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Updated almost 4 years ago, 02/25/2021
Any investors live in a Tiny House?
So this is an idea that my wife and I have been bouncing around for the last couple of months. We are new to investing and looking for some rental properties. Preferably we would like to start out with short term/Airbnb rentals, and long term depending on the area, if a deal comes up.
I wanted to know if anyone out there is currently living in a tiny house while running their business and if they are, any complications that they are running into. The good, bad, ugly, etc. I understand you have to comply with zoning regulations but surprisingly there are a decent amount of websites that already have the road mapped out for most of where you can go.
My wife and I have family all over the south east and we would like to restrict our investments to the same area (for now).
Any thoughts, comments, questions, experience, please feel free to post below!
Thanks,
Ethan
Hey Ethan,
I currently live in a normal-sized house, but I rent out "tiny" 107 square foot log cabins as Airbnb Short term rentals and I can say personaly they are INSANELY profitable as airbnb listings (especially if you have the right property). I'm developing and systemitizing what I do into a process and would love to share it with you.
David
@Matt Zale Hey Matt, yeah let's hear about it!
@Account Closed Hey y'all! I'm sending PM's to some members while making public posts too, so apologies if I'm restating some experiences. Just an FYI, a few years ago I contributed to the book 'Turning Tiny' which I believe is available on Amazon. It explains a lot of the reasoning for getting into the venture.. and it's a great addition for the coffee table!
The 10 acre community was a great experience and experiment in land dev entrepreneurship. I learned a lot about the process and what to expect for the next time. For several strategic reasons, the first community had to be dissolved. Fortunately, we had everybody on month-to-month agreements and every tiny house had wheels, making it easier to relocate.
Of course, there's a lot of excitement for the 2.0 version, so I want to be much more savvy about it and attract the 'dream team', such as what Gary Keller emphasizes in his "Millionaire RE Investor" book. If things go right with the business model improvement, we won't need to depend on just one developer or land owner in each major city to enjoy niche developments.
The tiny house 'movement' is more of a lifestyle. It involves a lot of cool/interesting people, however it's a challenge to collaborate with enthusiasts who make many of their decisions on emotion. I wish it wasn't that way, but I think one either has the investment mindset or not. So, I've decided a while ago to reach out to the investment communities, both the startup/angel/VC world and now the REI community. For now, I'm pretty new to BP and REI, so I'm soaking in as much knowledge here with the goal to increase personal wealth so that I can fund my ventures and maybe donate to causes down the line. The promising thing is that REI is so closely related to my last venture, that I'm kicking myself for not joining BP earlier.
Currently, there is still a need to find land for niche developments, such as tiny houses. This is why I'm getting further into the RE & Land Dev fields. Some groups are petitioning city codes to allow more tiny houses in urban settings, which is a noble cause, but I don't see this as a big breakthrough. For example, I don't see how placing a tiny house in the backyard of a hip zip code is any different than the existing ADU or 'granny flat'. Instead, I believe that the big creative disruption is in land acquisition and partnering with real estate players to integrate tiny house solutions. With land acquisition comes the opportunity and leverage to make so many other tech or infrastructure breakthroughs. In other words, start with land hacking and other businesses will follow.
In the meantime, there are some obvious opportunities for those that acquire or build tiny houses, such as partnering with local land owners and dividing up Airbnb profit. If anybody from BP is in the Austin, TX area, and is interested in the cause, or just REI in general, I'd love to sit down and grab a coffee with you.
Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:
@Account Closed I work in 15 states fly over 100k miles a year so yes some people travel the country working
Now I see why you got your pilot license!
@Matt Zale Thanks for sharing. I'm interested in lifestyle communities and land. Let's grab coffee?
@Matt Zale Thank you for sharing! There is a place near Clemson University that holds tiny homes as student housing. http://www.thepieratclemson.com/tiny-homes Maybe this can be of value to you somehow.
@David Fraser Yes, please share! I would love to hear all about it. Are all of these cabins in one location or spread out?
@Account Closed Thanks for the link to pier at clemson! It looks like these are park models built on permanent foundation, where my project was involved with what we used to call "THoWs" tiny houses on wheels, which are now being called 'movable tiny houses' by the tiny house code-inclusion advocates, for strategic purposes. Here's a link that gets deep into that process https://tinyhousebuild.com/tiny-house-appendix-ado...
With that said, I'm ok with park models, permanent, movable, or whatever can bring progress. There's even talk of floating house designs to mitigate American hurricane-prone and flood zone areas. The Dutch and others have made use of these for generations.
Personally, I think the exciting part is how land development and real estate could soon become a multi-disciplinary field attracting startups and investment.
@Account Closed
Sure man, happy to share: basically I started with one log cabin in my backyard, and have recently grown it to 3 rentable cabins (and a 4th bathroom cabin). ROI is like 100-200%, it's kindof like house hacking on steriods. They are all on my primary residence as of right now, but I'm scouting for other locations and how to "scale" this model. It's basically renting out the tiny house experience for a weekend, or "glamourous camping" as I call it.