How to Buy a Tiny House

Hello, what crazy times we are living in! With our personal experience designing and building a tiny house on wheels and living in an RV while building our off-grid homestead, we have been getting more and more inquiries from those of you interested in downsizing and hitting the road or buying land and building your dream home with lots of interest in community living. We are ready and excited to help you get going on that path whether you are going to do it all yourself or may want to hire a contractor. We will be creating a series of posts to help you figure out how to get started on this journey so feel free to follow along and ask questions!

Today I wanted to share an article about How to Buy a Tiny House that Lexi of Redfin wrote and thought would be helpful in learning about financing, selecting property and buying or building a tiny home.

Here are a few things we would add based on our experience.

1. If you want to find a small home on land, search for tiny homes on Redfin up to 1,000 square feet as homes under 500 square feet may not yield many search results.

2. Vacant land may or may not have any utility improvements such as power, water, sewer or septic. Talk to local utility companies, well drillers, etc. to estimate what these might cost to install. For our property, a well and utility power connection are estimated at $25,000 EACH! You can haul in a lot of water and buy a whole solar energy system for that cost.

3. Many people use personal savings to finance their tiny home.

Wintering in a Tiny Home

Wow, what a crazy winter we have had this year! When I first talked to the people who are hosting my tiny home and me, they told me snow was more of a novelty than the norm. So I wasn't expecting multiple snowstorms, feet of snow on the ground for months, and days when I couldn't get to work because I had to wait for the rural roads where I live to be plowed. They say this has been a record winter, worse than any in 20 years, so maybe I should consider myself lucky to have had this experience. Don't get me wrong, snow can be beautiful when it's falling and waking up to a blue sky and snow topped ponderosa pines is downright magical. It's the cold, the shoveling and the treacherous road conditions dealt with on a daily basis that remind me why I moved away from a snowier climate. Can you tell I'm ready for spring?

I am happy to say my tiny house has held up to the snow and below zero temps. Well mostly. My cantilevered door awning did manage to build up enough snow to split and rip apart the siding and furring strips I had lag screwed it to so I'm going to have to do some repairs to get it reinstalled. Luckily I had added a 2x4 across the horizontal supports so the polycarbonate didn't break.

I did invest in a heated water hose this winter and it was the best decision I could have made. For around $100, I have had running water all winter long. We didn't end up installing a frost free hydrant but the utility shed structure and a little bit of insulation around the water hose connections were enough to keep the line from freezing. I had guessed that I would be dealing with colder weather for a longer period of time than I had in Portland, and boy was I right! I highly recommend buying and using one if you live in a climate with below freezing winter temps.

Also, I bought an oil filled radiant heater to use as the primary heat source for my home. I usually had it set on the low or eco modes at 65 degrees (the lowest temp possible), and that was more than adequate to keep the house warm even in sub zero conditions.