Are Pre-fab Tiny Homes the Answer

I mean, I am no housing critic, but the ads of tiny homes that you can purchase on a number of sites, such as Amazon, Wayfair, and many custom companies are actually quite intriguing. While many are promoted as the “tiny home” movement to simplify living spaces and be more eco-friendly, they are also being promoted as a low-cost option to house those suffering from housing insecurity.

Emerging as a potential remedy for the affordability of houses in our rapidly escalating urban areas, tiny homes are increasingly viewed as a sensible solution to the affordable housing crisis. Their construction has gained momentum. The immediate upside of these little houses is their affordability. For a significant portion of the population just trying to keep up with skyrocketing housing costs, little houses afford a practically unique opportunity to achieve a reasonable kind of homeownership without putting oneself in an unreasonable amount of debt. That seems especially advantageous when considering that millennials and young professionals, by virtue of their youth, are more likely to enter the housing market saddled with significant student loans and other obligations.

Despite their numerous advantages, tiny homes face several challenges in being widely accepted as a solution to the housing crisis. The first is zoning. The hard truth is that in many parts of the country, you couldn’t legally put a tiny home down, no matter how well it was built. That’s partly because many municipalities have zoning rules so strict that you can’t even fit a tiny home into them. And when you look at it closely, building codes and zoning rules seem to be stacked against places that are poorer and smaller. That’s not the whole story, but it’s certainly a big part of it.

Financing is the next big hurdle. Mortgage lenders seem almost uniformly unenthusiastic about making loans to prospective tiny homeowners. That’s more than “unenthusiastic,” actually; it’s a problem of access to capital that very few would-be tiny homeowners have been able to solve. Typically, if they are transported on wheels, many lenders and states view this as a mobile home, and therefore, it requires different financing that is usually higher than a home mortgage.

Locations are another factor. Finding reasonable locations that still allow access to job opportunities. And overcoming the stigma that might be attached to living in a tiny home. However, for those who are facing housing insecurity, it seems that a tiny home would provide a secure and stable environment that could help in more ways than harm.

Until next time…