money 'People think they're just RVs': Tiny house builder describes the appeal and issues
First came the iPod, taking over for the larger-sized walkman. Next came the smartphone, which made the desktop computer and laptop. Now comes the ... tiny house?
“I'm a minimalist personally,” Peter Huggler, co-founder of Indigo River Tiny Homes, told Yahoo Finance. “A lot of people think that they're just RVs, but these houses are built to the same standards and quality as a standard home.”
The real appeal to these homes comes with the economic price tag on them. While the median price on buying a home in the United States is $225,300, the average cost of buying a tiny home is roughly $60,000. Also, given the size, tiny homes also allow residents to worry less about upkeep and maintenance issues.
The tiny house movement grew in the last decade in the United States. The International Code Council (ICC) even added a tiny house appendix to the International Residential Code (IRC) in 2018. Unfortunately, it’s still difficult for some new customers to receive the appropriate funding for the homes and find a place to settle down due to city mandates.
“The two biggest challenges to living tiny other than, you know, people embracing the minimalist lifestyle is a place to park it and then financing to purchase the tiny house,” Huggler said. “Unless you have an 800 credit score, there's not a whole lot of options for you out there for tiny house financing.”
He added: “Most cities have ordinances that don't allow tiny houses to be within the city limits. They're [pushing owners] on property outside the city limits or in an RV park where it's allowed and legal to park these.”
It come as no surprise that a bulk of tiny home owners are older and possibly already retired. A majority of tiny home owners are 50 years of age or older, and approximately 32% of these owners have more than $10,000 in savings for retirement.
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