themselves to the same thing to go sit in front of a PC they could remote into in some bland office where they do shit like answer calls from a VOIP PBX. Something they could do almost anywhere on the globe and they chose to do it there for a wage they can barely survive on. This is worse than living in a machine or somewhere meant for them. At least things are happening and happening for a reason in places like that.


Least Concern said:


> That's interesting. I wish the video would have shown more. Does the house come with any furniture or appliances? Is it put on a permanent foundation?
> 
> 
> Yeah, I've heard some of the people who build with these will sand-blast the coatings off of them and re-coat them. Having lived in old houses that had lead paint, I'm not so sure it's really a big deal, though, especially in the inside where you'll have insulation and drywall between you and the original container. Just don't go around licking the exterior walls and you should be fine, right?


Yeah the problem is doing it right is very expensive on a compliance end. It doesn't really matter so much that you've removed 99.99% of the toxic material when you inhaled the .01% while doing so. If it's the wrong compound and your containment is poor, the EPA loves buttfucking people over site contamination like that. It quite clearly doesn't make it impossible but it's a hurdle that goes frequently unmentioned. Which honestly makes me a bit mad on the internet. Imagine only discovering this risk now after you'd spent hours breathing the magic smoke around your plasma cutter? Stuff like lead/asbestos is overhyped because idiots would ignore it otherwise. If you know what to look for and have some common sense in dealing with it you can mitigate almost all of the risk.


----------



## Pee Cola (Jun 14, 2022)

Y'know that $17k container home video from 2019 I posted? Welp, the same dude repriced the same container home again in 2022, and now it's $42k.


----------



## Lunar Eclipse Paradox (Jun 15, 2022)

That's basically what Hong Kong is like.




Families of 5 Children living in a one room apartment or even a closet.


----------



## T0oCoolFool (Jun 15, 2022)

Least Concern said:


> Resurrecting my first new KF thread for some updates.
> 
> Something that's often considered for use as a tiny home are shipping containers, either singly or in combination.
> 
> ...


I thought this looked really cool. It would be good for people like my uncle, the type of person who wants to own a house but find most traditional homes a bit too big for their tastes, while tiny homes are too small. Even if you can find a traditional house that's on the small side, the costs right now are through the roof. So $50,000 for a small-ish home seems like a good deal. 

That being said, after reading more into Boxabl, I find myself not liking it anymore. For one thing, the $50,000 is for the home only. On their website, they say that the price for shipping and setting up the home is a separate cost, and states that shipping from Las Vegas will cost $3-$8 a mile, and paying for set up will cost $5,000 to $50,000. So this $50,000 home is really going to cost a lot more than they're making it out to be.

The other issue I have is the layout. After looking at it more closely, I can't see the average person liking the way it is set up unless they live alone. Like tiny homes, the only separate room in the whole house is the bathroom, everything else is in the same room. Good luck trying to sleep or get any work done if your partner or child(ren) decide they want to watch TV, do laundry, eat, etc.

This makes me wonder who this home is for? It's not as cheap as they're making it out to be, and the setup is not ideal for more than one person. As a temporary dwelling it doesn't make sense, as it would be cheaper to just go rent a nice apartment or even a house. And long term it makes even less sense, especially if you plan on having a family. 

One of Boxabl's main selling points is that this can be built quickly, but really, who cares about that? Like, does it really matter that much if a house can be built in an hour? What are you in such a hurry for that this would be appealing to the average person and make them want to buy this over renting or buying a small traditional home? The only people I see this appealing to is wealthy city dwellers that suddenly want or need to move (due to covid, or sudden crime in the area such as riots, or natural disasters such as a wild fire/tornado, etc).

To me, this seems like an upgraded version of tiny homes, and  it's going to be mostly hipsters that buy these.


----------



## Damocles_Sword (Jun 15, 2022)

Jesus, that house walk through in the OP. Even the shittiest single wide I've ever had to live in would be paradise compared to that. That isn't a house, that's people storage. That's where you go to consume a nourishment cube and sleep for 6 hours before having to return to work. The ridiculously rich van life hobo cosplayers will hate it because it's stationary so no way of posting different pics on insta. The cabin in the woods types will hate it because the space sucks for that kind of life. No place for necessities. The urban bug hive drone won't even like it because there's no room for the consumption portal to get them excited for next product or the funko wall.

My current hive has a little village of tiny homes meant as a halfway house/gateway to hobo rehab. The retarded altruists running it made the mistake of thinking that hobos would value a basic need like warm place to sleep over drugs. The village has sit nearly empty for around a year and I read recently that the morons are going to lower their standards.


----------



## Least Concern (Jun 15, 2022)

Solar Eclipse Paradox said:


> That's basically what Hong Kong is like.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hong Kong, like SF, is a bit of a special case where humans have hit the limit on buildable area (without completely paving over the parks, anyway). I do think it's kinda nuts for anyone to live in either place if they're not making at least six digits, but some people will prioritize living in poverty in an exciting city over living in comfort in the sticks. Well, good for them.



T0oCoolFool said:


> The other issue I have is the layout. After looking at it more closely, I can't see the average person liking the way it is set up unless they live alone. Like tiny homes, the only separate room in the whole house is the bathroom, everything else is in the same room. Good luck trying to sleep or get any work done if your partner or child(ren) decide they want to watch TV, do laundry, eat, etc.
> 
> This makes me wonder who this home is for? It's not as cheap as they're making it out to be, and the setup is not ideal for more than one person. As a temporary dwelling it doesn't make sense, as it would be cheaper to just go rent a nice apartment or even a house. And long term it makes even less sense, especially if you plan on having a family.


I definitely wouldn't want to live in such a place if I had a child old enough to walk, but there's still plenty of people for whom that does not apply; single people, couples with no children yet (or who will never have them), downsizing empty-nesters, etc. Even for families with kids it might have to do in extreme, temporary cases like natural disaster. Just because these aren't for everyone doesn't mean they're for nobody.


----------



## Abigail (Jun 16, 2022)

I can't get a mortgage when I plan to make a dream house. Then one of my friends, an architect, suggested I try a shipping container home which is a cool, affordable and sustainable option for housing. Then I searched for a shipping container house in detail, with some positive and negative feedback from my friends and family. But I wanted to make it straightforward, so with the help of my friend(Architect ), we researched and finally met a company that had experience in shipping container for sale and rentals. They clear all our negative assumptions regarding container homes with the help of previous customer experience. They also show us a variety of custom-made shipping containers for shipping container homes with special paints to prevent rust. We have been living in the shipping container home for many years and have not seen any major problems with them. The container is nearly indestructible, and the steel lasts for decades. In our container home, we use corrugated metal and apply a white coating on it. This ensures that the metal doesn't rust and keeps the container insulated. Regarding the noise, we haven't had any complaints about it. The container has been placed in the middle of the backyard and doesn't disturb our neighbours.


----------

