What if I told you that you could build a brand new house for $20,000? It’s a completely legitimate offer; Blueprints, lumber, supplies and everything else to put a roof over your head for less than the cost of many car loans. It’s not from a pop-up ad or spam folder and doesn’t involve the enhancement of any anatomical features, but there is definitely a catch; your new home would just barely be 100-square feet.
So you don’t want your new home to be mistaken for a college dorm or a dollhouse —rich kids have playhouses with more square footage than that — but there’s more to these small spaces than the price tag.
These days, the cool, sustainable kids are moving into tiny houses or apartments. People like Jay Shafer, author of The Small House Book (who also enjoys vague, mysterious book titles), have happily squeezed into homes of 500-square feet or less, never to return to multi-story suburbia. No longer reserved for pretentious New York City dwellers, less space means fewer belongings, cheaper bills and more money to spend on traveling and going out.
Entertaining is the first thing to go after moving into a tiny home; throwing parties can require a lot of extra furniture and kitchen utensils, and truly small homes can’t really accommodate the bodies for a party let alone the dishes they might eat off of. Sleeping areas will likely be lofted, all fractions of available space are maximized for storage, and any pets bigger than a hamster probably will not take kindly to your new bedroom-sized residence.
Living small isn’t for everyone, but those that crave a simpler life with less responsibility may find it relaxing. Shafer believes that Americans have long been duped into buying more house space than they actually need, which is a difficult argument to refute given the status of the U.S. housing market.
Think of your dream home. It probably has a pool, a couple bedrooms, a couple bathrooms, maybe a big backyard, or perhaps a three-car garage? Mine would have a gas range, tall ceilings and windows everywhere. Because we are dreaming, this perfect house would obviously be free and without a 30-year mortgage, but the reality is that the Phoenix-metro area has more underwater mortgages than any city in the U.S — over 550,000, which is about 58 percent of total loans. Once one of the fastest-growing cities, we’re now the one with the highest rate of ‘buying big houses we can’t afford.’ I don’t know about you, but the vision of my dream home simply appears to be the setting for a bad nightmare.
While I don’t mean to hate on mansions, there is certainly an unwarranted extravagance that Americans can’t seem to shake when buying a home. Most would find living in 100-square feet to be uncomfortable, if not impossible, but that doesn’t mean we need to literally break the bank for one with 10,000 square feet. Mathematically, there has to be a middle ground in buying a reasonably-sized home, just don’t ask an American what it is.
Send Sarah your blueprint for a tiny home at swhitmir@asu.edu
