Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Resources for the Modern-Day House on the Move

In my ongoing hunt to find a home for my house, I've stumbled upon a couple interesting and useful websites: Tiny House Listings and the Tiny House Map.  Tiny House Listings is similar to a lot of real estate websites, except instead of advertising respectable cookie cutter homes in the suburbs, it offers tiny houses for sale and possibly illegal parking spaces for rent!  In addition to such fascinating classifieds, the website hosts a neat little blog on all things tiny housing, including, oh hey! House for a Hobo!  Check out the summary here.

Sweet rides such as this show up on Tinyhouselistings.com

The Tiny House Map just came out last month, but I think its sheer genius.  The movement to smaller housing has definitely been growing (when I first learned about Tumbleweed and joined their Facebook page last year, they had 24,000 some fans- now its well over 42,000!), but its really hard to gauge how many people have actually taken the plunge from dreaming to making life in a 120 square foot box their reality.  "Not many" appears to be the answer.  Check it out- I'm the only tiny houser in the state of Virginia!


Its interesting to see the distribution of tiny housing across the country.  With a bit of demographic information, one could probably come up with good guesses about what it is that makes people interested in tiny houses, e.g. cost of rent, environmental surroundings, age distribution, etc.  Any theories?      

8 comments:

  1. I think a lot of it has to do with the recession combined with people just wanting a simpler easier life. We've been programmed for 50 years to consume as much as possible as we go deeper into debt. It's the American way! Now people are waking up to the fact that you don't have to sit in a cubicle 40-50 hours a week to pay off a 30 year mortgage and credit cards.

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    1. Agreed. While tiny houses do still cost money to build and upkeep, its far less than what has become the "traditional" American house. Mortgages definitely restrict what you can do with your life.

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  2. think mostly you now need a sweet old classic truck to hitch to your trailer...

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    1. Yeah, like one of these beasts:
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/37573576@N06/5817131238/

      Old quarry man included.

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  3. That's awesome! You're an innovator :P Hope the search is going well!

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  4. I think it's definitely true that more people dream of tiny houses than build them, just like more people look at the dessert menu than order dessert—sometimes imagination feels like enough.
    But as you mentioned, Tiny House Map is a new site, so not everyone's tiny house is a pin in the map, and probably most people who actually live in tiny houses have no idea that there's a whole cultural trend around them--they just think they have a really small house.

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  5. Which Tumbleweed model did you buy plans for? The Walden?

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    1. Tarleton...which may be the same exterior as a Walden?

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